Atlantis Vol. 7 No. 2 Spring/Printemps 1982 2-20

The Politics of : Trends in Canadian Fertility Policy i Larry D. Collins, St. Francis Xavier University Edited by Donald Higgins, Saint Mary's University*

Federal governments in have always solute ban on abortion against hospital-based refused to pay the political price of a directly doctors who maintained the polite fiction that applied state abortion policy. This has meant they only performed required on that by default the doctors, and the hospital medical grounds. The state's stance had therapeutic abortion committees controlled by moved slowly over the decades from fatalistic them, determined Canadian abortion prac• unconcern to the benevolent paternalism of tices. These practices largely serve the middle elite social control.3 One potential pressure and upper classes and political elites. A group for reform of the had arisen democratic state cannot openly embrace the as family planning associations came into resulting system whereby abortions are as• being in several provinces, because the pre- suredly available to rich women but essentially 1969 law prohibited not only abortion but also denied to poor women. Consequently, the the dissemination of information about any state's responses to the abortion/fertility issue form of contraception. This latter prohibition have been ambiguously symbolic rather than was also essentially unenforced; pharmaceuti• substantive. This study attempts to explain cal companies advertised, doctors prescribed how the state managed to avoid, despite fierce and drug stores sold contraceptives.4 The state public demand and controversy, establishing was thus a silent partner to both systems of fer• 2 an equitable abortion/fertility policy. tility control systems—abortion and con• traception. The Pre-1969 Era An informal abortion system had evolved There is a widespread assumption, nurtured within some Canadian hospitals where abor• by government and the mass media, that in tions were performed on a daily basis.5 These 1969 national abortion policy was reformed. In hospitals established abortion committees, fact, the state has always maintained indirect usually consisting of three to five doctors, who control of abortion practices by keeping them met in camera. No reliable statistics were kept, illegal except under very limited circum• stances. Before 1969, the government simply *Dr. Collins had almost completed this article before he died ac• cidentally in July of 1981. At the request of the editors of Atlantis, refused to enforce the Criminal Code's ab- the article has been edited by his friend, Dr. Donald Higgins. but strict quotas were imposed by these com• delivery of abortion services and to protect the mittees to avoid their hospitals' gaining doctors and their hospitals from legal liability. reputations for being lenient on abortion. The The state, already in a delicate position, faced abortion committees served to diffuse respon• a dilemma. sibility for decisions made by the individual doctor. Such decisions reflected physicians' The federal government's reaction was com• personal moral standards and class biases, plex. It chose to give public symbolic support while relieving them of personal respon• to the reformers, while also giving quiet sibility.6 The committees further diffused reassurance to the pro-life movement. The responsibility by acting in the name of their government's strategy was to attempt to en• hospitals, thus lending an aura of respectability sure that no effective state action would offend to the entire illegal system. This helped to any faction. It legitimized the doctors' de facto rationalize on personal and compassionate autonomy and generally tried to steer the con• grounds those abortions actually performed as troversy away from the federal government favors to friends and community elites. But and the governing party caucus. Without fraud was often necessary, as one knowledge• legalizing abortion, the 1969 reform law en• able physican and official in the federal De• shrined the rhetoric of reform while basically partment of Health and Welfare related: just legalizing established medical practices. "There were 'emergency appendectomies' in Catholic hospitals and 'menstrual irregulari• The 1969 reform law's inequities quickly ties' requiring D and Cs (dilation and cure- became obvious to committed feminists as well tage)."7 And there is no record of prosecutions as to the highly moblized pro-life movement. against validly licensed individual doctors or Both sides challenged the medical profession's against accredited hospitals. 