Horton Journal of Canadian History ~ Papers
A History of Abortion in Canada
by Leah Swift
The history of abortion in Canada is a telling account of the evolving treatment of women in Canadian society. Abortion can be used as an example to illustrate not only the growing rights of women under Canadian law, but also the changing morals and values of a culture that has only gradually given women the freedoms we take for granted.
The rights of women have never been secure. In Canada, it was less than a hundred years ago that women were acknowledged as persons before the law, let alone given the right to vote. The right to control their bodies and make their own reproductive choices was even slower in coming and had as its price the lives of countless women caught between oppressive morality and forced to take matters into their own hands (Women’s History Homepage).
Abortion has existed in almost all societies and time periods. "In primitive tribal societies, abortions were induced by using poisonous herbs, sharp sticks, or by sheer pressure on the abdomen until vaginal bleeding occurred. The ancient Chinese and Egyptians had their methods and recipes to cause abortion, and Greek and Roman civilizations considered abortion an integral part of maintaining a stable population" (Abortion In Law, History & Religion).
Historically, religious views have greatly influenced the legality of abortion. The Judeo-Christian institutionalized oppression of women reduced females to bearers of children. The right to terminate an unwanted pregnancy was a definite threat to this domination. However, abortion during the first trimester was not always a crime. "From 1307 to 1803, abortion before the fetus moved perceptibly or "quickened" was not punishable under English common law." It is English common law that lays the basis for Canadian criminal law, and civil law in provinces outside of Quebec (Abortion In Law, History & Religion).
The Catholic Church’s opinion of abortion changed in 1869 when Pope Pius eliminated the distinction between an animated (quickened) and non-animated (not quickened) fetus. After 1869, the abortion of either was considered homicide. It was believed by some that the change in policy did not stem from an interpretation of God’s word, but from an attempt by the Church to expand its population base. Limiting women’s freedom over their bodies would greatly enhance the power of the Catholic Church (When Does Life Begin?).
It was also in 1869 that the Canadian parliament introduced a law that made abortion illegal. The penalty was life imprisonment. The law also made the distribution, sale and advertisement of birth control illegal. These laws were including in the first Canadian Criminal Code, written in 1892 (History of Abortion In Canada).
The law did not stop women from having abortions performed or, in some cases, performing abortions on themselves. Without a legal watchdog to insure that abortions were performed safely and in sanitary conditions, the dangers were overwhelming.
One of the most haunting images in Canadian fiction is that of Eva Winkler, an unfortunate character in Margaret Laurence’s novel The Diviners. The book is set in 1942, in a small Manitoba town where an unwed mother would soon find herself an outcast. Eva Winkler "shivers, cries a little but not much. And aborts herself that night with a partly straightened-out wire clotheshanger" (Laurence, 152). Eva’s choice leaves her barren, though in the backdrop she seems like one of the luckier ones. Between 1926 and 1942, over 4,000 Canadian women were killed as a result of bungled, illegal abortions (History of Abortion in Canada).
Self-induced abortions were common practice among those too poor to afford a doctor willing to break the law. The more harmful methods included "homemade douches of Lysol, turpentine or carbide" as well as the insertion of "catheters, lead pencils, knitting needles, crochet hooks, or slippery elm" (Cahill, 18).
A woman who obtained an illegal abortion 1967 wrote about her experience. After finding herself pregnant, she wrote, "These vague biological stirrings inside of me could never justify giving birth to a child I did not want and was not prepared to raise. Neither was I willing to subject myself to the ordeal of pregnancy and waiting, only to relinquish the child at the end of it all." She says that "Finding an illegal abortionist was not easy" and that her questions about the procedure and about the risks were not answered. She describes the process as "a 48-hour ordeal of pain". The registered nurse who performed the abortion gave only "vague instructions about what to when the bleeding began" and left after fifteen minutes. The procedure cost $400. (Our Bodies, Our Selves, 236-237). By 1967, it was estimated that 120,000 abortions could be taking place a year (Pro-life History of Canada).
In 1967, Justice Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau introduced an abortion reform bill. A federal committee was assembled to examine both points of view. In 1969, with Pierre Elliot Trudeau as Prime Minister, section 251 of the criminal code was amended to decriminalize contraception and allow some abortions under extremely limited circumstances, for example, if the woman’s life were in danger. Access was for the most part unavailable to women outside of major cities. However, to feminists who had long felt restricted and degraded under the century-old legislation, the decision signaled a fundamental change (History of Abortion In Canada). To those who felt that abortion was the murder, this marked the beginning of "Canada’s hellish descent" (A Pro-Life Canada History).
It is relevant to point out that the fight to decriminalize abortion in Canada was led by Dr. Henry Morgentaler. Though the struggle claimed to be against the oppression of Canadian women, it was only through the efforts of a male doctor that this freedom was achieved. It is a sad fact that in some demeans the accomplishment.
Doctor Henry Morgentaler led the fight to decriminalize abortion in Canada. A survivor of the Auschwitz death-camp, he is seen by a significant percentage of the Canadian population as a mass murderer. Possessing a desire for social justice, Morgentaler was involved in the 1967 committee to examine the possibility of an abortion reform bill. In 1969 he closed his family practice in Montreal and began to open illegal abortion clinics, believing that the right to choose when and if to bear a child should be a fundamental right. In twenty years he performed approximately 20,000 abortions. A father of four, Morgentaler has been described as "an ordinary man with a good sense of humor". In 1988, following the decriminalization of abortion, he told Maclean’s magazine that he wanted to make his contribution to humanity "so that there will be no more Auschwitzes. Children who are born wanted and are given love and attention will not build concentration camps." Undoubted there are those in Canada who would compare Morgentaler’s career choice to Hitler’s (Wood, 15).
