Student submission under the full title: The Church, the Law, and Queen’s University: Birth Control and Abortion Access and Moral Regulation in Canada 1965-1985
By: Sofia Tosello
The choice to get an abortion or take birth control was considered a moral decision by the law, the church, and the Queen's administration. Although by 1969, abortion was partially legalized and women were free to use various methods of birth control, the Canadian Catholic Church, the Canadian Bar Association, and politicians still openly voiced their moral standards and pushed these standards onto birth control and abortion dilemmas.[1] By looking at The Queen's Journal articles between 1965-1985, and the history of birth control and abortion access in Canada more broadly, it becomes clear that the Catholic Church, Canadian lawmakers, and the Queen's administration attempted to regulate morality and, thus, shaped student’s attitudes towards and controlled access to abortions and birth control on and off campus.
According to the Criminal Code amendment in 1969, the decision to get an abortion or take birth control was governed by an individual's personal moral laws. However, with the introduction of the Therapeutic Abortion Committee (TAC) and the subsequent pushback lawmakers received from people regarding the TAC, it can be argued that lawmakers were still attempting to impose their moral standards concerning abortion and birth control upon Canadian women. A news brief article published in 1969, stated that taking birth control was now "the moral decision" of "solely the patient”.[2] AMS's new approach to birth control access was influenced by the Criminal Code, which notes that "in circumstances where there is no serious danger to the public interest in respect to the act of birth control or therapeutic abortions," a woman is allowed to use their own discretion.[3] In other words, birth control use was acceptable at Queens insofar as it is not deemed by the law to be a danger to the public. Abortion is somewhat legal as if the TAC denied women an abortion, there would be no other way for the pregnant women to legally obtain one in Canada.[4] There were no concrete guidelines for how the TACs was to judge the health and circumstances of a woman's pregnancy, nor was there any way for women to appeal the committee's decision.[5] It is not surprising then that due to the lack of recourse and overall ambiguity of the TACs methods, women became increasingly more perturbed by the rigidity of the TAC throughout the 1970s.
An editorial article published in 1985 demonstrates this increasing resistance to the TAC. The article calls the TAC and the law "a farce."[6] The editorial boldly claims that the Canadian legal system "strip[s] the woman opting for an abortion of any dignity by forcing her to play along with the therapeutic scheme, [which] is an insult to them all."[7] The authority of the TAC meant that women continued to perform dangerous, at-home abortions or travel outside of Canada to ensure their pregnancy was terminated promptly.[8] Women who tried to get help from other medical professionals and social workers outside the TAC were unsuccessful in their efforts, as the law ensured that all other medical groups were functioning within the committee's guidelines.[9] However, grassroots organizations like the Calgary Birth Control Association (CBCA) helped women get abortions in the United States, defying the TAC's control over abortion access.[10] Thus, the TAC reminded women that the moral decision to have an abortion was not their moral decision at all. In other words, because abortion was framed by the law and by the government as a moral issue, it can be suggested that by introducing the TACs, the law ensured that women did not regulate their own moral decisions. In turn, people at Queens and in Canada began pushing back against the moral standards of the law when it came to birth control and abortion, suggesting that they themselves felt as though their moral decisions were being regulated by lawmakers.
The Criminal Code and AMS deemed that people should judge the moral decision to use birth control based on their personal "ecclesiastical [...] laws."[11] In other words, throughout the 1960s and 1970s, for Catholics, religion and the moral conversation about abortion were intrinsically linked. Moreover, the Catholic church denounced various methods of birth control and abortion. For example, Catholic hospitals would not even allow TACs.[12] They also bolstered the notion that they upheld the highest moral standards.[13] How this idea affected students on the Queen's campus can be observed in an article published in 1966 where a female student notes that when she arrived at Queen's University, she was armed with her "Catholic morality."[14] While on campus, she began seeking out birth control methods, noting that the only acceptable form of birth control condoned by the Catholic Church was the ineffective "rhythm method."[15] It is clear that the student sometimes thought about the religious implications of getting an abortion or using birth control. Furthermore, Catholic women would use their religious and moral dictates to argue either for or against abortion.[16] The link between morality, religion, and abortion and birth control is further established in an article published in 1965, where the writer urges the Catholic Church to reverse their negative position on birth control by arguing that "morality should be judged by [the] intention" of the women using birth control.[17] Thus, for a Catholic woman, seeking out birth control was a moral issue where their decision was influenced by the moral standards enforced by the church, proving the extent to which they had imposed its moral regulation onto Catholics at Queens and, more broadly, Catholic Canadians.
