Marie O’Connor from Survivors of Symphysiotomy

“I raise a very serious breach of human rights not on the list of issues.

Ireland’s continuing refusal to admit that the practice of symphysiotomy from the 1940s to the 1980s was a human rights abuse has brought us here. Ireland was the only country in the world to do these childbirth operations in preference to Caesarean section. Religious ideology and medical ambition drove the surgery.

An estimated 1,500 women and girls, some as young as 14, had their pelvises broken, gratuitously, by doctors who believed in childbearing without limitation. Life long disability, chronic pain, mental suffering and family breakdown followed.

Patient consent was never sought: women were operated upon wide awake and often screaming: those who resisted were physically restrained. This was torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.

The State has failed to provide an effective remedy. There has been no independent inquiry, only two whitewash reports published 13 days before this hearing. The revival of symphysiotomy was a mass medical experiment that sharpened the need for patient consent, yet the government’s Walsh report justifies the involuntary performance of these operations.

There has been no restitution, only an ex gratis scheme – set out in the Murphy report – that our members have unanimously rejected. The scheme is based on the official lie that these operations were medically acceptable: it forces women to waive their legal and constitutional rights before they know the outcome of this State process. There is to be no independent board, women will have no right to independent doctors, nor will their lawyers have a right of audience.

The State claims it was not liable but these operations were carried out by State employees, and done in private hospitals providing services on behalf of the State, under its supervision.

We ask you to urge the State to finally vindicate the rights of these women under the Covenant.”

Marie O’Connor speaking at the United Nations Office of The High Commissioner for Human Rights in the last hour.  In total, 16 civil society organisations from Ireland will give brief speeches to the UN Human Rights Committee today.

The committee monitors states’ compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which Ireland signed in October 1973 and ratified in December 1989.

Later today Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald and her team of officials will go before the committee for three hours, followed up by another three hour session tomorrow morning.

Survivors of Symphysiotomy (Facebook)

Ireland faces questioning before UN Human Rights Committee (Kitty Holland, Irish Times)

Sam Boal/Photocall Ireland