Just when you thought it was safe to go into the hospital again...

The Butcher of Bega

The thing that disturbs me most about this article is that these women would have had nurses, midwives, partners or parents with them and it seems that no one intervened to defend the mothers or their babies. Obviously I don't know what really went on, or what sort of complaints were made but comments like

"They [doctors] didn't particularly like him but they didn't interfere."

and

"They were all worried about their jobs and it was silly really. They should have just said something. They used to all talk about it in the tearoom and no one did anything about it."

indicate that people knew something bad was happening and chose not to get involved.
It strikes me as a sample of what the psychology behind Auschwitz must have been like. A person in authority says 'do something' and good people (or people who think of themselves as 'good') do it.

On another note why in this quote:

"She recalled a woman who had such a "traumatic" delivery that she refused to allow Mr Reeves back in her room."

is traumatic in ""? It could possibly be a quote from the midwife, or from the mother but it seems strange to quote a single word with out clarifying who said it, or what the rest of the comment was. All the other quotes are sentences - this is the only individual word to be ""-ed. What it manages to do - intentionally or not - is to call into question the use of the word 'traumatic'.

Do we believe that it's impossible for a woman to have a traumatic birth? Are we still at the stage where we think women can experience a doctor who

mutilated their genitals, botched procedures and sexually assaulted them

but still leave the hospital saying "At least I've got a healthy baby and that's all that matters"?

Because if that's true, then women's health care has come no-where since year dot.