Reading the ECHR symphysiotomy judgments in detail now. They are hardly a vindication of govt policy. Two points caught my eye:

1) The court largely adopts the state's line on the history of symphysiotomy, without much further inquiry. In particular, it presents Irish Catholicism as an impenetrable monolith, leaving no room for medical or moral agency.

1) Shades of A,B and C v. Ireland here - again the court is telling us that violence against women was a product of the culture.

1) (It is significant in this respect that the 3 cases considered deal with the 1960s - the last decade in which, for example, both legal and illegal access to contraceptives were heavily constrained. More wiggle room with later cases)

2) On adequacy of remedy etc, the threshold for intervention here seems very high. The state threw the kitchen sink at symphysiotomy, and forcefully managed complainants to support it, so job done.

2) The Farrell judgments (L.F.) were extremely limited in scope - they emphasised that, following an established conservative line of precedent in medical negligence law - they were deferring to standard of care set by a *minority* school of thought.

2) The ECtHR is mirroring that deference, reinforcing a body of law that necessarily subordinates women's experience of medical treatment to a top-down account of the generation of legitimate medical knowledge.

So this is not a judgment about how symphysiotomy was fine and we can all hold our heads high. This is a judgment that lets the state off the hook by allowing a series of patriarchal legal mechanisms to operate unimpeded.

I'll leave it to colleagues more familiar with the courts' general politics on gender and its peculiar approaches to torture, inhuman and degrading treatment to comment on those.

I went to observe L.F.'s case in the High Court years ago. She has borne extraordinary costs in an effort to obtain the kind of remedy she needed and, in my view, deserved. Heartbroken for her.