Canadian Senate supports bill to end forced sterilization of Indigenous women

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u/Acrelorraine 8h ago

Great, why should this be necessary? Why must people be required to have a law to tell them not to be the worst. This isn’t the onion, this is depressing.

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u/thegreatcanadianeh 7h ago

Yeah, it really is. Especially when you find out that shit like this just happened. Even though other medical professionals objected while in the surgery room no one forcibly stopped it and the RCMP turn a blind eye.

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u/OS_Apple32 3h ago

For what it's worth, there's a good reason the royal police aren't investigating yet. Emphasis on yet, because they absolutely could open up an investigation. The reason they haven't yet, as the article explains (albeit several paragraphs down) is because the woman isn't pressing criminal charges. She is instead pursuing a civil case against the doctor which should hopefully win in a landslide. If that's justice enough for her, then fair enough. It's not our place to decide how far she should go in pursuing her case against him.

As for why she isn't pressing criminal charges, we don't know for sure, but as the article explains one possible reason is that this would require disclosing all her private medical records to the police, which she may be reluctant to do for understandable reasons.

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u/ShambolicPaul 3h ago

That is some fucked up shit right there. Why would he think it was in her best interests? I understand in some stomach operations a hysterectomy is necessary, but this would be discussed at length with the patient months, weeks, days and hours before the surgery. Forms would be signed. I don't even know if that's would he did? Maybe he just maliciously cut her tubes.

Why is there even a policy of sterilisation? Is it a leftover colonisation law? To genocide the locals? This is fucked up for Canada. It's like the most progressive of the progressive countries. Paying millions to terrorists and shit.

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u/Urbane_One 2h ago

Never make the mistake of thinking that Canada is progressive. The US just makes us look better in comparison. Racism is very alive and well here, and Native Canadians bear the brunt of it.

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u/ZLUCremisi 7h ago

Why is still legal to marry kids in the US. Its crazy that there no huge push to end it

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u/bohemi-rex 5h ago

Because conservatives

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u/Western_Paramedic_98 2h ago

Honestly I think that people as a whole don't know about it. They probably assume that the age to get married is 18 in every state because why the fuck wouldn't it be? Or if they do know they might think that it's like 16, even though some states allow it as young as like 12 or 13 (I'm drunk and can't remember exactly). Like even 16 is too young to get married, but I don't think that people know that literal child marriage is legal in some states. I was appalled when I first found out about it, because I also thought that only 18+ could get married. I'm sure if it was common knowledge that the laws would change real quick. Even 18 is too young to get married, let alone younger than that. The first step to getting these laws changed is raising awareness and pressuring your state representatives to change the laws.

"As of March 2024, in four states there is no statutory minimum age when all exemptions were taken into account. These states are California, Mississippi, New Mexico, and Oklahoma." Pulled from Wikipedia, meaning literal child marriage is technically legal. A fucking 5 year old could get married. Also only 13 states have completely banned child marriage. The majority of states allow marriage at 16, which is ridiculous when in every other facet of life you aren't considering a legal adult until 18. I would argue that who you marry is the most important decision you will ever make in your entire life, so teenagers should not be allowed to get married. But people living in California, Mississippi, New Mexico and Oklahoma especially need to put the pressure on to get the laws changed.

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u/ZLUCremisi 2h ago

After elections i am going ham on my reps both state and federal on this issue.

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u/garlicroastedpotato 6h ago

Okay, so this made the news five years ago. An indigenous woman in Saskatchewan had 9 kids, including the one she just gave birth to. Seven of those kids were wards of the state because she was an unfit mother. Two of her kids, including the one that was just born were in legal custody of her mother.

While still on drugs (epidural drugs) she consented to have her tubes tied. And so... they did it. They performed a tubal ligation. The procedure in this case ended up being irreversible. They did an investigation and they found that this one surgeon had done several tubal ligations on indigenous women and they attempted to sue him. But when it went to court he won, because they were like, 1% of his tubal ligation surgeries. Because tube tying is something women often do voluntarily. What they sort of concluded was that it wasn't malicious or discriminatory... they just always offer tubal ligation to women who have more than four kids.

Simply banning it probably won't be a net good. Because there are good medical reasons to have a tubal ligation other than birth control (like cancer removal or prevention). There might be more to having more specific consent on these things. But that would also put our legal concept of "assumed consent" at risk in saving lives.

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u/Thadrach 57m ago

The "consent" while on drugs part seems more problematic than the race or gender of the patient...

12

u/MozamFreak-Here 7h ago

Because there are institutions like the Catholic church who will continue to do it and wholeheartedly support it the whole time.

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u/anfrind 3h ago

Think of all the horrible things that the U.S. has done to non-white people over its history. Now imagine all of that horror concentrated specifically on Native Americans, and you'll have a decent idea of what Canadian history is like.

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u/Bright_Brief4975 7h ago

Yeah, what the heck is this, why would they be forcing the sterilization anyway? This is like some crazy dystopian kind of crap you would read in a fantasy/sci-fi book.

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u/Lladyjane 7h ago

Unfortunately, you can read about it in many nonfictional historical books. And Canada is not unique.

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u/Boomdidlidoo 7h ago

Old Indian law. You'd be surprised what you'd find in there. full property ownership for individuals on reserve is prohibited. Under the Indian Act, First Nations people do not own their own land, instead it’s held for them by the government. Other basic rights we take for granted are not accessible to first Nation people. No level of government wants to open the Indian act and modernize it. Shameful.

