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Articles on Voluntary sterilization

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Conversations between patients and their doctors about permanent birth control procedures can at times be fraught and influenced by long-standing stigmas. Courtney Hale/E+ via Getty Images

What is voluntary sterilization? A health communication expert unpacks how a legacy of forced sterilization shapes doctor-patient conversations today

Elizabeth Hintz, University of Connecticut

The term voluntary sterilization, referring to the choice to receive permanent birth control, arose as a contrast to the involuntary, or forced, sterilization that stems from the eugenics movement.
Morningstar Mercredi, pictured on November 16, 2018, woke up from a surgery at 14 and discovered her developing baby was gone. What remained was an incision from her panty line to her belly button, cut without her permission. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jason Franson

Canada’s shameful history of sterilizing Indigenous women

Erika Dyck, University of Saskatchewan

Recent revelations of the coerced sterilization of Indigenous women in Canada are part of a long, complex and disturbing history – in which feminism became a fight to keep one’s own children.
Demonstrators rally in support of women’s rights at the Women’s March on Jan. 20, 2018 in Washington, D.C. (Shutterstock)

Sexist barriers block women’s choice to be sterilized

Dianne Lalonde, Western University

Women face extraordinary difficulty in seeking the birth control method of sterilization due to sexist reproductive norms.

Related Topics

  1. Birth control
  2. Eugenics
  3. Fertility treatment
  4. Forced sterilization
  5. Maternal deaths
  6. Regret
  7. Residential schools
  8. Roe v Wade
  9. Tubal ligations

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