A woman, anonymous, recounts the exchange she had with a doctor. “We’re going to do your tubal ligation.” I said, “No, I don’t want it. I want to have other children, me, later.” “Don’t you think you’ve had enough here? That’s enough, this has to stop. All the children you have brought into the world are all going to live in misery.” »
Overwhelming testimonials
Testimonies like this, the document of the School of Native Studies of the University of Quebec in Abitibi-Témiscamingue and the Commission of Health and Social Services of the First Nations of Quebec and Labrador abounds. In total, the researchers collected 35.
Some Aboriginal women have undergone unwilling tubal ligations, unwanted abortions, or hysterectomies, as one recounts: “He said to me, ‘I’m going to solve your problem once and for all. Anyway, you already have three children, I will operate on you again, I will clean you in your belly.” Then, I never understood what it was, he didn’t say “hysterectomy”. He never told me that I wouldn’t have any more children, that he had removed my uterus. »
Most of these women had gone to the hospital to give birth. Others were there for different types of unrelated operations. The report denounces in particular the pressure from medical personnel to carry out these acts. He also concludes, by observing all of the testimonies, that no participant benefited from the services of an interpreter so that she could exercise free and informed consent in front of the doctors. However, most speak an Aboriginal language first and foremost, without necessarily mastering their second language.
Indigenous leaders shocked
The Chief of the Assembly of First Nations Quebec-Labrador, Ghislain Picard, denounced in a press release the “high degree of colonial violence of an odious and unrecognized reality” and maintains that these testimonials make it possible to “find the presence of systemic racism in public services in Quebec towards natives. Adrienne Jérôme, the leader of the Anishnabe community of Lac-Simon, sees in these gestures a desire to cut ties with Aboriginal culture.
The chiefs are demanding that these practices cease immediately, and their message has resonated all the way to the Government of Quebec. Minister Ian Lafrenière, responsible for relations with First Nations and Inuit, says he wants to shed full light on this situation “completely unacceptable”. The executive maintains that there is an urgent need to offer indigenous people secure access to health services.
Asked by a Quebec radio station, the president of the College of Physicians, Mauril Gaudreault, said that if the names of the culprits were known, an investigation could be launched. He adds that “Asking a patient if she wants to undergo a tubal ligation while she is in labor to give birth is unacceptable.”
Several class actions of women who claim to have suffered this violence are being examined in Canada. In 2018, the United Nations Committee against Torture had already expressed its concern about the sterilization “extensive, forced or coerced” of Indigenous women and girls in Canada.