Abortion Rights in Canada: Here to stay?
Published in Antler River Media Co-op
(*artwork by Incé Husain)
On Thursday, October 24, an abortion rights protest clustered at the intersection of Southdale Road West and Notre Dame Drive. Five protesters stood in a line. Three raised familiar abortion rights signs that read “Honk for pro-choice”, “Safe and legal abortion is pro-life”, and “Keep your rosaries off my ovaries”.
The remaining two held more specific signs.
“Go home, Abby” read one. “Hellenic centre hosts RACIST,” read the other.
The abortion rights advocates were protesting the Hellenic Community Centre’s decision to serve as a venue for a fundraiser featuring American anti-abortion spokesperson Abby Johnson. The fundraiser was organized by 4LifeLondon and Choose Life Elgin to fund “the efforts and message of LIFE in Southwestern Ontario”. Tickets were $75 each; a table for eight could be reserved for $600. Five hundred people came according to anti-abortion group Western Lifeline.
“It’s reprehensible that any organization in London, public or private, would host a racist, anti-abortion, anti-vaccine person as a key speaker in their centre. I’m incredibly disappointed in the Hellenic Centre’s choice to host Johnson,” said Deanna Ronson, board member of Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada (ARCC), in an official statement. “I urge Londoners to consider contacting the Hellenic Centre to voice their outrage and even consider boycotting them in the future. We need more love in London, not people who are going to bring in more U.S.-style propaganda against basic human rights.”
Johnson rose to prominence as an anti-abortion spokesperson in 2009 following her heavily-contested recollection of seeing a thirteen-week old fetus “fighting for its life” during an ultrasound-guided abortion at a Planned Parenthood clinic.
“I saw a baby on the screen,” Johnson said in 2009 on FOX News. “I saw the probe going into the woman’s uterus, and then at that moment, I saw the baby moving and trying to get away from the probe. And I thought, it’s fighting for its life…(it) showed me the reality of abortion: that it ends a child’s life.”
A journalist from The Texas Monthly identified gaping holes in this story. On the day that Johnson reported her experience, Planned Parenthood records showed that no ultrasound-guided abortions were performed; that Johnson did not assist any abortion procedures; and that no patient was thirteen weeks pregnant.
But this imagery of a fleeing fetus formed the crux of Johnson’s memoir, Unplanned, which escalated into a film of the same name.
In an article by Huffpost, OB-GYN Jen Villavicencio criticizes the film for “inaccurate and fear-mongering” depictions of abortion.
“The idea that a fetus would recoil or show fear or try to run away from a cannula [medical tube] is really a frank falsehood,” said the OB-GYN, noting that a fetus at thirteen weeks in utero cannot make voluntary movements. “All the evidence says that is not possible.”
The article slams Unplanned for “sensationaliz(ing) abortion like a horror movie”. Clips from the film were rampant with blood “pooling in socks, dripping on floors”. One scene shows Abby’s character curled up on a bathroom floor, recoiling from a blood-filled toilet after taking an abortion pill. Planned Parenthood is villainized as a for-profit business that “sells abortions”.
“I think only anti-choice people will enjoy seeing the film because it wallows in fetal gore - which is why it got slapped with a Restricted rating in the U.S.,” said ARCC Executive Director Joyce Arthur in 2019.
Three of the abortion rights advocates protesting Johnson’s presence in London, including Ronson, first met five years ago while protesting the screening of Unplanned at SilverCity London Cinemas. That protest was full of evidence-based information about abortions that sought to overturn the film’s gruesome, manipulative propaganda.
Ronson believes that hosting Johnson poses a threat to abortion rights movements in London by dragging anti-abortion ideologies into Canadian politics.
“The fundraiser with Abby Johnson is a threat to abortion rights in London because it raised approximately $41,250,” said Ronson. “This money could be used to fund (anti-abortion rights movements’) favourite anti-choice Conservative politicians and other anti-choice initiatives...There are some extremely powerful anti-abortion lobbying groups that work to influence policies.”
