Sterilization In Canada

Today, the availability of birth control is taken for granted. There was a time, not long passed, during which the subject was illegal (“Margaret Sanger,” 2013, p.1). That did not stop the resilient leader of the birth control movement. Margaret Sanger was a nurse and women’s activist. While working as a nurse, Sanger treated many women who had suffered from unsafe abortions or tried to self-induce abortion (p.1). Seeing this devastation and noting that it was mainly low income women suffering from these problems, she was inspired to dedicate her life to educating women on family planning—even though the discussion of which was highly illegal at the time (p.1). She was often in trouble with

to prevent sterilization of women without their consent, but the caveat to this was those women

The Canadian family has been changing drastically over the 20th century. The definition of family has changed, along with the functions of families. Many modern families have veered from what we once considered the tradition family. This essay will discuss the different types of newly developed families, and some factors contributing to this change.

The Birth Control Movement of 1912 in the United States had a significant impact on Women’s Reproductive Rights. Women in the 1800s would frequently die or have complications during or after childbirth. Even if the woman would have died, they would still have a great amount of children. As the years progressed into the 1900s, the amount of children being born dropped. Because of this, birth control supplements were banned, forcing women to have a child that she was not prepared for or did not want to have in the first place.

Because of the Comstock Law of 1873, the mailing of information regarding contraception or devices to perform contraceptive techniques was prohibited. This was a major obstacle for Margaret Sanger and Planned Parenthood. As a result of the 1936 court case U.S. v. One Package, the mailing of contraceptive-related materials among physicians was legalized (Planned Parenthood). This turning point signified that contraceptives were finally beginning to be regarded as an important area of medicine. The mailing of contraceptive material to married couples and single adults was not legalized until 1965 and 1972 respectively (Contraception History). The government continued to liberalize its other policies regarding contraception as a result of Sanger’s influence.

“In the United States, 15 states have laws that fail to protect women with disabilities from involuntary sterilization” (Against her will). Sterilization of disabled women in the United States should not be allowed. It denies disabled women the rights of having children. It is sexist to force women to get sterilized but men do not have to get sterilized. Women should have the right to have children, no matter if they have a disability or if something is wrong with her. The United States has used forced sterilization along with other countries in North and South America, along with places such as Asia and Africa.

During her time in Michener Leilani was educated only to the level of a fifth grader. Leilani stayed in Michener until she was twenty. During her 9 years in Michener she was sterilized without her knowledge or consent at the age of 14. Leilani was one of nearly 3,000 Albertans surgically prevented from having children under that province’s Sexual Sterilization Act before 1972- Forced sterilization is the process of surgically enabling individuals to reproduce without their constant. The Act became law in 1928 when “eugenics” —a theory about selecting or eliminating certain genetic traits—was popular (humanrights.ca). Many people believed that individuals with disabilities were not fit to parent, and would create a strain on society. Forced sterilization is now recognized as a human rights violation. Leilani was the first of hundreds to successfully sue the Alberta government for this practice. The more closely minorities adhere to certain special rules, the more likely they are to influence public

     Although she had met her goal of legalizing birth control, Margaret Sanger still desired to assist women who were already pregnant but didn’t wish to keep the child. After returning from a national tour in 1916, Sanger opened the nation's first birth control clinic in Brownsville, Brooklyn (Katz 1). This, however, was a minor advancement considering that the clinic was raided in its first nine days of operation and she was taken to prison. The

In England, which gave birth to the eugenics movement, it is interesting to note that sterilization laws never took hold. Bertrand Russel, a British philosopher at the time published Marriage and Morals (1929) in which he wrote “I say only that our scientific knowledge at present is not adequate for this purpose, and that it is very dangerous when a community allows its moral reprobations to masquerade in the guise of science, as is undoubtedly happening

