Histories That Both Diverge and Converge: Birth Control in India and Canada

The sexual health markets emerged in response to the demand for birth control, however, they did not deliver in terms of quality or efficacy of product, even less so, towards women’s wellbeing.

Urvi Desai
April 1, 2022

On a sticky February afternoon in 1936,
Margaret Sanger, an American birth control advocate, attended the first
All-India Population Conference held at the famous Cowasjee Jehangir Hall in
Bombay (present-day Mumbai). The conference was attended by the wealthy of
Bombay society, the who’s who in the field, as well as doctors, advocates,
government officials, and more. At around the same time, family planning
societies began to emerge in India. These societies promoted birth control and
advised women who visited their centres about possible birth control
techniques. Varied as the organisations were, they shared the common goal of
insisting that poor women use birth control products to control reproduction.

Continued: https://thewire.in/history/histories-that-both-diverge-and-converge-birth-control-in-india-and-canada


Canada’s shameful history of sterilizing Indigenous women

Canada’s shameful history of sterilizing Indigenous women
December 5, 2018
Erika Dyck

Indigenous women are murdered, go missing or face abuse at much higher rates than non-Indigenous women in Canada. Recent news stories now report that birthing mothers have also been sterilized (given tubal ligations) without their full and informed consent, as recently as 2017.

These shocking stories describe women being told that they cannot see their newborn babies until they undergo a sexual sterilization surgery. And they describe situations in which women who are in the midst of delivering a child are asked questions about wanting more children, without realizing the consequences of their answers. And there are stories about surgery and abortion without consent.

Continued: https://theconversation.com/canadas-shameful-history-of-sterilizing-indigenous-women-107876