Canada is the only country in the world in which abortion is legal at any stage of pregnancy. This legalization occurred in 1988 after over a century of heated legal discussions, abortion rights movements, and the rise of clinics that performed then-illegal abortions. In 1970, thirty women advocating for abortion rights chained themselves to the House of Commons’ parliamentary gallery, shutting down Parliament for the first time in Canadian history. From 1977 to 1983, abortion rights advocate Dr. Henry Morgentaler illegally opened abortion clinics across Canada and faced an oscillation of convictions and acquittals; in 2008, he was honoured with an appointment to the Order of Canada for his human rights work.
The legal discussions about abortion revolved around the question of fetal personhood. In 1989, legislator Joseph Borowski opposed abortion on the grounds that it “contravened the life and security and the equality rights of the fetus, as a person, protected by section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms”. The Court concluded that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms did not apply to a fetus; according to the Criminal Code of Canada, a child “becomes a human being… when it has completely proceeded, in a living state, from the body of its mother”.
A report from ARCC summarizes that bestowing personhood onto a fetus threatens the rights of women.
“If we give any legal rights to a fetus, we must automatically remove some rights from women, because it's impossible for two beings occupying the same body to enjoy full rights,” reads the report. “If we try to "balance" rights, it means the rights of one or both parties must be compromised, resulting in a loss of rights. Legally speaking, it would be very difficult to justify compromising women's established rights in favour of the theoretical rights of fetuses.”
A lifetime believer in reproductive rights, Ronson joined the abortion rights movement five years ago. She was the director of Pro-Choice London for about a year and began serving as a member of ARCC’s board of directors two years ago. She recently launched London Reproductive Justice, a local group committed to “elevating the voices of marginalized communities” in issues of reproductive justice, which organized the protest in response to Johnson’s presence in London.
Ronson believes that abortion rights in Canada may be under threat if a Conservative government is elected into power at the next federal election. Former Conservative MP Alain Rayes, for example, recently stated that the number of anti-abortion Conservative MPs is rising; these politicians could introduce bills restricting abortion services.
Since 2007, there have been six attempts to reopen legal discussion on abortion rights in Canada - all of which would have led to restricting abortion rights. In 2012, there was an attempt to revise Canada’s legal definition of when a fetus becomes a human being. In 2007, there was an attempt to pass the “Unborn Victims of Crime Act”, which identified fetuses as separate victims when pregnant women are attacked; though seemingly well-intentioned, a response by ARCC argues that the “real effect of the bill will not be to protect women, but to give fetuses legal personhood as a wedge to re-criminalize abortion”, noting that the bill was conceived by anti-abortion groups and Conservative anti-abortion MPs.
“The most important abortion-rights initiatives to work on next will be leading up to the next Federal Election,” says Ronson. “We have to let potential voters know that their human rights could be under threat with a Conservative government.”
Ronson adds that reproductive rights are currently suffering in Canada. Only two hospitals in Saskatchewan and three in New Brunswick provide surgical abortions, and Alberta may privatize health care to render abortions unaffordable. As a result, Ronson says many pregnant people cannot easily access timely, affordable surgical abortions and are forced to seek out-of-province care. Access to medical abortion has improved, but doctors have the right to deny abortion medication based on personal religious or moral beliefs. In London, there are two ways to access abortion care: a clinic at Victoria Hospital, and the province-wide virtual Circle of Care Health Connections which mails abortion pills to local pharmacies.
“Across Canada, numerous pregnant people have to travel more than 100 kilometers for services. For pregnant people living in the far North, it’s even farther to access care.”
Ronson emphasizes that reproductive justice is intersectional and demands collaboration with other social justice movements, such as mental health, affordable housing, 2SLGBTQIA+ rights, and environmental justice. She adds that “inclusive language” should be used when talking about abortion to acknowledge gender-diverse people. For example, the term “pregnant people” should be used instead of the term “pregnant women or girls”.
The ARCC adopts the definition of reproductive justice established by SisterSong Women of Colour Reproductive Justice Collective, an American grassroots organization. Reproductive justice is defined as “the human right to maintain personal bodily autonomy, have children, not have children, and parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities.”