It can be suggested that the moral ideals of the church and the law influenced the Queen's administration throughout the 1960s and 1970s. In an opinion article published in 1966, the student argues that the culture of shame the Queen's administration had established around sex prevented women from seeking out birth control.[18] This was a shared idea with Canadian feminist organizations such as the Feminine Action League that believed women were ignorant of birth control as they did not want to be lectured on morality by doctors.[19] Moreover, a female student seeking birth control on the Queen's campus was denied it and told by two doctors to "keep her legs closed."[20] Hence, even though both sex's sex lives were being controlled by the Queen's administration, control over women's sexual activity was particularly noteworthy as it sometimes led to unwanted pregnancies.
We can understand this culture of shame to be a national one that affected all Canadian women. In a 1982 Journal article, the author of the article believes that the decision to get an abortion "must not be judged" in the public sphere.[21] However, by noting that the decision had “moral overtones” they are suggesting that abortion was still something that could be judged by various institutions such as the church, the law, or the Queen's administration itself.[22] We know this to be true as the woman interviewed in the article who had an abortion stated that, although the decision to get one was ultimately theirs, negative public opinion surrounding the decision still made her feel as though she had "sinned" and that she was being "judged."[23] This was a shared feeling with other women in Canada, who believed their decision to get an abortion was being unfairly judged by other people's moral standards.[24] For example, the RCMP kept tabs on female university students participating in pro-choice movements, such as the Vancouver Women's Caucus.[25] Like how the RCMP viewed women's opinions towards birth control and abortion as something to be monitored and judged, so did Queens. Queens endorsed this national culture of shame surrounding birth control and abortion and bolstered the moral authority of the TAC and the church.
Access to birth control and abortions remained a highly contentious debate throughout the 20th century. By questioning the moral authority of these institutions, women were not just challenging lawmakers, church officials, and Queens administrator's opinions surrounding birth control access and abortions, but also the hierarchical concept of gender roles in Canadian society.[26] Thus, the women's pro-choice movement was not just a minoritarian issue that affected women who wished to have an abortion or take birth control but a universalist issue in which women's subordination in the social, economic, and political spheres was contested.
[1] Shannon Stettner, “‘He Is Still Unwanted’: Women’s Assertions of Authority over Abortion in Letters to the Royal Commission on the Status of Women in Canada,” Canadian Bulletin of Medical History 29, no. 1 (2012): 152. [2] "AMS conceives of birth control," The Queen's Journal, October 9, 1969, 3. [3] Ibid, 3. [4] Stettner, “‘He Is Still Unwanted’," 153. [5] Christabelle Sethna, and Steve Hewitt, “Clandestine Operations: The Vancouver Women’s Caucus, the Abortion Caravan, and the RCMP,” The Canadian historical review 90, no. 3 (2009): 470. [6] Allen et al., “Dignity and Freedom,” The Queen's Journal, February 5, 1985, 8. [7] Ibid, 8. [8] Sethna and Hewitt, “Clandestine Operations,” 470. [9] Beth Palmer, “Lonely, Tragic, but Legally Necessary Pilgrimages: Transnational Abortion Travel in the 1970s,” The Canadian historical review 92, no. 4 (2011): 643. [10] Sethna and Hewitt, “Clandestine Operations,” 468. [11] "AMS conceives of birth control," 3. [12] Palmer, “‘Lonely, Tragic, but Legally Necessary Pilgrimages’,” 469. [13] Stettner, “‘He Is Still Unwanted’," 162. [14] "The Difficulty in Obtaining Birth Control Pills: Problems and Prospects of an illicit relationship,” November 11, 1966, 9. [15] Ibid, 9. [16] Stettner, “‘He Is Still Unwanted’," 156-62. [17] Ken Menzies, “The Church and Birth Control,” October 19, 1965, 2. [18] Tony Tugwell, "Too long public - individual's sex life should be private,” November 11, 1966, 9. [19] Sethna and Hewitt, “Clandestine Operations,” 467. [20] "The Difficulty in Obtaining Birth Control Pills,” 9. [21] Anne Marie Goetz, “The Trauma of an Unwanted Child,” January 19, 1982, 5. [22] Ibid, 5. [23] Ibid, 5. [24] Palmer, “‘Lonely, Tragic, but Legally Necessary Pilgrimages’,” 164. [25] Sethna and Hewitt, “Clandestine Operations,” 478. [26] Ibid, 477.