by HOMA KHALEELI
“You blank a lot of it out, over the years, but you don’t forget. It gave me the horrors’ … 88-year-old Rita McCann, who had a symphysiotomy without her knowledge or consent in 1957.” PHOTO/Patrick Bolger/The Guardian
When Mary discovered she was pregnant, she was more than delighted: she was relieved. It was 1981 and although she was just 23 years old, she had wanted a family since she had married three years earlier.
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“I was in labour, but for a long time,” Mary remembers. “I was in so much pain that I was shouting and roaring. I was hysterical. I remember a nurse slapping my jaw and telling me to get a hold of myself. At one stage, my heartbeat and the baby’s heartbeat got them worried. So they called a doctor to examine me.”
When the doctor arrived, he did something Mary cannot forget. “They gave me gas and air and an injection, and took me to another room, where they tied my legs up on each side,” she recalls. “There were two nurses on each side of me. I saw this doctor at the end of my bed with a big, long silver thing. They made a hole in your private parts, and he inserted this silver thing up and cut the pubic bone and pushed it over to widen your pelvis for you to deliver your baby yourself.”
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