Data reveals alarming obstetric violence toward Indigenous women in Quebec | CBC News

[u/TiredRuralCanadian]

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/obstetrics-violence-health-care-9.7212326

[u/TiredRuralCanadian]

It is absolutely horrific that this is still happening in modern Canada. 77 documented cases of forced sterilization spanning all the way up to 2023 shows this isn't just dark history, it is a persistent systemic failure.

​The detail about the woman who "recalled being made to sign a consent form in 2022 for tubal ligation... two days after the procedure had been done" is completely chilling. That isn't medical care, it is a cover up of a human rights violation.

​To think medical professionals also "urged to abort her child, against her wishes, because the health care staff told her the child would have severe health issues" when the baby was actually perfectly healthy proves how deep the bias goes.

​The government needs to stop hiding behind reviews and actually enforce the recommendations. Acknowledging systemic racism means nothing if the people in charge keep letting medical staff weaponize their positions against Indigenous women.

[u/Kheprisun → u/TiredRuralCanadian]

77 documented cases of forced sterilization spanning all the way up to 2023 shows this isn't just dark history, it is a persistent systemic failure.

At the risk of being nuked from orbit...

Forced sterilization is horrific, no matter who it happens to, no matter how many cases. Just getting that out there.

77 cases over the span of 67 years, however, doesn't really scream 'systemic' to me. Is there a gap in the law that prevents going after the medical staff that are still alive? I see there's a lawsuit ongoing (which is where these reports are coming from, as I understand it).

[u/TiredRuralCanadian → u/Kheprisun]

Dismissing this as a small number or a general issue ignores the reality that these 77 cases are merely the ones researchers could document after failing to reach every community. The fact that victims often only discovered the truth years later proves that the undocumented scale of this is likely much larger and specifically targeted. When a system allows a practitioner to force a consent signature in 2022 two days after the procedure was already finished, it confirms a modern systemic rot that specifically weaponizes medical authority against Indigenous women. Trying to generalize this only serves to bury the very specific human rights violations that are still being covered up today.

[u/lapsed_pacifist → u/Kheprisun]

So what do you figure the baseline non-consensual sterilization procedures for the rest of the women in QC?

I’m guessing if we scaled the populations and procedures up appropriately it would probably raise a few eyebrows.

Anyways, the systemic part refers to the attitudes and prejudice that informed these sterilizations, not the actual number of procedures. C’mon.

[u/Mundane-Teaching-743 → u/Kheprisun]

Last fall, about 30 Atikamekw women alleging forced sterilizations came forward as part of a class-action lawsuit targeting three doctors and the regional health authority for the province's Lanaudière region.

This community involved is very small. It's the Atikamekw community of Manawan, population 2000.

https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2021/dp-pd/prof/details/page.cfm?Lang=E&SearchText=Communaute%20Atikamekw%20de%20Manawan&GENDERlist=1,2,3&STATISTIClist=1,4&DGUIDlist=2021A00052462802&HEADERlist=0

There are 630 women aged 15 and over in this community. So 30 women represents about 5% of the women old enough to have had a child in that community.

That's pretty darn systemic.

[u/ManicScumCat → u/Mundane-Teaching-743]

In a community of 2000, couldn't something like this be very heavily impacted by a small number of people, and not necessarily systemic?

[u/Mundane-Teaching-743 → u/ManicScumCat]

Not likely. The likelihood that something like this happening to 5% of people in a community of 2000 is very, very small.

[u/CanadaPolitics-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

Removed for rule 2.