Your Freedom to Choose
1986 1986-03Read it in the scan (PDF at ETOL), page 4 →
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The following interview with Judy Rebick was submitted to Socialist Action by Anne Brunelle of the Alliance for Socialist Action in Toronto. Rebick is a leader of Toronto's pro-choice movement, a spokesperson for the Ontario Coalition for Abortion Clinics, and a member of the Ontario New Democratic Party, Canada's labor party.
Anne Brunelle: What is the status of the law on abortion in Canada?
Judy Rebick: Abortion in Canada is illegal except under certain circumstances, and that is that abortions must be per -formed in an approved or accredited hospital and approved by a therapeutic abortion committee made up of three doctors who determine whether a woman's life or health is in danger.
But only 30 percent of hospitals have therapeutic abortion committees. And those that have these committees usually have quotas. So access to abortion is extremely limited—especially in rural areas. And even in the big cities, because of the bureaucratic character of the therapeutic abortion committees, there's an average of a sixweek delay between the time a woman finds out she's pregnant and the time she actually gets the procedure.
Brunelle: Are clinics legal in Canada?
Rebick: Clinics are illegal in Canada. But in Quebec, due to the struggle of the women's movement there and of Dr. Morganthaler, who opened a clinic in Quebec in the early '70s, there are clinics. Morganthaler opened the clinic because the hospitals in Quebec were primarily Catholic hospitals and were refusing to set up therapeutic abortion committees under the 1969 law. So he set up a clinic there illegally and did thousands of abortions before he was finally arrested.
Then Morgenthaler waged a 10-year struggle through the courts, where he was acquitted by three juries. Finally the Quebec government, the Parti Quebecois government, which was a nationalist gov -ernment, decided not to prosecute any doctor who performed abortions in safe medical conditions. As a result, today there are more than 15 government clinics in Quebec providing abortions even though it's technically illegal to do so.
There's also now, due to a struggle that's been taking place in Ontario over the last A4 : 2222