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Named defendants in the case include doctors Kristine Mytopher, Amed Ezzat and Ian Lund.

Allegations in the statement of claim have not been proven in court.

“The report found ‘pervasive structural discrimination and racism,’ in the Saskatoon Health Region that was unappreciated by medical personnel,” the claim states.

The six-month review was conducted by Yvonne Boyer, a lawyer and then-Canada Research chair in Aboriginal health and wellness at Brandon University, and Dr. Judy Bartlett, a physician and former professor with the College of Medicine at the University of Manitoba. Boyer is now employed at the University of Ottawa.

They found that health professionals “used scare tactics and psychological pressure against the women to carry out sterilization,” the claim states.

Women told the reviewers they felt invisible, that the procedure went against their religious beliefs and that they felt judged and targeted because of their race.

Some have since engaged in self-harm, have physical and emotional ailments, have experienced marriage breakdown and failed relationships “as a direct result of their sterility,” the claim states.

In the 1930s, Saskatchewan, Ontario and Manitoba drafted sterilization bills that were defeated. Alberta and British Columbia did enact legislation that “had great detrimental effects on Aboriginal women” who were labeled “mentally unfit” when “for various cultural and historical reasons they did not fit in with the Eurocentric dominant society’s definition of ‘fit,’ ” the claim quotes from the report.

Jackie Mann, vice-president of integrated health services for the Saskatoon Health Region, has apologized on behalf of the region.

Within weeks of the first two women approaching the Health Region in the fall of 2015, with complaints of coercion that had occurred years earlier, the region implemented a policy prohibiting tubal ligations in cases where women have not discussed the matter with their doctors prior to being admitted for delivery.

Other women came forward after reading of the cases in the Saskatoon StarPhoenix.

badam@postmedia.com