A tide of #MeToo testimonies about painful gynecological procedures and abusive medical staff is rippling across the Balkans, where women are breaking taboos in patriarchal societies to share their traumatic hospital experiences.
The outcry was sparked by one female politician’s emotional account of an agonizing treatment she received after a miscarriage, shocking many in a region where sexual health is rarely discussed in the public sphere.
“They tied my arms and legs and started a curettage without anesthesia... These were the 30 most horrible minutes of my life,” Croatian Legislator Ivana Nincevic-Lesandric told a male-dominated Croatian parliament in October last year.
Photo: AFP
“I could tell you about every second as each was lasting an eternity,” she said of the surgery that involves scraping tissue from the uterus, and is often performed after a miscarriage or abortion.
“Do you plan to change this — and when?” she challenged Croatian Minister of Health Milan Kujundzic.
Saying that “this is not how Croatian hospitals proceed,” the minister pledged to investigate the case, while the hospital where she was treated rejected her claims.
However, Croatian women came to her defense, with hundreds offering testimonies of similarly painful and humiliating experiences during gynecological procedures.
“You did not cry when you had sex, so shut up,” one woman recalled a doctor telling her during a biopsy when she was whimpering in pain.
“They held me by my hands, legs and head, and the doctor said I was spoiled for crying,” wrote another, who said she was denied an anesthetic during a curettage after a miscarriage.
The outcry in Croatia inspired a wave of similar grievances across the region.
In neighboring Bosnia, the non-governmental organization Natural Birth received more than 300 testimonies from women on painful gynecological procedures in just 10 days.
“Maternity wards are the last places of institutional violence against women,” Natural Birth president and Sarajevo doctor Amira Cerimagic said.
She likened the regional response to a Balkan version of the #MeToo movement, a US-turned-global campaign launched in response to accusations of sexual abuse and harassment by powerful men in the entertainment industry and other sectors.
That original #MeToo campaign has yet to make any significant waves in the Balkans, where a strongly patriarchal culture endures.
“We are shining a light to everything that is happening behind closed doors... it has been lasting for generations and it must be changed swiftly,” Cerimagic said.
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