8 Under this autonomy. Should pro-abortion activists pre• system abortion in the first trimester of vail, the medical profession's monopoly over pregnancy came to be safer than carrying a the delivery of medical services would be pregnancy to term; and the few women that seriously eroded; doctors would be reduced to were helped by the pre-1969 system were providing their services like entrepreneurs, served very discretely and effectively. "on demand". Pro-life activists, on the other hand, threatened the limited abortion reform Mounting Pressure on the State that met the needs of the middle class. Both sides pressed their case on the federal govern• When political pressures in the 1960s forced ment. Having failed to dampen the issue, the the issue onto the national agenda, the state government resorted to manoeuvres designed was forced to respond. Feminist and other ac• to shift public perceptions of further political tivist reformers demanded open access to abor• responsibility to act away from itself and onto tion. Pro-life groups, supported and guided by the Canadian Medical Association (CMA) and the hierarchy of the Roman , the provinces. At the same time, the federal insisted that the government retain (and later government tried to contain the socially ex• reinstate) the absolute ban. Doctors were badly plosive conflict between pro-and anti-abortion exposed and caught in the middle, since their forces at the federal level. Although this com• abortion practices were the issue. The Cana• bination of moves was very much in the dian Medical Association sought relief by tradition of the politics of Canadian federal• 9 proposing a Criminal Code amendment to ism , for a time the process of elite ac• preserve its members' monopoly over the commodation was sorely strained. Usually such manoeuvres are virtually in• Eventually the became part of visible. "Normal" policy issues are resolved the CMA's internal politics, and its public through a process of elite accommodation in positions reflected shifting power balances be• which participants share common ideological tween pro-and anti-abortion advocates as each assumptions regarding the scope of acceptable faction tried to control abortion policy by con• 10 choices and the rules governing change. The trolling the CMA. Its 1966 resolution, de• process leaves the public with almost no signed to protect all physicians, soon threat• political role beyond that of spectator. Not ened to tear the CMA apart from within.12 knowing how or where to intervene, the public Liberal Member of Parliament Ian Wahn in• typically becomes, at most, the audience for troduced the CMA's proposal in the House of staged conflict that accompanies gentlemanly Commons in October, 1967, as a private mem• agreement. On abortion, however, the ex• ber's bill. Wahn said his bill sought "to declare treme public polarization made normal elite what the existing law actually is and to make it accommodation very difficult to manage. The entirely clear that doctors are entitled to per• state struggled to maintain an elite-permissive form therapeutic abortions which are necessary status quo under conditions where traditional to preserve either the life or health of the elite accommodation for once proved in• woman."13 With small but significant sufficient to enable elites to maintain their con• changes, the CMA's resolution became the trol over public perceptions and definitions of 1969 abortion reform law. the issue. Further, the elites' ability to main• tain control over future events surrounding the The Reforms of 1969 and Responses to issue was weakened. Them

As the political debate arose in the 1960s, the The Commons' Standing Committee on elites' inability to control the issue was reflect• Health and Welfare had begun in December of ed in the position taken by the medical 1966 a review of the proposals to amend sec• profession. The CMA's informal abortion tion 357 of the Criminal Code banning the ad• practices were threatened because its effects vertisement and sale of "any means" of birth were exposed to public scrutiny. The CMA's control. In what became part of the 1969 organizational needs, rather than any desire to reform, it recommended that "dissemination make abortions available to more women, of family planning information should be com• motivated its call in 1966 for abortions to pletely free of illegality as a matter of personal become legal: choice."14 Here, then, were the bases for clearing the legal obstacsles to creating an abortion/fertility policy. a) where it is performed by a duly li• censed medical practitioner after con• The medical profession and the federal sultation with and approval of a hospital government held largely compatible interests appointed therapeutic abortion com• in 1969 in wanting a law to resolve shared elite mittee, b) if performed in an active treat• concerns over liability and control without ment hospital, c) if performed with the changing the current practice of restricted ac• written consent of the spouse or guardian cess. For the doctors, the new law represented where the committee deems necessary, d) an important victory. The government's ob• where the continuance of the pregnancy jectives were more subtle. In adopting what may endanger the life or physical health 11 was otherwise a copy of the 1966 CMA of the mother. proposal, the government refused to define further Criminal Code changes plus an "health" or to mention "consent" as the aggressive federal programme promoting con• CMA had wanted. The new law did specify traception. They justified their demands on the that abortions would be permitted only in basis of the civil right of women to self- provincially accredited or approved hospitals. determined fertility control. Each of these changes was designed to limit