Sudburians stood in solidarity with their American sisters June 24, on the second anniversary of the overturn of the Roe v Wade Supreme Court case that has resulted in increasing restrictions to abortion access in the United States.
“A lot of the time, people believe it won't be us when we see things happen to others,” said Mia Valliere, one of the organizers of Women’s Strike Sudbury, which held a protest attracting around 50 people in Bell Park on Monday afternoon.
“We look at the U.S. and we think, ‘Well, that can't be us.’ But there's no guarantee of that there. There's our charter and it does protect our life, liberty and our security among many other things, but it doesn't protect our reproductive rights, precedent does.
“We are afraid that with the wrong interpretation at the wrong time and the wrong politician getting into office saying the wrong things, and the next thing you know, we're in the same place as them.”
In Canada, abortion was formally banned in 1869, and would remain illegal for 100 years. In 1969, therapeutic abortions were legalized in cases where the mother’s life was in danger.
But in 1988, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in R v. Morgentaler that the existing law was unconstitutional, and struck it down.
Abortion in Canada is legal and publicly funded as a medical procedure, offered through provincial health-care systems.
Women’s Strike Sudbury, a group recently formed by a couple of local young activists, Valliere and friend Annie Blodgett, is an offshoot of Women’s Strike Canada, which organized protests across the country June 24 in reaction to the Roe v. Wade anniversary.
While they’re marking events south of the border, the organizers of Women’s Strike Sudbury have a number of demands of governments here.
They called on the federal government to implement legislative protection on a guaranteed right to reproductive choice, so that it cannot be revoked by politicians.
They also want provincial governments to provide better access to reproductive care and abortions, as these services are often more available in urban centres.
Valliere said Conservative MP Cathay Wagantall has brought forward three bills to Parliament that “contain subtle hints at criminalizing abortion.” The first two were voted down, but the third, brought forward in 2023, has not yet been decided.
Sudbury MPP Jamie West, one of the speakers at the event, gave a summary of what’s happened in the United States since Roe v. Wade was overturned.
“That opened the crack, and very rapidly, state by state, they started repealing these decisions, and enforcing penalties — penalties on doctors, penalties on people who are looking for care and stiff penalties where you could lose your medical license for even offering advice about where else you could get care," he said.
West said “as New Democrats, we believe reproductive rights are human rights, and they are health care,” adding that health care is a provincial responsibility, and his party will not allow the Doug Ford PC government “to move this backwards.”
“We all know the name Morgentaler (referring to the late Canadian abortion advocate Dr. Henry Morgentaler),” said West. “As Canadians we gave him the Order of Canada. These are our values. Reproductive rights as health care, health care as a human rights, and we will fight to defend that.”
Valliere said that we’re now in a time that Canadian author Margaret Atwood “warned us about in her iconic book “The Handmaid's Tale”.
“This book is more than dystopian fiction. It is the product of Atwood's work as an academic, and as an advocate. It is her warning that one day maybe rights become limited. The next day, maybe they're lost. Until one day, little by little, there are none left. Our government can and will betray us if we don't vote wisely.”
Sudbury YWCA executive director Marlene Gorman said her organization had been looking at organizing a Roe v. Wade anniversary protest, when they were contacted by Valliere and Blodgett about their event.
She said she loves to see “young women on a role of strong advocacy in our community.”
“We're standing with our sisters in the United States today to oppose that decision,” Gorman said. “If it happened there, it could easily happen anywhere. And so, what we're doing is preserving our rights, our choice.”
Heidi Ulrichsen is Sudbury.com’s assistant editor. She also covers education and the arts scene.
