CANADA Interview with abortion rights campaigner JUDY REBICK is a leader of Toronto's pro-choice abortion campaign and a spokesperson for the Ontario Coalition for Abortion Clinies. She is also a member of the Ontario New Democratic Party, Canada's labor party.
Anne Brunelle, of the Alliance for Socialist Action, interviewed Judy in Toronto about the impact of the campaign and the current stage of the fight for legal, safe abortion.
reopened in December 1984, and was raided again. This time, though, they didn't do a heavy police raid like the first time, which had really outraged people because there were patients in the clinic. The second time they quietly arrested the doctor.
Nevertheless, there was a response. Finally the biggest mobilization came in February 1985, because the Catholic Church tried to pull out all of its troops and openly from its pulpits to organize a demonstration against the clinic.
We called a counterdemonstration and had 10,000 people in the streets supporting the clinic. That was the turing point in the struggle. It was after that that the government decided they couldn't close down the ded they couldn close down be clinic and they had to wait for the thing to go through the courts.
Q. Has the trade-union movement been active in this campaign?
A. Yes. We've had tremendous support from the trade-union movement, the Ontario Federation of Labor, from the beginning. The reason for that is that we, in the Ontario Coallition of Abortion Clinics, have had a very strong orientation toward trying to win support from the labor movement. In Ontario there is also a very strong feminist influence in the labor movement.
Q. You are running for president of the Ontario New Democratic Party (NDP). Can you tell me a bit about the party and why you are running in this campaign?
A. The party is basically a labor party. It's different from any of the parties in the United States in the sense that it has a structured relationship to the labor movement. It's a social democratic party and its basic support comes from labor and working people.
In the pro-choice movement we have seen NDP support as essential in our struggle. And we have fought very hard inside the party to get the party to support the clinic and to support and defend Dr. Morgentaler.
I'm running for president not only because of that experience but because a number of us in the women's movement, in the international solidarity movements, the peace movement and the labor movement feel that potentially the NDP could be a tremendous support for our struggles. So we're organizing a campaign inside the party to change it to be much more an activist party, which gets politically involved in the various campaigns and social struggles that take place - not only speaking for those movements in parliament, but also being involved with them on the streets. •
Question. What is the status of the law in Canada?
Answer. Abortion in Canada is illegal except under certain circumstances. Abortions must be performed in an approved or accredited hospital and approved by a Therapeutic Abortion Committee (TAC) made up of three doctors to determine whether a woman's life or health is in danger. Hospitals are not required to establish TACs so only 30 percent of hospitals have them.
Those who do have TACs usually have quotas, so access to abortion is extremely limited - especially in rural areas. Even in big cities there's a tremendous delay because of the bureaucratic character of the TACs, with an average of a six-week delay between the time a woman finds out she's pregnant and the time she actually gets the procedure.
Q. Are clinics legal in Canada?
A. No. But in Quebec there are clinics because of the struggle of the women's movement there and of Dr. Henry Morgentaler, who opened a clinic in Quebec in the early "70s. Morgentaler opened the clinic because the hospitals in Quebec were primarily Catholic and were refusing to set up TACs under the law which was passed in 1969. So he set up a clinic illegally and did thousands of abortions before he was finally arrested.
Then there was a ten-year struggle through the courts where he was acquitted by three juries, and finally, the Parti Quebecois government -which was a nationalist government -decided not to prosecute any doctor who performed abortions in safe medical conditions. As a result, today there are more than 15 government clinics in Quebec providing abortions, even though it's technically illegal to do so.
There's also now a clinic in Toronto, due to a struggle that's been taking place in Ontario over the last three years. Again, Dr. Morgentaler was arrested and acquitted of charges of performing an illegal abortion. That case is now going to the Supreme Court of Canada. In the meantime, the government has decided not to prosecute further. So the clinic remains open. It's been open for more than a year.
Q. Who decided to try to challenge the law in Ontario with a clinic and why that particular kind of challenge? health A. It was a group of women's health workers in Toronto that decided to ask Dr. Morgentaler to open a clinic here, because access to abortion was deteriorating for two reasons. The women's movement never found the 69 law acceptable, but it opened up access to legal abortions and demobilized the movement in the early "70s. But what started happening a number of years ago, because of hospital cutbacks and because of the pressure of the anti-choice groups, was that access to abortion was becoming more difficult. These women's health organizations had been lobbying the government for some sort of clinic system for many years and hadn't gotten anywhere.
Q. Have you been able to mobiilize around the clinic?
A. Oh yes. There has been a tremendous and sustained mobilization around the clinic in Toronto. I think it has been the most significant mobilization of the women's movement in the history of English Canada.
When the clinic opened in July 1983, it was immediately raided. The doctors were arrested. Equipment was seized and there were large demonstrations of around 5,000 people protesting this.
There was a bit of a lull and then finally it went to trial. The doctors were acquitted and the clinic then