Class-action suit filed for Indigenous women subjected to coerced sterilization

A proposed class-action lawsuit has been filed against the B.C. government on behalf of Indigenous women subjected to coerced sterilizations or abortions.

The lawsuit filed in B.C. Supreme Court says that before 1973, the practice of sterilizing a person in the absence of their informed consent was expressly sanctioned in the province under the Sexual Sterilization Act.

It claims that since the act was repealed in 1973 after being in effect for 40 years, the practice of coerced sterilizations for Indigenous women has continued.

“Coerced sterilization and abortion involving Indigenous women was, and remains, a form of sexism and genocide — a practice directed at eradicating Indigenous people and their cultures,” says the suit.

The suit claims that the B.C. government was complicit in creating an atmosphere of institutional and systemic racism in provincially funded and regulated hospitals, and coerced sterilization was implicitly and explicitly condoned, encouraged, authorized and performed.