Front Burner - Where do abortion rights in Canada stand today?

Episode Date: May 24, 2019

With the United States in a renewed fight over abortion rights, it's led many to ask: where exactly do we stand in Canada? Today on Front Burner, we speak to reproductive health historian and pro-choice advocate, Shannon Stettner, about Canada's history with legal abortion, and whether reproductive rights are as protected as many think.

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Uncover bomb on board. Investigating the biggest unsolved mass murder in Canada. CP Flight 21. Get the Uncover podcast for free on Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts. Available now. Hello, I'm Jamie Poisson. The signing of this bill today is consistent with that respect for life. This bill is unconstitutional and violates the fundamental constitutional rights of women. I don't know about you, but the ongoing fight over abortion rights in the United States,

the abortion bans, and a push to get an abortion law before the Supreme Court. And challenge Roe versus Wade, the 1973 ruling that legalized abortion in the United States. It made me realize something. That I am way more intimately familiar with how the issue plays out in America than I am with the history of the pro-choice fight here in Canada. We're talking about law! Then if it's not just another issue, why are you discovering it in the past few months? The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled 5-2 that the country's abortion law is unconstitutional.

Today on FrontBurner, I want to change that by looking at the pivotal moments that have come to define access to abortion in Canada and asking if abortion rights are as protected as we think they are. I'm here now with Shannon Stettner. She's a historian on abortion, an editor of several books on the subject, and a member of the pro-choice movement here in Canada. Hi, Shannon. Hi. So I want to talk to you today about how Canada got its pivotal decision on abortion. But I know that up until 1969, abortion was completely banned in Canada. And how did women deal with an unwanted pregnancy at that time? Right. So we know that throughout history, when women didn't want to be pregnant, many were able to find ways not to be

pregnant. And sometimes that meant that they found a sympathetic physician who was willing to perform an abortion. Sometimes they had to travel elsewhere to get a legal abortion in another country. Sometimes they sought out illegal abortions, and that may or may not have ended well for them. And what kind of things were happening to women who were getting illegal abortions? of things were happening to women who were getting illegal abortions? Worst case scenario, obviously, was that women were dying from illegal abortions and or some women would be hurt in ways such as not being able to have children following an illegal abortion if there had been an infection or whatnot. Because seeking out an illegal abortion puts you there had been an infection or whatnot, because seeking out an

illegal abortion puts you in a very vulnerable position. Some women were also taken advantage of in those circumstances. We don't really have a clear sense of just how many women died as a consequence of a legal abortion because those statistics weren't necessarily being kept. It's really hard to say. legal abortion because those statistics weren't necessarily being kept. It's really hard to say. In 1969, we see the government at the time, led by Pierre Elliott Trudeau, pass a law governing abortion in the country. And what does this law say? The criminal code bill. At last, it's through the House of Commons. After one of the greatest marathon debates in recent years, the bill was finally passed late this afternoon by a vote of 149 to 55.

So in 1969, the omnibus bill allowed for abortion through the creation of what are called therapeutic abortion committees. These committees had to consist of at least three physicians, and those physicians had to determine in writing that continuing a pregnancy endangered a woman's life or health. And then if they did make that determination, the woman was allowed an abortion, but that abortion had to be performed in an accredited hospital. So while some people see the 69 date as a decriminalization of abortion, I think that that is too generous of a description. It was a partial decriminalization, it was a liberalization, but there was still a lot of regulation around who could access an abortion and how. And what led Pierre Elliott Trudeau and his government to put forward this law in the first place?

Well, generally we refer to the 1960s as a reform decade. There's a movement across a number of issues to sort of modernize laws and especially to move away from state regulation of private sexuality and private morality. The view we take here is that there's no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation, and I think that what's done in private between adults doesn't concern the criminal code. So this law in Canada is in line with legal changes that were happening, that had already happened in the UK, and that were happening in, you know,

discussions that were happening in the US and elsewhere. And you mentioned that for some this was a decriminalization of abortion, and for others it didn't go far enough. And so can you tell me a little bit more about the reaction at the time? How do people respond to this law? People who have an anti-abortion position were very much against any type of decriminalization and automatically organized for the recriminalization of abortion. On the other side, those who support a pro-choice position didn't feel like the law went far enough. those who support a pro-choice position didn't feel like the law went far enough. They wanted women to have control and to be able to make the decision without having to go

through the therapeutic abortion committee, which was quite a cumbersome process. If someone close to you needed an abortion, she'd get one. Rich women in the society get abortions. It's poor women who suffer. So? So! What about welfare women? What about, you know, native women? Mr. Trudeau, can I take you back to the safer waters of Singapore? And one of the first reactions we see from the pro-choice side in response to the 69 legislation is the May 1970 abortion caravan, which was a protest on Parliament Hill where women actually gained entry to the House of Commons

while it was in session and disrupted the proceedings while they were shouting for things like free abortion on demand. In Ottawa today, the chant that closed the House of Commons. Millicent women demonstrators who favor free abortions forced a half-hour adjournment of the Commons. Officials said they couldn't recall any similar incident in the history of the Canadian Parliament. It's a woman's right to control her own lives.

