Toronto. Complaints converge in the office of Senator Yvonne Boyer. This collects available data on the forced sterilization of Aboriginal women in Canada. These are not exhaustive, but Boyer speaks of thousands of cases.
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At least 12,000 women have been affected since the 1970s, says the senator, who herself has mixed-race roots. “Whenever I speak to an indigenous community, I am overwhelmed by women telling me they have been sterilized.”
Women do not necessarily refer to ancient times. Both affected groups and activists, but also the voices of the medical profession and politics still blame many cases. A Senate report last year also concluded that “this horrific practice is not confined to the past.” At least five class action lawsuits are currently pending in Canada.
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One case among many others: This spring, a doctor was warned by health authorities for forced sterilization from 2019, according to documents available to the AP news agency. The operation was triggered by abdominal pain in the indigenous woman. The doctor had written consent to remove the right fallopian tube but not the left.
But he cut both fallopian tubes – despite objections from medical staff during the operation. An investigation then revealed that there was no medical justification for sterilization. The doctor’s actions were condemned as a “serious surgical error” and unethical.
The Geneva Conventions classify forced sterilization as a crime against humanity. Recurring reports of new interventions of this type also worry UN human rights monitors: five years ago, for example, the UN Committee against Torture formally expressed concern and demanded that all allegations are investigated.
In a statement to the AP, the Canadian government said it was aware of the allegations and that the courts were involved. “The sterilization of women without their informed consent constitutes an assault and a criminal offence,” the statement said. At the same time, the government has acknowledged that bias in the health system “continues to have disastrous effects” on tribal people.
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This represents approximately 5% of Canada’s approximately 40 million people, spread across more than 600 Aboriginal communities. Their access to the health system is often difficult and burdened by the shadows of the past. Until the 1990s, the natives were even mostly cared for in separate hospitals, from where frequent abuses were reported.
A more recent case is that of Sylvia Tuckanow. She gave birth in July 2001 at a Saskatoon hospital. Before a Senate committee in 2019, she described what happened next. “I could smell something burning,” she said. Then she heard the doctor’s voice: “There: constricted, cut and sorry. Nothing can pass. The fallopian tubes were targeted. She disagreed, Tuckanow pointed out.
In November, a report documented nearly two dozen forced sterilizations in Quebec from 1980 to 2019. The impact on First Nations people, describes Morningstar author Wednesday as staggering. In view of the indigenous lives lost, she speaks of a genocide.
Wednesday knows exactly what women go through – in the long run. She herself was sterilized at the age of 14. She didn’t find out until decades later, when she asked for help because she couldn’t get pregnant. She still suffers, she says today. “No therapy or cure, no matter how good, can make up for the fact that my human right to have children has been taken away from me.”
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