federal responsibility. The federal government had suffered no illusions that the issue would be resolved at the The 1969 law's complicated procedures en• stroke of a pen. A further means of issue con• sured limited access to abortion but without ex• tainment would be needed to help deflect the plicit policy. The political burden still lay with political heat away from the government and a individual doctors and their committees, who badly divided Liberal Party caucus. The had to define "health" case-by-case, and politically explosive nature of , decide when "consent" was needed. The law coupled with dissatisfaction over the abortion also reminded activists on both sides of the reform, meant that the federal response had to issue that provinces accredited hospitals and be cast in the narrowest terms possible. Fur• thereby controlled overall availability of abor• ther, all sides had to be reassured of the gov• tion services. In fact, the federal stance went ernment's sympathetic concern. Finally, the further; it was never to deviate from the argu• federal government had to steer a solution ment that if more abortions were desired than without appearing to impose one beyond its were available, the fault now lay elsewhere, elite-permissive policy. with the doctors and provincial governments. In 1975 the federal government still main• tained that "Abortion as a health matter, comes under provincial jurisdiction. However, as the termination of fetal life is involved, some The Federal Government's Structural legal aspects come within the terms of the Response: The Family Planning Division Federal Criminal Code. The federal role is thus limited and specific."15 By formalizing In Canada, affairs of state expand or (more past practice, along with the social inequities, rarely) contract so easily that it is difficult to the reform law exacerbated the real social determine precisely what is public and what is problem. Women, naturally wanting to avoid private. The state now moved to expand, first the dangers of illegal abortions or the time and by creating a bureaucratic structure for sym• expense involved in leaving Canada, got false bolic reassurances to all sides of the dispute, encouragement.16 The law required hospitals and then by recruiting private groups on each to maintain accurate statistics, so abortion side of the issue. The groups had to be ones demand appeared to increase dramatically.17 that the government could support, establish Anti-abortion forces blamed the apparent in• liaison with, and use informally as a means for crease on the law itself and attacked wide• collecting information. The federal govern• spread use of artificial contraception. They ment also had to be able to guide and steer pressed for a return of the absolute legal ban, each faction. The steering agency was called and opposed family planning programmes at the Family Planning Division (FPD), and the the federal and local level, arguing that abor• private groups were voluntary associa• tion and birth control eroded traditional social tions—particularly the values and institutions. Pro-abortion advocates Federation of Canada (PPFC) and the Service focused on the law's inequities and the health de Regulation des Naissances (Serena). hazards of illegal abortions, and demanded The PPFC was to become an important in• Despite the Minister's caution, the Cabinet strument in the state's strategy to contain the Committee on Social Policy rejected Munro's abortion issue. The process was one the state first FPD proposal on October 25, 1969. "It has often followed, essentially to inspire, some• seems evident," Munro later wrote to the times even to create, an interest group to make PPFC, "that however simple the amendment 18 claims upon its resources. From 1972, gov• to the Criminal Code appeared to be, its ac• ernment funds literally transformed the PPFC complishment was not an easy one and it be• and Serena from struggling local operations in• came evident that some time needed to elapse to full-blown national organizations. Both or• to permit the government to take any more ganizations operated within the dominant ide• positive action."21 He tried again nine months ology of the liberal state, aiming primarily at later, recommending that, "Cabinet approve reducing the disparity between the principle of as a national policy a concept of family plan• universal access to contraception and the ning which respects individual choice, religious existing maldistribution within society. Being and ethical beliefs [including] grants in aid and very largely dependent on federal government contract research with outside persons and funding, both organizations were subject to agencies, a family planning training pro• manipulation. Supporting these organizations gramme, dissemination of family planning in• enabled the government to encourage that side formation," and he recommended establishing of the reform movement most closely aligned a family planning unit within the Department with rather cautious incremental changes. of National Health and Welfare.22 Cabinet ap• proved the recommendation but excluded a In April of 1969, John Munro, Minister of "concept of family planning as national