Met With Perfect Pleasure

Today marks the 20th Anniversary of fully-legalized abortion in Canada. Until the umbilical cord is cut, there are no laws in this country to protect or recognize the life of an unborn child. And as a “surgical procedure” abortions are funded by the federal government, making them free of cost to Canadian residents and citizens.
Unlike Americans, Canadians tend to skirt around hot issues like abortions. Your typical Canadian tends to avoid conflict and discussing matters where we may disagree. We are hesitant to suggest that just because I think something is wrong, that it is wrong for you as well, and so many Canadians who have a personal objection to abortion, would not act to see it become illegal. There is very little media coverage regarding the state of abortion in our country and is a marginal issue during elections at best.
Because we are inundated with American media, Roe vs. Wade is commonly known about here. However, with the anniversary of that case last week it made me question how abortion came to be legalized in Canada. I discovered just how different the process of seeing abortion legalized was from the situation in the US.
It began with the view of the very popular and charismatic former Prime Minister who thought that, “the state has no place in the bedrooms of the nation.” In 1967 Pierre Trudeau introduced a bill to the House of Commons that was passed in 1969. The bill amended the section of the Criminal Code which prohibited the procurement of abortion and made it punishable by life in prison by creating a provision for abortions to be permitted when a woman’s health was found to be in jeopardy and approved by a three-doctor hospital committee.
Fast forward to January 28, 1988: in R. v. Morgentaler, the Supreme Court of Canada found that the section of the Criminal Code used to charge Dr. Henry Morgentaler for performing abortions was in violation of section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The court ruled that, “The right to liberty…guarantees a degree of personal autonomy over important decisions intimately affecting his or her private life. …The decision whether or not to terminate a pregnancy is essentially a moral decision and in a free and democratic society, the conscience of the individual must be paramount to that of the state.”
The same year Trudeau’s amendment to the Criminal Code was passed, an Auschwitz survivor and Polish immigrant named Henry Morgentaler began performing abortions in his Montreal medical practice. In June 1970 he was arrested and charged with conspiracy to perform an abortion. Between 1970 and 1973, Morgentaler was charged 10 more times and in 1973 he publicly stated that he had performed more than 5000 abortions without the permission of the three-doctor committees, and allowed one to be video taped for the CTV news program W-Five.
Despite his admission of being in violation of the law, Morgentaler was acquitted by a jury but in 1974, the Quebec Court of Appeal overturned the verdict and found him guilty. Morgentaler appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada where his conviction was upheld and he was sentenced to 18 months in prison. During this time he was tried on a second charge and acquitted by another jury. This time his acquittal could not be overturned due to “the Morgentaler Amendment” which prevents a jury verdict from being overturned by a higher court and the province of Quebec declared they could no longer enforce abortion laws. Further to this, The Federal Minister of Justice set aside Morgentaler’s conviction on the first charge, ordered a new trial and in 1976 he was acquitted by a jury for the third time.
Fuelled by his victories, Henry Morgentaler opened abortion clinics in Quebec, Toronto and Winnipeg where he continued to challenge the law by performing abortions without the permission of a three-doctor hospital board. Along with other doctors at his clinics, Morgentaler was charged with conspiracy to procure a miscarriage, but at the 1984 trial a jury once again acquitted him. This time the Ontario Attorney General set aside the acquittal and ordered a new trial. Again, Morgentaler appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada, where in 1988 it was determined that Canada’s abortion law was unconstitutional and was nullified. Dr. Morgentaler called the verdict, “a vindication of everything I believed in. For the first time it gave women full status of human beings able to make decisions about their own lives.”
The verdict however was not about women’s rights and liberties, it was about the fact that the regulations outlined in the criminal code created a situation where there was unequal access for women depending on their location in the country. This situation is what was deemed unconstitutional. Morgentaler was acquitted because he attempted to fill that void, and create equal access to abortion for women in Canada.
It was the recommendation of the Supreme Court that the government introduce a new abortion law and in 1989 a new law was introduced and approved by the House of Commons. Under the new law doctors would face a two-year prison term if they approved an abortion when the woman’s health was not in danger. However, the law was condemned by several doctors and was overturned by the Senate. No government has attempted to introduce an abortion law since, and 20 years later I find myself living in a country where there is no abortion law whatsoever.