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Bodily Autonomy
From: Abortion to Abolition
$3.50
Bodily autonomy is the first principle of reproductive rights. The stories in this first chapter speak to a conceptualization of bodily autonomy in Canada. The first section of this chapter describes how Heidi Rathjen, a survivor of the massacre at école Polytechnique, has clawed at the limits of gun control law for three decades to gain some semblance of reparation for herself and her murdered classmates. The story of Justice Claire L’Heureux-Dubé, in the second section of this chapter, shows the constraints of sexual assault law when its adjudicators are steeped in misogynistic anachronisms, and how transformative the voice of feminist dissent is in that context. The third section shows how the late Synthia Kavanagh faced transphobic restrictions to her gender expression not only in general society in 1980s Canada but also in one of the most binary-enforcing institutions there is: the prison. The fourth section of this chapter recounts how Terri-Jean Bedford and her colleagues, Valerie Scott and Amy Lebovitch, took the country to court for the right to do their jobs as sex workers. In the final section of this chapter, the 2020 story of Santina Rao and her public assault by Halifax police officers shows how gender stereotypes and racism intersect and the police — public servants — fail to protect the public.
Contributors
Martha Paynter
Martha Paynter is a registered nurse providing abortion and postpartum care in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The founder and chair of Wellness Within: An Organization for Health and Justice, and a doctoral candidate at the Dalhousie University School of Nursing, Martha has 20 years of experience working to advance gender health equity. Her practice, teaching and research focus on the intersection of reproductive health and the justice system. A frequent contributor to Briarpatch, CBC, the Coast, the Conversation, the Halifax Examiner, and Saltwire, Martha writes about publicly-funded health care, prison abolition, and gender equity.
