The Abortion Movement in Canada 1969-1988 Beth Palmer A Dissertation submitted to the Faculty ...

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Choices and Compromises:
The Abortion Movement in Canada 1969-1988
Beth Palmer
A Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies
in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements
for the Degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
Graduate Program in History
York University
Toronto, Ontario
December 2012
© Beth Palmer, 2012
Abstract
This dissertation explores pro-choice activism in Canada following the 1969
omnibus bill that decriminalized abortion. The 1969 legal amendments permitted
abortions performed in accredited hospitals and approved by the hospital's
therapeutic abortion committee, yet Canadian women continued to face barriers to
access that were exacerbated by a range of social markers, particularly region and
class. Activists identified these barriers and developed strategies to address these
issues. The pro-choice movement worked to attain an uneasy balance between
helping individual women to access services while simultaneously challenging the
government to revise abortion laws. This dissertation explores the contradictions of
a mass movement with a shared objective but divergent views as to how to achieve
this desired end. The study also examines activists' compromises as they focused
either on the immediate, time-sensitive needs of women seeking abortions, or on
the long-term goals of effecting legal change.
This study highlights four different activist strategies: hospital board
challenges, referral and shuttle services, demonstrations and protests, and the
establishment of free-standing abortion clinics. Drawing on an extensive range of
archival sources from across the country, as well as oral interviews with individuals
active in the pro-choice movement, this dissertation highlights regional
particularities as well as the shared pro-choice objectives across the country.
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Activist organizations' archival holdings illuminate both the specific tactics
employed by different groups and the ways that the pro-choice movement
maintained a connection to the women's movement. Abortion access emerged as a
unifying marker for second wave feminisms in Canada, as a framework that
facilitated a critique of patriarchal, capitalist structures while simultaneously
appealing to a wide support base.
lll
Acknowledgements
Researching and writing this dissertation has been an absolute pleasure, in
large part due to the unbelievable support I have had over the past several years. I
could not have finished this study without the kind words of encouragement, the
careful edits, and the much-needed distractions coming from so many people. My
doctoral research was supported by a Canadian Graduate Scholarship from the
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, an Ontario Graduate
Scholarship from the Ministry of Training, Colleges, and Universities, and awards
and bursaries from York University.
I was so lucky to have a supervisory committee that recognized my style of
researching and writing and gave me the freedom to work at my own pace. My
supervisor, Kate McPherson, offered incisive comments, words of wisdom, and
snacks at all the right times. She pushed me to make this thesis into something that
I can be proud of, but also helped me realize the importance of a balanced life,
and I can't thank her enough for that. Molly Ladd-Taylor helped me to see the
bigger picture throughout this project but has also encouraged me to apply this
same broad perspective to my non-academic pursuits. Stephen Brooke's insistence
that this was, in fact, a dissertation came at just the right time. My outside member,
Jacinthe Michaud, and my external examiner, Lara Campbell, both provided
helpful comments and a great discussion at my defense. Of course, any mistakes or
omissions are entirely my responsibility.
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As a historian, I prefer to spend my hours in archives and alone with books,
but this project forced me out of the archives and into the neighbourhoods,
workplaces, and homes of inspirational men and women who were willing to share
their memories with me. I have been inspired by the conversations and lasting
friendships that have emerged from this research. Many thanks to Marcy Cohen,
Shauna Dorskind, Carolyn Egan, Donna Liberman, Janis Nairne, Ruth Miller, Judy
Rebick, Ray Thompson, and others for their hard work to ensure that women of my
generation have access to reproductive services, and for their willingness to share
their experiences with me.
My research also led me across the country, where I was lucky enough to
see and stay with friends. Ali Chalmers and Danica Poje made research trips to
Vancouver productive and too much fun. In Alberta, I was able to spend time with
the Quinlan family in their home province, which was an absolute pleasure. In
Edmonton, Alvin Finkel revived my interest in history after exhausting non-stop
weeks at the archives. Likewise, in Ottawa, Marc Saurette and Jacqui Lauder, Tom
Ngo, and Lynn Murphy and Bruce Weiner kept me simultaneously distracted and
focused at the archival tasks at hand.
I have been fortunate to have a growing group of historians studying
reproductive rights. Too often, scholars lay claim to a topic, but I have been truly
lucky to have a community of researchers who recognize the political importance
of this scholarship to support and challenge each other. I thank Katrina Ackerman,
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Nancy Janovicek, Christabel le Sethna, and Shannon Stettner for all their help with
this project. At York, I have also been extremely fortunate to have had a cohort of
supportive colleagues, including Will Baker, Jason Ellis, Liz O'Gorek, and Ian
Mosby. I thank them all for their kind words and blunt criticisms.
I was just as lucky to have a community of loved ones outside of my
academic world; my friends and family have always known when to ask about my
progress and when to focus elsewhere. I am so lucky to have such a wonderful
group of friends. Thank you Ashley Cohen, Paige Dzenis, Hannah Feiner, Tony
Hammer, Natalie Petozzi, Jen Quinlan, Lindsay Rauccio, Laura Sunderland, and
Ashley Taylor.
