The three applicants in these three cases – L.F. (External URL below), K.O’S. and W.M. – are Irish citizens. Each gave birth to children in three hospitals in Ireland in the 1960s. Each applicant underwent surgical symphysiotomies in the respective hospitals during or in advance of labour. Their cases were among ten applications brought by women to the European Court of Human Rights (“ECtHR”) who had undergone such a procedure in Ireland around the same time. All three applicants alleged that they had not been informed about the procedure and had not given their full and informed consent. They stated that they had suffered physical and psychological trauma as a result of the procedure. The symphysiotomy procedure was uncommon in Western Europe around the time, but in Ireland, it was revived in the 1940s and continued to be used until the 1980s. Following a 2011 report into the use of the procedure in Ireland, the Minister for Health announced the establishment of an ex gratia payment scheme offering compensation to women who had undergone the procedure between 1940 and 1990. However, some women, including the applicants in these cases, instituted domestic proceedings. In L.F.’s case, the High Court found that, during the time in question, the procedure had been a reasonable though limited option. This decision was upheld by the Court of Appeal, and the Supreme Court refused L.F. leave to appeal. K.O’S. and W.M. subsequently abandoned their domestic claims. Further, none of the three applicants applied to the ex gratia payment scheme, as they all believed that there was no possibility of any acknowledgment of a breach of their rights. The three women then applied to the ECtHR in 2017, relying on Articles 3 (prohibition of inhuman or degrading treatments), 8 (right to respect for private and family life), and 13 (right to an effective remedy of the Convention). The applicants complained that the use of the procedure in Ireland had not been the subject of a Convention-compliant domestic investigation and that, in addition, they had been unable to fully litigate their claims at the domestic level. K.O’S. also complained that the State had failed in its obligation to protect women from inhuman and degrading treatment by allowing symphysiotomies to take place. In 2020, the ECtHR declared that each application was inadmissible. In respect of K.O’S.’s argument, the Court found that she had failed to exhaust domestic remedies as she had not made that complaint before the domestic courts. In respect of the other two applicants, their applications were refused on the grounds that they were manifestly ill-founded.
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