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Not Having Children
From: Abortion to Abolition
$3.20
Reproductive justice includes the right to choose to have children or not, and to parent any children you choose to have in safety. This chapter opens with the case of Dr. Emily Stowe, who is best known as one of the first women to become a licensed medical doctor in Canada, and less known as the defendant in a well-publicized abortion trial in 1879. The next section in this chapter covers the great Eastview Birth Control Trial of 1936–37, a six-month affair to prosecute Dorothea Palmer for sharing information about contraceptives in the small town of Eastview, Ontario. The third section of this chapter describes the ordeal that Chantal Daigle endured in 1989, facing an abusive, controlling ex-boyfriend who wanted to bar her from accessing abortion and a province that refused to support her sovereignty. The fourth section of this chapter describes Clinic 554 in Fredericton, New Brunswick, as a protagonist in the overdue legal fight for equitable abortion funding across the province. The final section recounts how anonymous PEI artist iamkarats turned an image of the province’s iconic Anne of Green Gables into an emblem representing the right to abortion access, just in time for the tide around the island to finally come in. The author also outlines three main issues that remain on the horizon for abortion activists.
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.