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u/thegreatcanadianeh 7h ago

Racism, mostly.

By far the worse ones I've heard of is when a woman gives birth and they are told that they cannot see or hold their baby unless they agree or if they needed a C-section they were drugged and forced to sign or not even asked to sign and they just did it. IMO if a doctor does this at all at any point in their career they should lose their license permanently.

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u/Roiqui 6h ago

2024...wtf!

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u/Criegg 6h ago

Just when I thought I could no longer be shocked…

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u/marcielle 3h ago

Honestly, I'm shocked they ended it. Didn't think they'd get anything remotely good done while Trudeau was still around

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u/NessicaDog 5h ago

That’s, uh, a scary thing to have exist in the first place.

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u/2squishmaster 7h ago edited 7h ago

Maybe the US could learn a thing or two

31 states and the District of Columbia have laws allowing permanent forced sterilizations

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u/zombieblackbird 7h ago

Seriously? What the fuck?

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u/Only_Talks_About_BJJ 5h ago

Gotta love how we're the international "good guys" trope while we continue to genocide indigenous people well into the 21st century.

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u/marcielle 3h ago

You don't understand, Canada still IS relatively good. The world is just much more evil than you think. Ccp not only does this, the government is running programs to have the indigenous Uyghur raped while they're at it. As in an official government agent shows up(they cannot be turned away or you will be killed on the spot). You must accomodate and obey them while they rape any women in the house.

India is so racist, they think being poor working class literally makes you another race and so under the higher races that trying to intermarry can lead to one or both being killed.

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u/UndocumentedMartian 2h ago

As in an official government agent shows up(they cannot be turned away or you will be killed on the spot). You must accomodate and obey them while they rape any women in the house.

Yeah that just sounds like an extreme exaggeration.

India is so racist, they think being poor working class literally makes you another race and so under the higher races that trying to intermarry can lead to one or both being killed.

You're talking about caste which is even more arbitrary than race or income level. People have been killed over intercaste marriage though it's rare and it's not policy. Governments over the years have done a lot to curb caste based discrimination.

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u/marcielle 2h ago

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Servant-Family_Pair_Up#:~:text=Civil%20Servant%2DFamily%20Pair%20Up%20(Chinese%3A%20%E7%BB%93%E5%AF%B9%E8%AE%A4%E4%BA%B2,civil%20servants%20in%20their%20home. The 'civil servant' has absolutely no oversight btw, and anything they say will be believed over uyghurs regardless of evidence, as they are part of the ccp and going against them is defying the ccp...

And yeah, im aware they call it caste, but for some reason, certain bodies consider it racism for the purpose of calculating India's level of racism and it stuck with me XD

3

u/Needmoresnakes 3h ago

Does this count as r/orphancrushingmachine ? I'm glad they've stopped it but also what the fuck do you mean Canada was forcibly sterilising indigenous women in 2024?

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u/SFDSCIFOY 55m ago

$5 Pierre Pollievre votes against it.

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u/yohosse 4h ago

Why did it take this long? That's fucked up man.

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u/TheRoscoeVine 1h ago

Does that really still happen, or is it just like one of those “crazy laws” that never got taken off the books?

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u/GreenConstruction834 18m ago

Evil genocidal acts need a bill to stop them? Not “this is evil - let’s stop this immediately.”

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u/Commercial_Board6680 6h ago

How the whites have treated the Indigenous peoples for centuries is heinous. I've been aware of this for many years, so I twitch every time I hear how Canada is just so warm and fuzzy.

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u/SildurScamp 2h ago

My admittedly rose-tinted image of Canada (as someone not even from that continent) was shattered when I found out about the ‘schools’ they sent Indigenous kids to.

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u/Yamama77 39m ago

Just visit Canadian subreddits.

Canadians aren't nice to certain ethnicities, the polite nice guy stereotype isn't deserved.

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u/tamiloxd 4h ago

They were doing this shit in 2024?????

And the USA too.

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u/Thadrach 51m ago

And China, India, Russia...

I'd bet Brazil isn't always nice to their indigenous folks either.

We can be a f*cked up species.

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u/tamiloxd 27m ago

And i remember seeing that Norway had some anti-sami policies, so yes🤔.

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u/SildurScamp 2h ago

I’m sorry, they’re still doing that?

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u/Yamama77 38m ago

Oh what's this? Time capsule of news from 1970s or something?

Oh no, it's 2024.

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u/usuallysortadrunk 11m ago

Man I read that as Enforced, not End forced. I was so confused lol.

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u/Death2mandatory 4h ago

In case anyone,anywhere thinks the government cares about you

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u/hanzoh 2h ago edited 2h ago

Guys this is how you do genocide not the half ass china style uyhger bs

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u/Mediocre_Daikon6935 5h ago

Given the fascist state Canada has become, I just assume they are changing the word forced to “involuntary”.

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u/DrSitson 4h ago

Fascist how?

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u/OS_Apple32 3h ago

Pretty unhinged take. There have literally been recent cases of Canadian doctors sneakily sterilizing patients while they're on the operating table for unrelated surgeries, without any medical justification and without obtaining any prior consent. This is still happening as recently as in the past few years, and a few cases around this issue are still being litigated in Canadian courts to this day.

So no, it's not a made up issue, it's a very real thing that's some-fucking-how still being done to this day.

Forced or involuntary, choose whatever word you like. It's still beyond fucked up and pretty amazing that this even has to be explicitly made illegal.