poli• National Health and Welfare, seized upon a cy," agreeing to support only "the right of request from the PPFC for a national con• to exercise free individual choice in ference on family planning to create the Family the practice of family planning."23 Cabinet Planning Division in his Department. The refused to authorize additional funds for the Division's terms of reference were rewritten FPD, but directed Health and Welfare to draw twice at the Ministerial level to restrict its man• resources from "lower priority activities" date as much as possible while giving the ap• within the department. The Family Planning pearance of action.19 Four basic political Division did not actually begin operating until requirements underpinned the FPD's opera• 1972, but without being fully staffed then or tions: 1) abortion would not be considered an since. acceptable method of birth control; 2) con• traceptive use must be governed by the prin• Throughout its operational life, the FPD ciple of free choice within the context of family was limited by the government to a passive, life (hence the name Family Planning Divi• reactive posture vis-a-vis the Canadian public: sion); 3) there would no be fertility research "An official policy, central to FPD's operation and no population policy established, and 4) is that it responds to demands for, rather than the division would not initiate or promote birth actively promoting family planning informa• control programmes but only respond to re• tion."24 Responsibility for initiation and quests for information. According to the FPD's promotion was left to the provinces: "Organi• own internal evaluation, "It would appear that zation and administration of family planning two major reasons for [its minimal terms of programmes will be assumed primarily at the reference] were the sensitive nature of the sub• provincial level."25 The Government limited ject matter itself and concern with respect to its role to supporting only educational services 20 federal-provincial relations." on request: The effort of informing Canadians is in leaving the luxury of choice to the middle terms of education rather than per• classes: suasion, remembering that education is an attempt to expand the knowledge of At present, persons from higher economic the population so they can make rational strata of society are much better informed choices from alternatives while per• and have far better access to family plan• suasion tries to limit choices and control ning information and materials than per• perceived alternatives of the population.26 sons in the low economic environment. Dissemination of family planning in• formation should be comprehensive and The FPD took no action at the grass-roots widespread to give access to all segments level, and was never designed to effect be• of the population. A programme of this havioural or demographic changes in the nature would serve to allay the fears of population at large. minority groups especially our Indian population.28 This is not to say that the federal govern• ment made no assumptions regarding which NHW also believed a policy of active part of the population should receive birth con• promotion of birth control might "increase trol information; it did. The Cabinet wanted demand beyond the level of available re- >>29 FPD programmes directed toward low income sources. groups that it knew were not being served by its restrictive abortion policy. Spreading know• Problems with Implementation ledge about contraception among the poor would relieve social welfare costs and the In May of 1970, a group of women chained demand for abortion: themselves to chairs in the Parliamentary Press Gallery demanding abortion on demand and There is a well established association forcing the House of Commons to adjourn its between family size and socio-economic sitting. Both the Canadian Psychiatric Associ• status, maternal and child health, cul• ation and the CMA criticized the hospital com• tural deprivation, and educational ac• mittee system, and in 1971 the CMA retaliated hievement. Family planning therefore against the government's efforts to focus would contribute positively towards responsibility on doctors by recommending ameliorating the problems facing lower that reference to abortion committees be 30 socio-economic families by controlling the eliminated from the Criminal Code. The birth of unwanted offspring . . . An active Royal Commission on the Status of Women family planning policy would also have criticized the law's discriminatory effect, and the salutory effect of decreasing requests called on the government to permit abortion for induced abortions, including illegal on request within the first trimester (12 weeks) 31 abortions, which are still prevalent of pregnancy. It was becoming increasingly despite the recent amendment to the difficult for the state to control, within the 1969 criminal code on abortion.27 compromise reforms, the growing political protest generated by its elite-permissive abor• tion policy. The government, however, knew it could not publicly target the poor without producing a Between 1972 and 1979, each of the FPD's political reaction from minority groups—that three major