It's a woman's right to control her own lives. Okay, and then I know around this time, Dr. Henry Morgenthaler enters the picture, and what is he doing? Right, so Henry comes in around the mid-60s. He appears at one of the government commissions that is looking into the possibility of changing the abortion law. And he testifies that he has been performing abortions. And after he does that, he becomes inundated by requests from women around the country who want to access safe abortion services. We view an unwanted pregnancy as an accidental pregnancy, and we believe that the medical profession should be allowed to give help to those women who at the present time have

to resort to illegal abortionists and who face the risk of death and injury in the process. And so that sort of sets off his crusade, if you will, to provide services and specifically to start challenging the law by providing abortion services in his private clinic. You'll recall that the 69 law said that abortions were supposed to be performed in accredited hospitals. While in 1973, Morgan Taller published an article in the Canadian Medical Association Journal claiming to have performed 5,000 abortions in his private clinic, which demonstrates that it's unnecessary to provide abortions in the hospital setting. So not only is he performing abortions without the permission of these therapeutic committees,

he's also doing it in his private clinic. And what ends up happening to him? Well, he's charged. There are several court cases in Quebec where he is charged, and he was always acquitted by the juries. Charged in 1973 with 11 counts of performing illegal abortion in his East End Montreal clinic, Morgan Toller served 10 months in jail, suffering financial hardship, several heart attacks, and severe mental depression.

Now he's a free man. Henry takes his bite to other provinces, including coming to Ontario in 1983 and setting up an abortion clinic here, specifically with the idea of challenging the federal law. A jury acquitted Morgenthaler and two other doctors on abortion charges today. They were charged after police raided an abortion clinic Morgenthaler set up in Toronto last year. The Minister of Justice says the case will have little impact on the law. It'll probably stay the very same. I don't know on what basis the jury

active. Right. And so he gets charged in Ontario and then this charge winds its way up to the Supreme Court, which results in this very famous 1988 decision, R versus Morgenthaler. Can you tell me more about this decision? The year before, and this is important, the year before Henry opened up the clinic in Toronto, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms was adopted. We now have a charter which defines the kind of country in which we wish to live and guarantees the basic rights and freedom which each of us shall enjoy. And that included Section 7, which says that everyone has the right to life, liberty, and security of person. And that clause becomes very important in the 1988 Supreme Court decision. The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled 5-2

that the country's abortion law is unconstitutional and doctors can no longer be charged with performing illegal abortions. The court decided that this 1969 law violated Section 7 of the Charter. They argued that it infringed upon a woman's right to security of person and specifically they they named the therapeutic abortion committees as causing an undue burden chief justice brian dixon said forcing a woman by threat of criminal sanction to carry a fetus to term unless she meets certain criteria unrelated to her own priorities and aspirations

is a profound interference with a woman's body. Okay, so is it fair to say that the Supreme Court decision strikes down the 1969 law? Yes, that's exactly what it does. Okay. 69 law is found to contravene the Charter. For groups opposed to abortion, today's decision was devastating. I don't care what anybody says. I don't care what the law says. I'm going to abortion, today's decision was devastating. I don't care what anybody says. I don't care what the law says. I'm going to defend those people as long as I have a breath of left in me. And there's millions in Canada that are going to do the same thing. And so now we have no law on abortion in the books. Right. So the 69 law was struck down. But the Supreme Court of Canada left room for the government to implement a new abortion law.

And there is an attempt by the Mulroney government, beginning in 1989, to do that. They wanted to recriminalize abortion, allowing for exceptions only when a doctor determined that a woman's life or health was endangered. They believed that putting that decision on a single doctor got around the Supreme Court's criticism of the therapeutic abortion committees. There's been a demand from the public and from the opposition for leadership in this matter. We have drafted a bill which we think is a reasonable solution, which defines entitlement to abortion. It's based on health grounds. We don't say it's perfect. So that attempt actually passed the House of Commons, but it failed in the Senate and it failed on a tie vote.

So after that failed attempt to pass an abortion law, I remember the 1990s. There was a lot of violence around the anti-abortion movement. And Morgenthaler's clinic was firebombed. Doctors were shot by snipers. But when Dr. Morgenthaler arrived in mid-afternoon, he was lunched at by a man holding a pair of garden shears. Three Canadian doctors and a doctor near Rochester have been shot at and injured. And how would you describe the national climate at the time? What happens in the wake of the 88 Supreme Court decision, and this I think characterizes the anti-abortion movement in Canada, not the whole movement, but at least an element of it, between 88 and 92, is that it starts to adopt Operation Rescue tactics.