“I want to focus on lifting marginalized voices,” says Ronson. “When it comes to reproductive justice, those most greatly impacted are Black, Indigenous, 2SLGBTQIA+ and disabled folks. Eventually, I would love to see London Reproductive Justice registered as a non-profit organization made up with a board that reflects these marginalized communities.”
In March 2024, ARCC released a statement titled “Reproductive Justice Requires a Free Palestine” in response to Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza.
A UN report from May 2024 lists the norm of mass violence against Palestinian women and girls by Israeli forces. Israeli forces’ bombardment of hospitals and deliberate refusal of health care endangers 50,000 pregnant Palestinian women and 20,000 newborn babies; forces over 183 women to give birth without pain relief each day; kills hundreds of babies in incubators denied electrical power; increases miscarriages by 300 percent; subjects 95 per cent of pregnant and breastfeeding women to severe food poverty; refuses 690,000 women and girls menstrual hygiene supplies, with some taking contraceptive pills to deny the cycles of their bodies forced to be borne without privacy and dignity. Israeli forces also destroyed Gaza’s largest fertility clinic that stored 3,000 embryos, and there have been reports of Israeli forces disappearing and sexually assaulting women and girls.
ARCC’s statement “Reproductive Justice Requires a Free Palestine” condemns Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine and states solidarity with Palestinian liberation movements. It reads:
We affirm that what is happening in Occupied Palestine is not only a humanitarian crisis, but is inherently an issue of reproductive justice. Based on the pillars defined by SisterSong, full reproductive justice cannot be achieved with the ongoing violence and displacement that has been inflicted on Palestinian people and families for decades since the Nakba. We support calls for a permanent ceasefire and a permanent end to the occupation… We extend our solidarity to the people of Palestine and recognize their liberation as a feminist issue. We affirm every person’s right to live freely, equitably, and in peace no matter their race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, or other intersections. Reproductive rights and justice do not stop at abortion rights, and we are committed to solidarity through critical intersectional feminist frameworks in all of our work, including fighting for Palestinian liberation.
The statement ends with a list of resources offering support for Muslim communities in reproductive rights issues and a “guide” on how to support Palestine.
“We need to help promote events and causes for each other,” says Ronson on working with other local justice groups. “And get out there to physically support each other at rallies, marches, et cetera.”
The ARCC produced a document listing terms used in abortion rights movements, distinguishing the meanings of “pro-choice”, “pro-abortion”, “anti-choice”, “anti-abortion”, and “pro-life” to give a full sense of the sociopolitical landscape in which abortion rights are discussed. Some journalistic guides, such as the Associated Press Stylebook, require journalists to only use the terms “abortion rights” and “anti-abortion” to ensure “neutral” reporting.
“The idea behind the guidance has been to scrub the emotional and political arguments from the language and to describe the specific issues and policies without adopting the words of the people entrenched in the political battle,” reads a statement by American newspaper NPR.
Ronson believes that all terms should be used except for “pro-life.”
“The term “pro-life” is a misnomer,” says Ronson. “People who are against abortion are not pro-life if the only life they are concerned about is that of the fetus.”
Western University-trained physician Dr Jennifer Gunter echoed this sentiment, refusing to serve on a CBC discussion panel about abortion rights that included an anti-abortion advocate. Gunter accused CBC of “elevat(ing) those who lie to deny medical care”.
“Elevating these people is part of the problem and why we are dealing with this snowballing medical tragedy. There is no scientific counter to this travesty. Just lies. Every single scientific opinion points to the necessity of legal, safe, affordable abortion and contraception,” writes Gunter in a tweet. “I will not participate in false equivalency. The CBC has a massive platform and it should not be used to provide the illusion that there is a debate.”
Ronson says that those interested in becoming reproductive rights advocates should join local or national organizations. London Reproductive Justice and ARCC are seeking volunteers and monetary donations to grow their initiatives. They can be reached at londonreprojustice@gmail.com and info@arcc-cdac.ca, respectively. ♦
This article appeared in The Antler River Media Co-op on November 4th, 2024:
https://antlerrivermedia.ca/abortion-rights-in-canada-here-to-stay/