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Doctrine and doctors, women and chainsaws [1]
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Date: 2022-07-24
Symphysiotomy survivors demonstrating for restitution due to birth injuries arising from medical malpractice. While the Irish government has made restitution to some victims, the window for compensation closed in 2016.
It is a manifestly un-fun fact that the chainsaw was originally invented in 1597 as a medical instrument. It was designed to expedite doctors in performing symphysiotomy, a procedure that severs a woman’s pubic bones. In the case of an obstructed birth, this surgery opens the pelvis to allow the baby to pass through.
Chainsaw designed for bisecting the pubic symphysis.
Once modern antiseptic techniques made c-sections less deadly, symphysiotomy persisted almost exclusively in Irish Catholic hospitals. Between 1940 and 1984, an estimated 1500 Irish women were subjected without consent or anesthesia to a barbaric “chainsaw birth.”
The rationale for Catholic doctors continuing this procedure, which the UN has classified specifically as torture, was to maximize the number of children a woman could theoretically birth in the future, while preventing the need for contraception that was thought to arise from repeated c-sections.
But how could the underlying reasoning for church-sanctioned torture of women in labor not be informed by the Bible’s assertion that suffering in childbirth is the God’s “curse” on women as punishment for Eve’s sin?
Women whose pubic symphyses have been bisected suffer lifelong complications, including incontinence, prolapse, sexual dysfunction, mobility issues, and chronic pain.
So why is this tragic story now relevant in the US?
One out of six hospital beds in the US is currently owned by the Catholic church. While the sight of obstetricians whipping out their small chainsaws is not a risk at this point, medical treatment constrained by religious dogma and misogyny, rather than science, is again a clear and present danger to pregnant and birthing women.
Sources:
symphysiotomyireland.com/...
www.healthcaredive.com/…
www.aljazeera.com/...
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