Jocelyne, 30, came home with her newborn son cradled in her arms. It was October 1983, and her second-born child. “I can’t have any more kids,” she told her daughter, with despair and confusion. “The doctor told me so,” she said. Jocelyne migrated to Montreal, Canada, from Haiti during the late 70s. She said she couldn’t give proper consent due to being under anaesthetics when doctors decided she needed tubal sterilisation, a permanent method of contraception.
Jocelyne’s story is one of many from Canada’s chequered history of reproductive rights for women of colour. While progress has since been made, race-based inequitable access to healthcare continues today.
In the early 19th century, procedures to restrict population growth in “undesirable groups'' was a part of Canadian government policy. The practice was a result of longstanding colonial practices that inflicted disproportionate, irreparable harm on Indigenous and Black women. Despite these practices now being banned, women of colour still don’t have complete autonomy over their bodies.
