Editor’s note: The subject matter discussed in the following article may be disturbing to some readers.

For decades, thousands of Indigenous women and other marginalized people in Canada have been quietly sterilized without prior or informed consent.

In 2005, when Katy Bear was 21, she underwent a tubal ligation procedure in a Saskatoon hospital, just hours after giving birth to her fourth child.

“We were young, we owned our own home, we both had good jobs, we were, as society would say, we were set,” she tells CityNews.

Bear says medical staff first recommended a tubal ligation as a form of birth control. When she didn’t agree to it, she claims a staff member told her Provincial Protective Services would take her other children if she didn’t consent.

“I just remember thinking ‘Oh my God, what is going on here?’ Fine, I’ll just have it done, like leave me alone, leave my kids alone.”

Bear tells CityNews that before she had time to discuss it with her husband or family, she was taken to surgery.

“This doesn’t feel right, I don’t want to do this, just take me back to my room,” she recalls. “And they looked at me, and they said, ‘You already signed that paper, everybody is waiting on you, there is no going back.’”

Bear says she suffered from pain due to the clamps used in the procedure that affected her life for years. Then, in 2023, an event she calls a miracle – she became pregnant.

“I thought this was a blessing,” noting she had been sterile for almost 19 years.

But she says there were complications due to the sterilization. The pregnancy was outside of her uterus, and it almost claimed her life.

Her new doctor was able to reverse the original sterilization procedure, and later that year, she became pregnant again.

But in the lead up to the birth, at the same hospital where the original sterilization procedure was performed, staff told Bear the baby was breech and that she needed an emergency Cesarean section (C-section), and asked if she wanted her other tube tied.

“The fear, because I was sterilized in this hospital when I was 21, the fear set in, and I was, I just want out of here, I don’t want anything,” she said. “This conversation is supposed to be taken months ahead of time, not in trauma, not under distress, not in a C-section or before a C-section.”
 
Bear and her baby are both healthy now, but she and other advocates are fighting for their reproductive rights and for justice for survivors.

A bill currently moving through parliament would amend the criminal code to include forced or coerced sterilization procedures, classifying them as an act of aggravated assault that could be punished by up to 14 years in prison.

Bill S-228 passed the Senate last fall and is set to have its first real debate in the House of Commons on Thursday.

The Survivors Circle for Reproductive Justice said an estimated 12,000 to 15,000 individuals have been sterilized in Canada without proper consent — some as recently as last year.