Operation Rescue is an anti-abortion group that was founded in 1986 in the United States. The founder of the organization and the slogan of the organization was, if you believe abortion is murder, act like it's murder. And so that's seen as inciting violence against providers and against clinics. The choice is death. That's the choice. The other was life. Somebody would love your baby.

Pro-life leaders in the pro-life movement are not responsible for George Tiller's death. George Tiller was a mass murderer, and horrifically, he reaped what he sowed. And then we have the first, the fire bombing in 1992. And then we have the three Canadian doctors being shot in 94, 95, and 97. And we have Dr. Gary Ramales, who was shot in 94, is stabbed in 2000.

And if you back it up just two years to 1998, Dr. Barnett Slepian was assassinated in Amherst, New York. And I think what happens with the use of the Operation Rescue tactics in Canada is that the violence sort of puts a damper on them. I think that people realized that maybe the violence was going too far. A lot of members of anti-abortion groups didn't want to engage in that kind of violence. I think that it's, you know, I think we have to be really clear that the people who were engaging in those kinds of tactics were very much, I think, sort of a fringe element. With all the negativities that I had when I was pregnant and the pressure from friends and families to go for an abortion or place the baby up in adoption, your life would be ruined. It's not true. The pro-life movement, we've been fighting.

We've been trying to raise awareness. We've been trying to elect solid men and women, pro-life men and women to office. It hasn't been easy. If we fast forward then to 2004, Prime Minister Stephen Harper, he makes this very clear decision to steer clear of the abortion issue. And he says he has no plans to change the country's abortion regulations. Our government's going to do everything we can to keep from reopening that particular debate. And how did he get to making that statement? Well, I think he realized, I think he was politically astute enough to realize that reopening the abortion debate at that point in time just wasn't a good move politically. So let's talk about that then. If we're talking about the mid-2000s, can you give me a sense of what abortion looks like across the country?

You know, one of the biggest issues for us has always been the issue of access. People think that because there's no abortion law, that abortion is freely accessible across the country, and it just isn't. Even to this day, it isn't. There are lots of barriers for people living in rural areas, for people living in the north, for people who need to have time off and money to travel to abortion clinics or hospitals for services. This legal activist says even Canada's weather and geography

can work against women seeking an abortion. In Alberta, the only places you can get an abortion are Calgary or Edmonton. Even winter conditions can make it near impossible to get to an abortion-providing hospital within the time frame. And that's very much what it was like in 2006 as well. I mean, activists in PEI in particular were very active in 2014, 2015, 2016, getting the provincial government to finally relent and allow abortion services on the island. Abortion, the need is something serious.

Abortion, your reluctance is mysterious. They hadn't been available on the island since the mid to late 80s. So there have been substantial victories, but I think that the anti-abortion movement in Canada and the politicians who are a part of that movement have been emboldened by what they see as the recent successes in the United States. PCMPP's Sam Oosterhof left question period to speak to the anti-abortion group. I'm pro-life because I believe in human rights.

To quote Dr. Seuss, a person's a person no matter how small. I think it's unlikely that we would see a new federal law on abortion at this point in time, but I don't think it's impossible. There is one thing that I find happens in this country, which is that we look at what's happening in the United States and we put that on us when really there are very different dynamics at play. there are very different dynamics at play. And so why do you think it's possible that we could see the same kind of challenges to abortion that we're seeing south of the border right now? Well, I think abortion is always on the table to some degree because there is a sustained movement against abortion. And I think that even if they're small, they're not about to go away anytime soon. And in fact, we see new organizations cropping up with the intent specifically of electing anti-abortion politicians so that they can change laws. So it seems to me that that is perhaps the new strategy. That, to me, is something we should be alert to.

Shannon, thank you so much. You're welcome. Thank you. So we've been talking about access to abortion issues, and we mentioned some of the aggressive legislation that's recently popped up in the United States. We did an episode on it last week. You can find it in our feed. But I also want to mention that in the U.S., there are states moving in the opposite direction, like Nevada, whose female majority legislature just voted to loosen the state's abortion laws. Women seeking an abortion will no longer be told about the, quote, physical and emotional implications of the procedure. The legislature also removes a criminal penalty for anyone who supplies a woman with medication

to induce an abortion without the advice of a physician. So that's all for this week. Front Burner comes to you from CBC News and CBC Podcasts. The show is produced by Matt Alma, Hannah Alberga, Chris Berube, Imogen Burchard, Elaine Chao, Shannon Higgins, and Katie Toth. Our sound designer is Derek Vanderwyk. The executive producer of Front Burner is Nick McCabe-Locost.

And I'm your host, Jamie Poisson. Thanks for listening and see you Monday. For more CBC Podcasts, See you Monday. starts a blog. She names it Gay Girl in Damascus. Am I crazy? Maybe. As her profile grows, so does the danger. The object of the email was, please read this while sitting down. It's like a genie came out of the bottle

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