Gendered Silence and Misdiagnosis in the Clinical Encounter: Celia de Fréine's Blood Debts and the Hepatitis C Scandal in Ireland

Abstract

The history of women’s health care is characterized by silenced or heavily edited episodes that have contributed to the neglect of women’s bodies and minds and accordingly prevented them from receiving the best possible treatments. As Hannah Devlin has contended, this prevailing attitude toward women’s health has triggered “a string of health-care scandals over several decades” in which the voices of the patients have been consistently ignored. Ireland is no exception in this respect, and its history, both past and present, is punctuated by the silencing of women’s voices and bodies in the clinical encounter. The death of Savita Halappanavar in October 2012 at Galway University Hospital—where, in spite of her physical distress and severe complications in the midst of a miscarriage, she was refused a termination of her pregnancy because there was still a fetal heartbeat—stands out among the recent failures of the Irish medical, religious, and political systems with respect to women, and it has left an indelible impact on the campaigns for reproductive justice in the