Indigenous women and coerced sterilizations lawsuit--Canada

[maize]

I feel sick reading this.

Edited November 18, 2018 by maize

[maize]

More

https://thestarphoenix.com/news/local-news/indigenous-women-coerced-into-sterilizations-across-canada-senator

[Ottakee]

Overall, Indigenous women are the most vulnerable in the US.....rape, murder, missing, having their children' removed, etc.

 

[Guest]

Wow. I am speechless. 

[maize]

I found this from the 1970's in the US but if this is a current and ongoing thing in Canada I imagine unofficial coercion is a reality for indigenous and other minority women in the US as well. That this is happening in 2018 in North America leaves me speechless.

https://www.nlm.nih.gov/nativevoices/timeline/543.html

[GoodGrief]

1 hour ago, maize said:

I found this from the 1970's in the US but if this is a current and ongoing thing in Canada I imagine unofficial coercion is a reality for indigenous and other minority women in the US as well. That this is happening in 2018 in North America leaves me speechless.

https://www.nlm.nih.gov/nativevoices/timeline/543.html

 

Definitely not occurring in the nine years that I worked OB units in various Indian Health Service hospitals in the 80s-90s. Getting consent for those procedures was a big deal.

[bolt.]

I think it’s current and ongoing in the sense that proper consent and information is not being followed in all cases even now.

The reporting is a bit opaque because the details cover 40 years. The narrative about what has happened looks quite far back into the modern past. It lacks a sense of detail around the occurrences “as recent as 2017”. Not that we need gritty details — just that the implication that rights have been violated in the same flagrant manner ‘this whole time’ might not be an accurate picture of the reality.

Reading between the lines, I think that indigenous women are probably being lied to and pressured in underhanded ways — and it has to stop. I’m not sure the whole hospital is colluding in making open threats any more?

[Bluegoat]

I've felt a bit like bolt - based on the reporting I've had a hard time getting a feel for what has happened and what is happening now.  I've also wondered about the extent this might happen more broadly, particularly in terms of women who are poor or have problems with addiction, work in the sex industry, have FAS, and such.  There is a larger cross-over of indigenous women in those populations here in Canada compared to the population as a whole, and it seems entirely possible to me that other vulnerable women may have been pressured in similar ways.  Not that that is a better problem, but I'd not want the scope of the issue to be misunderstood.

[maize]

This article says that changes were made to consent procedures after women started coming forward in 2015. Which points to very recent problems.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/saskatoon-health-region-apologizes-for-coerced-tubal-ligations-on-indigenous-women/article35824599/

I do suspect this is an issue with other vulnerable groups. 

That more egregious coercion happened in the past doesn't mean coercion of any kind in the present is not a serious problem.

Edited November 18, 2018 by maize

[Excelsior! Academy]

I cannot believe this is still happening!  My own mother had her uterus cauterized at 16.  My native grandmother was in and out of facilities with a paranoid schizophrenic diagnosis.  The answer was to sterilize my mother.   She remembers being held down while the nurse cried and said to her how she (the nurse) didn't know why he (I'm assuming the acting doctor) was always doing "this" to these young girls.  My mother had miscarriage after miscarriage and a menstrual like cycle the entire time she was pregnant with me.  It is just sickening that this was ever a practice and even more disgusting that it is going on today.  

[Terabith]

In South Dakota, in the 1990's, my classmates revealed that in store after store and restaurant after restaurant where they all worked....every one of those places had a policy against serving indigenous people.  It was shocking to a kid from the South.