It’s July 2008, a few weeks after the nation appointed Henry Morgentaler to the Order of Canada, and a small band of placard-bearing protesters trudge along the hot sidewalk outside the abortion clinic bearing his name in Fredericton. They are outraged that the man who riveted Canadians as he led the fight to decriminalize abortion has been given one of the country’s highest honours, but that’s not why they have come. They are here because it’s a Tuesday. This is the only day of the week when the clinic has a doctor, who will perform anywhere from a dozen to 15 abortions, most before 11 o’clock in the morning. “Slogans are important,” says Thaddée Renault, who wears a sign on his back that reads, “Henry: Pick on someone your own size.” It has a small pink plastic fetus affixed to it. Renault walks slowly as if to a funeral dirge. He has a mournful face, downcast eyes and a stern mouth. “What do I accomplish?” he says. “I don’t know, but I think it’s important to be a witness.” At 76, he has been protesting for 15 years, the first five at Morgentaler’s original clinic on the north side of the St. John River and since 1999, here on Brunswick Street.
Next door is a white cottage with flower boxes on its windowsills. It is the site of the pro-life Women’s Care Centre, as well as the headquarters of New Brunswick Right to Life. Their location is deliberate; if the placard-bearers can talk a woman out of entering the clinic, their kind of help is close at hand. That same evening, a half-dozen women, all in their twenties, gather at a table a little removed from the other diners on a restaurant’s backyard patio. They are feminists, pro-choice activists in this predominantly conservative city. Many volunteer as patient escorts at the clinic; one of them, 25-year-old Peggy Cooke, is its volunteer coordinator. She is also the author of a spunky blog, Anti-Choice Is Anti-Awesome, about life at the clinic and the antics of protesters she’s dubbed Glarey Mary, Crazy Legs and Mad Thad. “Intimidate women. That’s all they’re there to do,” she says.
But the pro-life forces in New Brunswick have been effective. New Brunswick pays for abortions only if done in a hospital by an OB/GYN and before 12 weeks – and then only if the woman first gets permission from two doctors. Unlike abortions at clinics in other provinces, those at Morgentaler’s facility in New Brunswick are not publicly funded. The usually upbeat Cooke sighs. “Sometimes it seems that we’re outnumbered.” A silence falls over the table, where there should be excitement, even celebration. An art auction the next day – New Brunswick’s first ever upmarket pro-choice fundraiser, at a smart restaurant – is sold out. The proceeds are going toward Morgentaler’s legal costs in his protracted court battle to get the government to pay for the 700 or so abortions done at his clinic annually, each costing up to $750.
The 27-year-old organizer behind the high-profile party insists she not be identified. She is moving up fast in her career with a government agency that mustn’t know she is a clinic escort. She worked the early shift that day. “It was a sad morning,” she says. Protesters had spotted one woman parking her car in the lot across the street. “They surrounded her, yelling, ‘Slaughter!’ ” she recalls, shuddering. Another patient’s boyfriend halted at the clinic door and announced he had forgotten his bank card. The woman, weeping, turned and ran down the street. A third almost backed out of having the procedure when she saw an acquaintance in the waiting room. Volunteers hurried her out and took her in through a back route.
It’s as if time has stood still in this pretty riverside city of heritage homes, indifferent to the two decades that have passed since the Supreme Court of Canada decriminalized abortion on January 28, 1988. Though an attempt was made by Brian Mulroney’s Progressive Conservative government to replace the law, it was defeated in the Senate. Twenty years later, Canada still has no abortion law; it’s the only developed country in the world without one. A 2008 Toronto Star/Angus Reid survey found that the majority of Canadians are pro-choice: 45 percent felt that abortion should be permitted in all cases and 22 percent felt it should be permitted, but subject to greater restrictions. Meanwhile, 18 percent felt it should be allowed only in cases of rape or incest or to save a woman’s life. Perhaps not surprisingly, then, 60 percent of Canadians supported the appointment of Morgentaler as a member of the Order of Canada.
But if you ask the women who came of age after abortion was decriminalized, the debate is far from being resolved, and abortion has not lost its stigma. Young pro-choice activists still see a need to affirm abortion rights, particularly safe access, as part of an entire slate of sexual freedoms. Their pro-life counterparts want the feminist movement to broaden itself to encompass their beliefs. What it adds up to is a generational change – some of it subtle, some of it definitely not – on both sides of the debate. This is not their mothers’ movement anymore.
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