Full Description
When Henry Morgentaler, Canada's best-known abortion rights advocate, died in 2013, activists and scholars began to reassess the state of abortion in this country. In Abortion, some of the foremost researchers in Canada challenge current thinking by revealing the discrepancy between what people are experiencing on the ground and what people believe the law to be after the 1988 Morgentaler decision.
Grouped into four themes - History, Experience, Politics, and Reproductive Justice - these essays showcase new theoretical frameworks and approaches from law, history, medicine, women's studies, and political science as they document the diversity of abortion experiences across the country, from those of Indigenous women in the pre-Morgentaler era to a lack of access in the age of so-called decriminalization.
Together, the contributors make a case for shifting the debate from abortion rights to reproductive justice and caution against focusing on "choice" or medicalization without understanding the broader context of why and when people seek out abortions.
Contents
Introduction / Shannon Stettner, Kristin Burnett, and Travis Hay
Part 1: History
1 Different Histories: Reproduction, Colonialism, and Treaty 7 Communities in Southern Alberta, 1880-1940 / Kristin Burnett
2 Not Guilty but Guilty? Race, Rumour, and Respectability in the 1882 Abortion Trial of Letitia Munson / Rebecca Beausaert
3 Abortion and Birth Control on the Canadian Prairies: Feminists, Catholics, and Family Values in the 1970s / Erika Dyck
Part 2: Experience
4 He Is Still Unwanted: Women's Assertions of Authority over Abortion in Letters to the Royal Commission on the Status of Women in Canada / Shannon Stettner
5 Abortion on Trial: Abortion Tribunals in the 1970s and 1980s / Beth Palmer
6 The Dark, Well-Kept Secret: Abortion Experiences in the Maritime Provinces / Katrina Ackerman
7 When Research Is Personal and Political: Researchers Reflect on the Study of Abortion / Marion Doull, Christabelle Sethna, Evelyne Morrissette, and Caitlin Scott
Part 3: Politics
8 Functionally Inaccessible: Historical Conflicts in Legal and Medical Access to Abortion / Frances E. Chapman and Tracy Penny Light
9 Morgentaler and the Technological Production of Embodiment / Jen Rinaldi
10 Between a Woman and Her Doctor? The Medicalization of Abortion Politics in Canada / Rachael Johnstone
11 Subverting the Constitution: Anti-abortion Policies and Activism in the United States and Canada / Lori Brown, J. Shoshanna Ehrlich, and Colleen MacQuarrie
Part 4: Discourse and Reproductive Justice
12 The Future of Pro-choice Discourse in Canada / Kelly Gordon and Paul Saurette
13 Reproductive Justice in Canada: Exploring Immigrant Women's Experiences / Laura Salamanca
14 Toxic Matters: Vital and Material Struggles for Environmental Reproductive Justice / Sarah Marie Wiebe
Conclusion / Kristin Burnett and Shannon Stettner