Morgentaler was a major player from 1969 through to 1988. In the 90’s and well into the new century, he has been an outspoken advocate for government-provided abortion, often criticizing a lack of funding for private abortion clinics.
The seventies and early eighties were fraught with court cases and legal battles. Henry Morgentaler's strategy was to draw attention to the fact that Canadian women were having illegal abortions. His defiant and continual opening of abortion clinics across the country angered the pro-life movement, who kept track of how many abortions were performed each year (Pro-life History of Canada).
In 1973, on Mother’s Day, Doctor Henry Morgentaler performed an abortion on national television. He announced that he had performed over 5,000 illegal abortions (Pro-life History of Canada).
Morgentaler was tried in 1973, on thirteen charges. His defense lawyers attempted to show that laws restricting abortion were unconstitutional, but they were unsuccessful. They also attempted to raise the issue of necessity. The jury acquitted. In February of 1974, the Quebec Court of Appeals heard the Crown's appeal. The acquittal was quashed and a conviction was substituted in its place. Morgentaler appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada. The Supreme Court dismissed the appeal and sentenced Morgentaler to eighteen months in prison. He served ten, during which he suffered a mild heart attack. By 1975 the Canadian legal had worked itself into a tangled mess of legalities. In 1976, under the newly elected Partis Quebecois, the Attorney General of Quebec announced that doctors providing abortions in Quebec would not be prosecuted (History of Abortion In Canada).
In 1983, Morgentaler opened a clinic in Winnipeg. A month later Morgentaler, another doctor and seven staff members were arrested for conspiracy to procure a miscarriage. Again, he was acquitted. The legal minefield was often quite literally explosive. Morgentaler's clinics were often the targets of arson, vandalism or bomb threats. Morgentaler was often threatened and in 1983 was hospitalized following an attack by a man with garden shears (Wood, 14).
However, the struggle was in the end successful. Abortion was legalized in Canada on January 28th 1988. The decision followed eighteen years of court battles. Five out of seven Supreme Court judges ruled that section 251 of the Canadian Criminal Code "undercut a woman’s right to ‘life, liberty and security of person’ in its attempt to protect the fetus." The then Chief Justice, Brian Dickson stated that, "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." (Janigan, 8).
Those in support of freedom of choice were exuberant. Katherine Coffin, national vice-president of the Canadian Abortion Rights Action League exclaimed that the decision asserted "what women have been saying for 20 years: that the decision whether to bear a child is a fundamental human right" (Janigan, 8). Justice Bertha Wilson believed that the overthrown section of the Criminal Code was limiting to a woman’s freedom because under it "the woman’s capacity to reproduce is to be subject not to her own control, but that of the state." However, Justice William McIntyre, one of the dissenting judges, held the opposite view, believing that because "no right to abortion can be found in Canadian law, custom or tradition, and the charter does no create such a right," that the decision was not the correct one (Janigan, 9).
There were other issues to wrestle with. For instance, the ruling gave provincial health authorities the onus to act—and immediately following the decision the health minister for British Columbia announced that his province’s medical services plan would only pay for abortions approved by a therapeutic abortion committee within an accredited hospital. This was small comfort to those who saw abortion was murder and regarded the decision as "an agonizing blow that sanctioned the slaughter of human beings—and diminished society’s respect for human life" (Janigan, 9)
The issue of abortion continues to be one of great debate today. Though abortion is legal, and has been legal in Canada since 1988, the routine harassment and murder of doctors who provide abortions persist. Political parties such as the Canadian Alliance, which are traditionally more right wing and based in so-called traditional values, continue to use the abortion issue to appear as pro-family. In the United States, the fear lingers that the critical decision of Roe v Wade could be overturned. If access and acceptance of abortion is a sign of the rights women possess, then it a frightening reality that the freedom of women in Canadian society is still a continuing battle.
Bibliography
Abortion In Law, History & Religion. Childbirth by Choice Trust. Toronto. 1995.
Cahill, Betty. Butterbox Babies. Toronto. McClelland-Bantam. 1992
"Canadian Abortion Rights Action League" www.caral.ca
"Chronology of Court Cases". Childbirth by Choice Trust. Toronto. 1995
Janigan, Mary et al. "Abortion." Maclean’s. February 8th 1988. Vol. 101. No. 7
Laurence, Margaret. The Diviners. Toronto. McClelland and Stewart-Bantam Limited. 1974.
Our Bodies, Ourselves. The Boston Women’s Health Book Collective. New York. Simon and Schuster. 1971.
"A History of Abortion in Canada."
"A Pro-life Canada History."
"When Does Life Begin? The Evolving Position of the Roman Catholic Church". Childbirth by Choice Trust. Toronto. 1995.
"Women’s History Homepage" http://www.nlc-bnc.ca/2/12/h12-278-e.html
Wood, Chris et al. "A Man With A Mission". Maclean’s. February 8th 1988. Vol. 101. No. 7.