Eugenics Record Office, Harry Laughlin. He used a Model Eugenical Sterilization Law to implement the mandatory sterilization of the “socially inadequate” in thirty U.S. states and Puerto Rico (Designating Dependency, Seal). Laughlin’s Model Eugenic Sterilization Law spread throughout the U.S. between 1907 and the 1930s. In 1936 Law 116 entered into force making sterilization legal and free for women in Puerto Rico while offering no alternative methods of birth control. The thought behind this was that it was more effective to deny women the right of motherhood in order to incorporate them into the workforce than to provide affordable childcare services. (Forced Sterilization In Puerto Rico,

In the 19th century, after tremendous progress in surgical processes, abortions were then conducted by surgeons on a wide scale, while medical abortions are used concurrently. However, as abortion technology prospers, legal restrictions came with it. In 1803, a English statute abolished the previously-legal first trimester abortions. The act “condemned the willful, malicious, and unlawful use of any medical substance when used with the intent to induce abortion” (Stern, 1968). In 1821, Connecticut enabled the first statute in the United States regulating abortions. Within 10 years, states like Illinois, Ohio, New York, Alabama, and others enabled abortion restriction statutes, and by 1968, 50 of the 51 jurisdictions in the United States have prohibited abortion except in the case women’s life is endangered (Ibid., at 3). In 1965, Britain, however, legalized abortion for “medical conditions of the mother, for socio-economic reasons, for eugenic considerations, and for pregnancies which resulted from rape or incestuous intercourse”, which is still law today (Ibid, at 4). In Canada, abortion has been legalized since 1969 through Bill C-150 if “a committee of three physicians determined that the pregnancy was a threat to the woman's life or health” (Norman, 2012). In 1988, Canadian Supreme Court struck down bill C-150’s provision requiring committee approval to receive an abortion in its decision R v Morgentaler, legalizing abortion across Canada for any reasons (Ibid.).

worse than engaging in premarital sex. A woman pleaded with the board in 1945 saying, "I don't

To begin, the use of commercial transnational surrogacy increases the complications of the legislation in Canada. As the world becomes more interconnected, the ability for Canadian citizens to find commercial surrogates in other countries is an expanding option. Unfortunately, due to rapidly changing legislation around surrogacy in many countries, parents and their child born from international surrogates may have difficulty leaving the child’s country of birth together (Lozanski, 2015). This uncertainty of the safety for the children of Canadians, combined with the potential for extreme exploitation of international woman due to a lack of regulations, results in an unsafe environment (Lozanski, 2015). In addition, due to the decreased costs of surrogacy in Canada, as a result of commercialized surrogacy being illegal and Canada’s public health insurance, the costs for people internationally to use surrogates in Canada is reduced. This may cause shortages of surrogates in Canada and cause Canadian taxpayers to pay for international people to come to Canada to have their children. As Canada’s public health insurance covers the cost of the surrogate’s medical expenses, taxpayers are paying for international citizens to have their children in Canada. By introducing, some form of commercialized surrogacy in Canada this could reduce the strain on the Canadian

The act of removing a woman’s ability to have a child, also known as sterilization, is a common way for governments to exert control over their people. Globally, sterilization was used as a way to control social behavior, but most practices were abolished in the 20th century. Forced sterilization was declared “an act of violence, a form of social control, and a clear and documented violation of the right to be free from torture” due to the clear discriminatory practice that harmed victims both psychologically and physically (Frohmader, Australian Civil Society). Despite this, sterilization is an ongoing practice in Australia originating in the early 20th century. Australia has permitted social and legal negligence when it comes to the sterilization of disabled women due to societal pressure and inconsistencies within the law.

Another reason some people argue that surrogacy is immoral or unethical is because it is perceived as demeaning to women with the possibility of exploitation. In 1992 ???????????????? justified intruding in the plaintiff’s right to procreate for three reasons, the third was because “surrogacy-for-profit arrangements have the potential for demeaning women by reducing them to the status of “breeding machines”” (Doe v.