programme activities was ren- it was imposing a solution on them while dered largely ineffective by political inter• of professional organizations and agencies."35 ference. The program activities were: the In responding to requests, delays of up to six distribution of informational-educational months were not uncommon. Censorship by materials on family planning and sex educa• the exceptionally cautious senior management tion; the provision (on request) of consultative frequently interfered with the writing process, services to the private sector, local government or delayed publication. One author under con• and other federal departments (such as Indian tract expressed a typical frustration: "It took Affairs and Northern Development) which them [FPD] four years to publish a brochure might have an interest in birth control policy; they paid me to write for them. Their excuse and the creation of a family planning grants was that it was too controversial to publish."36 program to support voluntary associations, Delays and censorship rendered much of the local government agencies and university Division's material obsolescent before it was based research. released. Consequently the overall demand for "general birth control" and "young people" Although the Cabinet wanted FPD pro• publications dropped between 1973 and 1977 grammes directed towards the poor, its actual as users switched to American materials.37 constituency consisted primarily of pro• fessional elites. Sixty percent of its publications Inadequate staffing also severely limited the went to educational institutions, municipal Division's performance. The Cabinet did not health units and PPFC affiliates. Provincial permit the FPD to hire fertility planning con• government departments ranked sixth (behind sultants. Instead, consultants in community hospitals and social service agencies) in terms education, social work and nursing were sup• 32 of publications sent by the FPD. posed to provide technical advice to provincial Organizations accounted for 65% of the FPD's and voluntary agencies. However, between literature, and the individuals who received the July 1974 and December 1976 the consultant remainder were largely professionals. The positions were vacant 34% of the time. The Division devoted the major portion of its position of community education consultant, operational budget to information pamphlets who was to alert local agencies to the FPD (half of which were produced within the De• material, was left vacant for eight months. The partment, and the other half contracted out) on "resource centre officer" was down-graded to such subjects as general birth control techni• a clerical position, eliminating responsibilities ques, sex education and family life. At no time for writing pamphlets and for representing the did the FPD distribute information on abor• Department at family planning conferences.38 33 tion, pregnancy counselling, or referral. Staff turnover was frequent and the Division did not inform its constituency of staff changes Several operational restrictions inhibited the or revised job descriptions. A committee FPD's effectiveness in reaching even its limited (known as the Badgley Commission) that was constituency. The Division mailed only specif• created in 1975 to review the operation of the ically requested items. It maintained a bibliog• abortion law reported that civil servants who raphy but would not distribute it unless specif• developed an interest and competence in the 34 ically requested. Its attentive public was abortion issue were likely to find themselves largely unable to use the Division's services ef• transferred to other duties.39 fectively: "A recurring comment (30%) ex• pressed by leading figures was that FPD had a As the Division came under increasingly very low profile and did not advertise enough; hostile political attack, consultants were given and thus did not reach a wide enough segment less authority to make decisions. By 1977, at the height of the abortion debate rekindled by operations because of fear of right-wing Marc Lalonde (who by then was Minister of charges that it was preparing a fertility policy. National Health and Welfare) and the Badgley No in-depth national or provincial research Commission, the FPD's consultants were de• existed concerning the scope or nature of the voting the bulk of their time to ministerial cor• problem of unwanted pregnancies, public at• respondence.40 Consequently the credibility of titudes toward fertility, or the enormous defi• the Division's consultant services was quite ciencies (reported by the Badgley Commission) low among professionals and organizations. in the delivery of family planning services. The FPD's internal evaluation concluded "that the Division did support some university-based impact and consequently the effectiveness of demographic research for "knowledge, at• the consultation component had been modest titude and practice", studies to evaluate need, . . . the extent to which the service has been de• and studies of delivery methods at the local 44 livered to the respondent group is very low in• level. Although researchers, like other grant deed compared to the need they express."41 