By Gavin Taylor
It’s a nondescript office building on Bank Street, but every weekday a small group of placard-carrying protesters march past its entrance.
Since Dr. Henry Morgentaler opened an abortion clinic in Ottawa in 1994, pro-life activists have held vigils, staged rallies and carried signs outside the building. Like other clinics across North America, it has become a focal point of protesters who believe that the abortion of a human fetus is murder and should be illegal.
The people who run the clinic, on the other hand, say the decision to have an abortion is best left to women and their doctors.
Since the federal government legalized abortion in Canada in 1969, the medical procedure has become the subject of a highly-charged debate, which has often been played out on the streets.
In 1970, 500 activists travelled from Vancouver to Ottawa to protest the restrictions the new law placed on abortions, and 30 women chained themselves to the visitors’ gallery in the House of Commons, shutting down Parliament.
Over the next 30 years, opponents of abortion also rallied against the law, staging demonstrations and the annual March for Life, which commemorates the passage of the 1969 law.
In 1988, the Supreme Court struck down the legislation, saying it violated the Charter of Rights. Since then, Canada has been without a law on abortion and the practice has effectively been decriminalized.
But the debate hasn’t gone away – and it hasn’t left the streets.
“The Liberal government wants to put it on the backburner, and that’s why we want to keep the issue hot,” says Karen Murawsky, spokesperson for the pro-life Campaign Life Coalition.
Both the pro-life and pro-choice movements are mainstays of the political scene: over the past 30 years, they have built national organizations and have cultivated loyal constituencies.
Many protest movements of their vintage abandon street tactics once they become part of the mainstream. Outsiders shout slogans outside Parliament, the thinking goes, but insiders quietly talk to MPs and exert their influence behind the scenes.
There is some truth to this view: both the pro-life and pro-choice movements have developed close relationships with MPs of different parties and get their message out through advertisements and workshops.
But many pro-life activists still feel a need to take their message to the streets.
“It’s an information thing,” says Murawski.
“If you do your street action properly, you have to make a statement. You have to have a demand. And you have to back up that demand with bodies.”
Murawski adds protests are also a way of “bearing witness to a truth, and the truth is that human beings are being killed.”
Marchers outside an abortion clinic, she says, inform the public that the clinic exists.
But Joan Wright, manager of the Ottawa Morgentaler clinic, says pro-life vigils are also meant to intimidate.
“All of us would support an individual’s right to free speech,” she says.
“I don’t want to silence them. My objection is that they don’t accept the right of women to deal with these things with their doctors.”
She says most of her clients feel threatened by the protesters.
“Abortion used to be illegal and absolutely the business of the state, and in one generation the state decided it didn’t want to have anything to do with it. Now it’s absolutely a matter of the individual and these protesters try to make women feel shame on a personal level.”
The pro-choice movement has largely abandoned street tactics since the abortion law was struck down, because the government no longer regulates access to abortion.
When the aim was to strike down the abortion law, pro-choice groups tried to raise public awareness through demonstrations and rallies. Now activists are more concerned with increasing access to abortions, a goal that requires behind-the-scenes pressure more than mass mobilization.
“The fact there haven’t been many protests recently hasn’t helped the pro-choice movement, but it hasn’t harmed it either,” says Pascale Hough, who co-ordinates the community education program at Planned Parenthood Ottawa.
Hough says most of the young women she meets are unfamiliar with the history of abortion in Canada, and some are even unaware that abortion is legal. The decriminalization of abortion, she adds, may have blunted the political consciousness of younger Canadians.
“As a younger generation who haven’t had to fight against abortion laws, they don’t always appreciate the rights they have,” she says.
“I think we’ve done a poor job of letting people know the importance of pro-choice values.”