Though my family might have preferred that I take on any project other than
a PhD in history, they have been nothing of supportive of my choices. Thank you
to my parents, Bryan Palmer and Joan Sangster, and Debi Wells and Tom
Carpenter, for their love and support, and for raising me in a feminist environment
with coat.hangers reminding us "never again."
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Table of Contents
Abstract. .. ii
Acknowledgements ... iv
Introduction ...
Chapter 1: The Personal Is Political: Abortion in Canada
Since 1969... 31
Chapter 2: Fighting for Barriers: Hospital Board Campaigns
and the Politics of Necessity... 80
Chapter 3: "Lonely, tragic, but legally-necessary pilgrimages":
Cross-border Travel for Abortions... 143
Chapter 4: "Free Abortion on Demand!": Public
Demonstrations, Pub I ic Demands... 195
Chapter 5: A Strategic Compromise: The Fight for
Free-Standing Clinics... 268
Conclusion... 318
Bibliography... 330
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Introduction
The Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1968-69 decriminalized
homosexuality, contraception, and abortion in certain circumstances, regulated
lotteries, gun possession, drinking and driving offenses and more. Justice Minister
Pierre Trudeau explained his proposed omnibus Criminal Code amendments to the
press in 1967, saying, "it is certainly the most extensive revision of the Criminal
Code since the new Criminal Code of the 1950s." He went on maintain that, "in
terms of the subject matter it deals with I feel that it has knocked down a lot of
totems and overwritten a lot of taboos and I feel that in that sense it is new. It's
bringing the laws of the land up to contemporary society, I think." Trudeau
defended the omnibus bill with his oft-quoted assertion that, "there is no place for
the state in the bedrooms of the nation." He went on to say that "what's done in
private between adults doesn't concern the Criminal Code. When it becomes
public, that's a different matter."1
Though the omnibus bill removed a wide range of acts from the Criminal
Code, it did not offer the profound change that many expected with regards to
abortion_. Restrictions on homosexuality and contraception were removed
completely from the Criminal Code, but abortion law remained codified, with the
1
CBC Archives, "There's no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation,"
http://www.archives.cbc.ca/pol itics/rights_freedoms/t:opics/53 8 accessed 21
January, 2012.
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newly-amended Section 251 specifying that only a "qualified medical practitioner"
could perform legal abortions. These legal abortions could only be performed in an
accredited hospital, with the permission of the hospital's Therapeutic Abortion
Committee (TAC). TAC approval was based on the likelihood that continuing the
pregnancy would "endanger the life or health" of the patient, an ill-defined
criterion that allowed committees to approve abortions based on what was
adjudicated to be physical or psychological need.
Activists across Canada were unsatisfied with these amendments and
immediately challenged the persisting restrictions to abortion access that Trudeau's
legal changes perpetuated. This dissertation will explore the historical processes
whereby activists mobilized and it will analyze the compromises these activists had
to undertake as they balanced short- and long-term goals to improve abortion
access immediately and to effect the social and political changes that would make
abortion readily available for all Canadian women. As such, this dissertation
examines the political strategies undertaken by abortion rights activists between
1969, when the Criminal Code was amended, and 1988, when legal challenges led
to the Supreme Court ruling declaring abortion laws unconstitutional.
To some degree, the narrative of abortion reform in Canada is wel I known.
The 1969 omnibus bill decriminalized abortion, but feminists realized the
shortcomings and quickly mobilized, descending on Parliament Hill in an
"Abortion Caravan" in 1970. When Dr. Henry Morgentaler established his family
2
planning practice in Montreal in 1970 - a thinly-veiled euphemism for abortion
provision - he began his decades-long challenge to the Canadian legal system,
ending in 1988 with the Supreme Court ruling that declared that the existing
abortion law was unconstitutional. In the 1970s, abortion emerged as a key
mobilizing issue for feminist activists. This dissertation seeks to build on this
account, complicating the narrative by teasing out the ways activists prioritized
their actions, and the resultant paradoxical compromises they undertook in order to
improve access to abortion. As abortion activism garnered support from a broad
spectrum of the population, the aims and perspectives of the abortion movement
became less focused and activists from different and divergent political
backgrounds found themselves working together in an uneasy partnership.2
Feminist scholars remind us that access to safe, legal abortions is widely
understood to be a critical component of women's health, as well as their social,
political and economic capacities.3 By documenting the ways that women have
sought out abortions and induced miscarriages for centuries, historians show us
that women have always understood the importance of controlling their
2 Nancy Adamson, Linda Briskin, and Margaret McPhail Feminist Organizing for
Change: The Contemporary Women's Movement in Canada (Toronto: Oxford
University Press, 1988), p. 10.
3 Janine Brodie, Shelly A.M. Gavigan, Jane Jenson, "The Politics of Abortion:
Representations of Women," in The Politics of Abortion Janine Brodie, Shelley A.M.
Gavigan, Jane Jenson, eds. (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1992), 4-14, p. 8.
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