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Canadian police won’t investigate doctor for sterilising Indigenous woman

Published:Wednesday | September 27, 2023 | 8:17 PM
Senate Committee on Human Rights committee member Senator Yvonne Boyer responds to a question from the media during a news conference, Thursday, July 14, 2022, in Ottawa. Boyer, who has proposed law that would make forced sterilisation a crime, said the long history of mistrust between Indigenous people and the police made it difficult for many victims to pursue criminal prosecution. (Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press via AP, File)

The Canadian government says it is urgently trying to end the forced sterilisation of Indigenous women, describing the practise as a human rights violation and a prosecutable offence.

Yet police say they will not pursue a criminal investigation into a recent case in which a doctor apologised for his “unprofessional conduct” in sterilising an Inuit woman.

In July, The Associated Press reported on the case of an Inuit woman in Yellowknife who had surgery in 2019 aimed at relieving her abdominal pain.

The obstetrician-gynaecologist, Dr Andrew Kotaska, did not have the woman's consent to sterilise her, and he did so over the objections of other medical personnel in the operating room.

She is now suing him.

“This is a pivotal case for Canada because it shows that forced sterilisation is still happening,” said Dr Unjali Malhotra, of the First Nations Health Authority in British Columbia.

“It's time that it be treated as a crime.”

Kotaska declined to comment to the AP. Last month, he released a public apology, acknowledging the sterilization “caused suffering for my patient.”

He said he was acting in what he thought was the woman's best interest.

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