Compulsory sterilization in Canada

Compulsory sterilization in Canada of individuals deemed mentally unfit or "socially inadequate" was widespread in the early to mid-20th century.

This led to compulsory sterilization of thousands of people, many of whom were Indigenous women, individuals with disabilities, and those deemed to have "undesirable" traits.

[5][6][7] These laws remained in place until the 1970s, when public opinion began to shift and the practice was eventually deemed unethical and inhumane.

[8] Despite legislation Indigenous women allege they were coerced into consenting to sterilization, often during vulnerable moments such as childbirth, from the mid 1970s onwards.

[12][2] Eugenics movements appeared in many European and American jurisdictions in response to historical, social, scientific, economic, and political processes occurring at the time.

[13] Francis Galton invented the term "eugenics" in 1883, building it from its Greek roots meaning "good in birth" or "noble in heredity".

[16] If left solely to nature, eugenicists argued, the dangerous classes, who were thought to have a high-volume reproductive rate, would take over.

[17] Nova Scotia was home of the first "eugenics movement" in the country when the League for the Care and Protection of Feebleminded Persons was established in the province in 1908.

[10] Ideology worked to conceal the historical and material relations that gave rise to many of the social problems of Canadian society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by allocating the causes to poverty, crime and illness within individuals instead.

Adoption of proposed interventions like sterilization served as a cost-effective public health solution allowing systemic explanations to be avoided, private interests to benefit and exploitative relations to continue.

An international conference of The United Nations Human Rights Commission, held in Montreal, stated in March, 1999 that Canada "is in violation of international law in its treatment of its aboriginal people" and that the condition of natives in Canada is "the most pressing human rights issue facing Canadians."

The report cited concern over recent cases of forced or compulsory sterilization of Indigenous women and girls in Saskatchewan.

[25] Furthermore, those of Aboriginal ancestry were disproportionately assigned the "mentally deficient" rating, which denied them their legal rights and made them eligible for sterilization without consent.

The true nature of the Act was revealed when Leilani Muir, a former inmate of the Michener Centre (also known as the Provincial Training School for Mental Defectives, PTS), discovered in 1971 that she had been sterilized.

[3][18] Although this appears to have settled the issue, in the early 1970s the public would learn that coercive sterilizations were in fact taking place in the North in spite of the lack of legislation.

[19] Eugenic ideology served as a convenient justification for the terrible circumstances created by colonization and it was instrumental in determining how to interfere in the lives of Aboriginal peoples.

Initial measures advocated in the spirit of negative eugenics including marriage regulation, segregation and sterilization were all imposed on Aboriginal peoples.

[29] Members of the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia, such as the "Honourable William Sloan", stated California was the leader in developing and carrying out a eugenics act.

[30] ''These individuals, termed by the Act as "inmates", would be involved or living in Essondale (now known as Riverview Psychiatric Institution), or the Boys' or Girls' Industrial Schools (for children deemed delinquent).

[30] Recent court discussions in Manitoba have investigated the legality and ethical permissibility of involuntary sterilization of the mentally disabled.

In it, a mother, "Mrs. E.", wished to have her moderately intellectually disabled daughter "Eve" sterilized to save her the emotional distress potentially caused by pregnancy and childbirth.

Parens patriae allows the government to make authorizations in the "best interests" where no other source of consent can be attained; this includes children and mentally disabled persons.

Founded in Ontario, the ESC boasted a large number of physicians in its ranks, including Clarence Hincks, one of the most devoted proponents of the Alberta Sexual Sterilization Act.

Other notable members included the Lieutenant-Governor of Ontario, H. A. Bruce, and eminent psychiatrist Clarence B. Farrar, who had been head of the Toronto Psychiatric Hospital since 1925.