Katy Bear sees cycles of harm being broken but there’s a long way to go, she said.
In the final days of her pregnancy in March, Katy began to worry when she started feeling less movement from her baby.
She was admitted to the maternal trauma emergency room at Jim Pattison Children’s Hospital in Saskatoon. It’s connected to the hospital where she was first sterilized.
Katy says the doctor overseeing her told her the baby was breech. The doctor recommended either a C-section or to have a specialized team manoeuver her baby into a better position before delivery.
Katy, anxious and overwhelmed, says she was then asked by the doctor whether she would like her remaining tube re-tied.
She was shocked. Conversations about tubal ligations aren’t supposed to happen when a woman is feeling vulnerable or in distress, like in an emergency room, right before or after birth, said Katy.
“I felt honestly violated as a woman. It’s reopening a door that I closed 20 years ago,” she said.
“We need to do better.”
In a statement to CBC News, the Saskatchewan Health Authority would not comment on specific cases, citing patient confidentiality. Instead, it referred to its consent policy and procedure for post-partum tubal ligation.
That policy stipulates that “a practitioner will only provide a tubal ligation during the post-partum hospitalization period if there is documentation of the individual’s desire to have this procedure on the prenatal record.”
It also says that if a person wants the procedure but there is no prenatal documentation of that, health staff are to refer the person to someone who can offer it as an outpatient procedure.
“Team members will stop the line if there is any doubt the consent was not fully informed or freely given,” the policy states. A Practitioner will only provide a tubal ligation during the post-partum hospitalization period if
