REPEAL ALL ABORTION LAWS!

“No woman can call herself free who does not own and control her own body... No woman can
call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother.”
Margaret Sanger (founder Planned Parenthood Association) in 1920

Every woman should have the right to choose whether or not she wants to bear a child. Every
child should have the right to know that he or she is wanted. As long as these rights are denied,
thousands of women and children are condemned to death and thousands more to misery. Death
comes to women through self-induced or ‘quack’ abortions — in Canada there are at least 2000
such deaths each year. Death comes to unwanted children as the constantly increasing number of
‘battered children’ affirms. Misery comes to the women who bear the unwanted child in numerous
forms — perhaps she is menopausal; already the mother of several children; physically and
emotionally exhausted; in poverty; young and in the midst of her education; or a woman at the
beginning or in the midst of a fulfilling career — whatever the situation, the denial of an abortion
forces a woman to take on a responsibility she may be unable or unwilling to carry. Evidence
recently collected indicates that unplanned pregnancies can precipitate longlasting mental
breakdowns and since therapeutic abortions are so hard to obtain, the misery of many a woman
‘will lead to this too. This leads to our demand that abortion be removed from the Criminal Code:
any woman has the right to an abortion if she so desires.

These laws are made by men,
not nature...

Most societies of antiquity practiced abortion and records of an abortion technique go back
3000 years before Christ in China.

lt wasn’t until 1869 that Pope Pius 1X decreed that all abortion from the moment of
conception was thenceforth murder. This was in response to a drastic drop in the birth rate in
France, resulting from new contraceptive devices, which alarmed state and church who had wars to
fight and colonies to populate.

These laws are not “natural” or “permanent”. They are recent innovations, developed in the
interests of the law-makers of a particular period of history.

As Canadian law now stands, a woman must degrade herself before the men who hold her
future in their hands: doctors and psychiatrists, and then, only if they agree, the hospital abortion
committee. If an abortion is performed in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, it is not even a surgical
procedure. However, the new law insures that the process of obtaining a therapeutic abortion is
complicated and prolonged. The fact that requirements for abortion are vague, that the application
requires the support of 3 or 4 doctors, and that the hospital committee has to meet and consider
each case, means delays of several weeks. The woman who attempts to obtain this legal abortion
and fails may give up any alternative, illegal channels because her pregnancy is too far advanced.

A more serious deficiency in the new law is the complete rejection of the social and economic
reasons that impell women to consider abortion. Many women seeking abortion are married with
children. They feel that they cannot afford another child without endangering the health and
living standard of their whole family. Yet these reasons are not considered adequate to qualify for
a therapeutic abortion. The young, unmarried woman who wishes desperately to terminate a
pregnancy, facing not only the social stigma attached to the ‘‘unwed mother”, but the prospect of
losing her job or curtailing her education, is told that the experience of bearing an unwanted child
will ‘‘make a woman of her.”

So long as a woman cannot “prove” that she will commit suicide if forced to complete her
pregnancy, she has only two alternatives: to bear an unwanted child, or to seek an illegal abortion:
Legal and illegal abortions are available to those who can pay for them. Women can fly to Britain
or Japan for legal abortions, or buy a safe, illegal abortion in Canada at a high price. Thus, the law

makes it virtualy impossible for poor or-working class women to obtain safe abortions.
As it now stands, the law could be interpreted much more liberally so that the definition of

health would include the health and well-being of the entire family. However, the medical profession

has chosen not to do so; the Medical Director of the largest general hospital in Canada has stated:
“Just because the law changes doesn’t mean we have to.”

Abortion as Birth Control

The birth contro! devices now available are neither completely reliable, nor safe, and the
priorities in research, financed primarily by the drug companies, put profits ahead of health. In
addition, women seeking birth control are rarely informed by this doctors of possible side effects,
or of certain physical conditions which prohibit the use of the pill (such as diabetes or heart
disease).

There are many social pressures which discourage women from using birth contro! methods.
Many women of child-bearing age have great difficulty in obtaining advice on the various methods;
high school students in particular are excluded from such information, both because of school
policy and because of the pressure on girls against premeditation in sexual activity when dating.
Furthermore, the recent sensational reporting of the dangers of the pill (all the way from retinas
detaching to breast cancer) frighten many women into abandoning this method of contraception.
What they don’t tell us is that the dangers in taking the pill affect fewer women than the serious
complications that can arise in taking a pregnancy to term, and that the mortality rate associated
with birth control pills is lower than that associated with the normal delivery of the child.

At the present level of medical technology, present forms of birth contro! are inadequate.
Abortion has to be a part of effective and safe birth control.

The Alternatives

The fear and mystery which surround birth control, abortion and child birth result from
prejudice rather than knowledge.

It is not necessary for women to go through these experiences as isolated individuals, lacking
information, and totally dependent on an individual doctor who can withhold information
according to his whim.

Clinics should be established to provide a complete service — birth contro! information and
devices, sterilization, abortion, and maternity care. They should be © blicly funded, and
controlled by those who use them (unlike present hospitals which are governed by boards of
businessmen).

This would enable us to go through the experiences of pregnancy, abortion, birth, together
with other women, rather than in isolation. Women, rather than businessmen, would determine the
priorities of the medical facilities which affect us most. In such clinics, doctors would be able to
pool their resources and knowledge, and women would benefit from the greater knowledge and
experience available to them.

Join the Campaign!

On May 10, thousands of women will demonstrate in Ottawa, and in support demonstrations
across the country, demanding the repeal of all laws concerning abortion. The human right of
women to control their own bodies must not be limited in any way by law.

Laws can be changed very quickly in war time; a state of national emergency. The deaths of
thousands of women from illegal abortion, and the tragedy of unwanted pregnancies, are such an
emergency.

Join us in confronting the medical profession and government on all levels in the struggle
against these inhuman laws.

printed by voluntary labor by vancouver women’s caucus,
307 W. Broadway, Vancouver