Good afternoon.

Before we focus on the points we are discussing today, on behalf of the DisAbled Women's Network of Canada, we want to remind you that we are meeting on unceeded Algonquin territory and highlight the period of truth and reconciliation we are now going through. So let's take this opportunity to focus more specifically on the needs of our aboriginal sisters and on how we can repair the harm caused to improve the lives of current and future generations.

We thank the Standing Committee on Health for inviting our organization to testify and we recognize the other witnesses here today.

We will make our presentation in both official languages.

At the DisAbled Women's Network of Canada, we are committed to denouncing oppressions intersectionally. So we address oppressions stemming from ableism, a system that infringes on the rights and freedoms of people whose abilities do not meet the standards, as well as racism, colonialism, sexism and other systems of oppression.

When it comes to forced sterilizations, we think they are a direct consequence of an ableist society. In that sense, they have specific repercussions on girls and women with disabilities. Jihan Abbas will highlight that painful observation.

Let's not forget that forced sterilization is closely related to a eugenic vision to determine and hierarchize individuals and their possibilities of existence. It is based on the logic of ableist oppression, which has established notions of deviation, by targeting what is missing, what is against nature and what can be oppressed and limited. As a result, we consider that forced sterilization, being a concrete expression of the ableist system, opens the door to racist, colonialist and sexist practices, among other things.

We know that racism and ableism are tightly interwoven. It is very useful to remind you that the eugenics movement, both in the United States and in Canada, had to do with the white supremacist ideas focusing on the degeneration of the white race. An overwhelming number of black women have been subjected to and are still being subjected to non-consensual sterilizations.

Researcher Shatema Threadcarft, in her 2016 work on intimate justice and the bodies of black women in the United States, shows the prevalence of those practices.

Canada is no exception in that respect. Before the Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights, university professor Josephine Etowa revealed that, during a study on the health condition of black women in Nova Scotia, it was noted that hysterectomy was being practised in a worrisome proportion. Here is what Ms. Etowa said, and I quote:

They started telling us their personal stories of how women in their community, especially those with dark skin colour, every time they went to the doctor, even in their early twenties, hysterectomy was one of the answers to whatever problem they went to see the doctor for.

So we understand how racism and ableism are expressed, and we see that this is an important issue in the forced sterilization file.

It is also a problem experienced by trans and intersex individuals.

Alexandre Baril, assistant professor at the University of Ottawa, states in his 2013 thesis that the Canadian government requires trans individuals who want to acquire a marital status to undergo changes to their genital organs involving a suppression of the ability to reproduce “naturally”.

Canadian sociologist and anthropologist Morgan Holmes, who represents the Egale Canada group, also reports on the concrete effects of cisgenderism leading to the forced sterilization of intersex individuals, especially children. She also appeared before the Standing Committee on Human Rights, on May 15, 2019. During her presentation, she denounced the paradox of subsection 268(3) of the Criminal Code, which, while prohibiting female genital mutilation, authorizes surgical procedures on intersex children, whose reproductive capabilities are removed with impunity and without consent.

On another note, which still continues to shed light on the situation intersectionally, the issue of sterilization also affects women in prison in large numbers. A U.S. study from 2016 talks about the pressures on incarcerated women to undergo surgeries to remove their reproductive capabilities. That same study confirms that those injunctions always seek to respond to a eugenic and ableist system.

The facts I am sharing here with you are only the tip of the iceberg. It is important to know that many other women at the intersection of multiple oppressions are subjected to forced sterilization. That is why we feel it is important, in the context of our presentation, to insist on the intersectional dimension of this problem and to show that solutions cannot be found outside such an analysis.

I will now yield the floor to Ms. Abbas.

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