Survivors of Symphysiotomy protest, Merrion Street, Dublin 2 in 2014
This morning.
The European Court of Human Rights has declared applications from three Irish women who underwent symphysiotomies in Irish maternity hospitals in the 1960s as inadmissible.
Symphysiotomy is a surgical procedure in which preganant women has the cartilage of her pubic symphysis divided to widen the pelvis.
Via RTÉ:
The ECHR has found that in one case the complaint was inadmissible as the applicant had failed to exhaust domestic remedies in the Irish courts.
In the other two cases it found the applicants’ complaints to be manifestly ill-founded, indicating that a question regarding the exhaustion of domestic remedies also arose.
Cases taken over symphysiotomies declared inadmissible (RTÉ)
Previously: Symphysiotomy on Broadsheet
And sending it back to the Irish courts will mean most of these elderly women will die before they see justice.
Which is typical of the way women whose health has suffered through state violence or neglect are treated.
Every time I hear a mention of Our Lady of Lourdes hospital in Drogheda, I immediately think of this procedure which should be an absolute rarity and the women whose lives were made hell because of a certain medic who performed it as a matter of routine. These women deserve better than more lengthy adversarial court cases. Macabre.