A new report released Thursday by researchers in Quebec surveys 35 Inuit and Indigenous women, of whom 22 relayed experiences of coerced sterilization. The study makes 31 recommendations to medical professionals and governments in the region to prevent the practice from continuing. (File photo)
New report sheds light on forced sterilizations of Inuit women in Quebec
Researchers find discriminatory practices, patients’ consent undermined
A First Nations health commission recommends pursuing class-action lawsuits against those who have allegedly forced sterilization procedures on Inuit and First Nations women in Quebec and Labrador.
The possibility of legal reparations is just one of several recommendations stemming from a report the First Nations of Quebec and Labrador Health and Social Services Commission released this week.
The report includes the testimony of 22 women who believe they were sterilized without their consent.
The last case of imposed sterilization recorded in Quebec occurred just three years ago in 2019, according to the report.
“For me, the tubal ligation was nothing. But it’s also something. A part of me was cut off. Cut off [from the ability to] create life,” one of the participants, whose identity is protected by the commission, said in the report.
The commission believes this is the first time data has been collected on imposed sterilizations and other medical violence against patients in the province when it comes to female reproductive health. The commission invited women to share their stories in May 2021, and a total of 35 are compiled in the report.
Several participants reported never having signed a consent form prior to undergoing a procedure that permanently altered their reproductive capacity, such as a tubal ligation or hysterectomy.
Others reported experiencing severe pain during and after the procedures and being denied or under-prescribed pain medications.
The report also indicates that in cases where patients did sign consent forms, they say they were not adequately informed about what the procedures involved and how it would affect their ability to have children.
Several women shared that it wasn’t until years later that they discovered they had been sterilized.
One participant in the study said she travelled to Montreal for treatment for severe menstrual pains but was given a hysterectomy, not knowing that it would impact her ability to have children.
Four women reported having witnessed forced sterilization on a family member or in a work context, and four women reported they had been forced to abort their baby.
“The imposed sterilization suffered by Indigenous women is a violation of their physical and psychological integrity as well as a theft of their fundamental right to bear children,” said regional Chief Ghislain Picard of the Assembly of First Nations in Quebec and Labrador in a news release accompanying the report.
The report makes 31 recommendations to medical professionals, governments and Inuit and First Nations organizations.
Those recommendations include calling on the Quebec College of Physicians to end the practice of imposed sterilization and imposed abortion; funding First Nations and Inuit doula training and midwifery services in Indigenous communities; and launching an awareness campaign on medical consent.
This practice is part of systemic racism that is found across the country but that the Legault government denies. Up to now, my understanding is the authors have collected testimonies of two Inuit women but that should not be the end of the story and if there are other Inuit women in Nunavik who were the victims of this practice, they can come forward and contact the authors of the report as their investigation is ongoing. The truth must come out if there is to be reconciliation and the authorities must be accountable for what was done.
Should not sterilize people , let them have children , can alway adopt them out to family anway.
On going slow genocide in Canada.