Black, Indigenous mothers say they were sterilized without full consent at Quebec hospitals
CBC
On a cold autumn morning in 2018, a 44-year-old Haitian woman was in labour at a Montreal hospital, hours away from welcoming her seventh child into the world.
After learning that she would have to undergo an emergency C-section, the woman was asked whether she'd like to have her tubes tied at the same time.
She recalls telling the obstetrician on duty that she didn't know what the procedure — called tubal ligation — was or what it entailed.
In an interview with Radio-Canada's Enquête, the woman said that she refused the sterilization procedure. Indeed, no consent form appears in her medical file.
However, two months after she gave birth, during a follow-up with her family doctor, she learned that she had been permanently sterilized.
CBC has agreed not to identify the woman due to privacy concerns.
After receiving this news, the woman filed a complaint with the hospital and the Quebec College of Physicians.