recipients, were required to submit reports of their work, the Division never published the The FPD dispersed its family planning findings of research completed under its grants under several categories: demon• auspices; it (including the bibliography) was stration, service, training, fellowship and classified and locked away.45 The public research, and sustaining. Grant recipients gained almost nothing at the cost of almost ten were expected to use federal funds as "seed million dollars over six years, but the federal money" and to switch to provincial govern• government succeeded in this way in siphoning ment support once the project proved viable. A off and controlling a great deal of information series of checks was imposed on the granting which might otherwise have contributed to the process to ensure that FPD money went to political debate. The Division acted not only to noncontroversial projects which did not in• steer university research as to subject area, but volve basic fertility questions or abortion also to confine its dissemination. referral. The Division referred project ap• plications to a government official from the The FPD believed that municipal and province where the application originated to provincial government agencies would draw ensure that the FPD did not fund projects heavily on its grant programme, but they which might embarrass a provincial govern• proved as reluctant as the federal government ment. Provinces were given an opportunity to to openly enter this political minefield. Munic• indicate if the project conflicted with their ipal and provincial government agencies ac• policies and whether they would be willing to counted for only 7.4% and 20% respectively of provide continued support. More than half of total available FPD grant funds.46 "A major the applicants for FPD grants were asked to difficulty," according to a National Health 42 alter their applications. This helps to explain and Welfare internal memorandum, "is the the absence of projects which dealt with abor• reluctance of provincial and municipal govern• tion—applicants were asked if their projects ments to publicize resources available through dealt with abortion, and if so, to revise their their health and welfare services. Depart• 43 submissions. Recipients whose projects at• mental officials are generally instructed to tracted unfavourable press attention or provide information and make referrals only at irritated M.P.s by involving abortion referral the request of the client.47 were threatened with loss of financial support. The federal government specifically exclud• In 1978, officials in the Family Planning ed the conducting of research from the FPD's Division tried to get provincial officials who had responsibilities for fertility policy to pro• The PPFC national headquarters eagerly duce their own materials on pregnancy preven• sought a close collaborative relationship with tion. The impact of prevention on abortion the FPD by keeping it informed of prospective demand had been made explicit by the 1979 plans and activities. The headquarters also report of the (Badgley) Committee on the coordinated the otherwise independent ac• Operation of the Abortion Law. As one federal tivities of local affiliates to keep them informed official noted, "We tried to concentrate on the about federal policy. But the FPD did not PR side of prevention. The idea was to get the reciprocate equally. Relations with the provinces to produce their own material on Federation's frontline staff were cordial, but family planning and sex education rather than the PPFC had no influence upon the federal rely on Health and Welfare which was finding government's policy making. On one occasion it increasingly difficult to provide materials the Department requested the Federation to and distribute them under the Liberal Govern• evaluate the FPD's operations. However, the 48 ment." Provincial officials were universally Department refused to give all of its opinions negative. "They argued that they couldn't on the study, and refused to provide the PPFC possibly get such an idea through their minis• with a copy of its own internal evaluation of the ters because to produce their own material Family Planning Division.51 would direct the political flak back on to them. Everyone wanted the federal government to The federal government used the PPFC to continue producing the material and take the carry out the public sector promotional func• political heat, while they received the stuff for tion that was prohibited to the FPD. Thus the free, of course." 49 PPFC carried out activities that were too politi• cally controversial for the government. For Government and Interest Groups example, the Department used the PPFC to pressure provincial governments to assume a The most sophisticated and astute of all the larger role in family planning under the terms FPD's issue-containment operations was to of the federal Social Services Act being provide sustaining grants to the Planned Par• developed in 1976. Health and Welfare offici• enthood Federation of Canada and the Service als urged the PPFC to lobby the provinces "so de Regulation des Naissances (Serena). The that when it comes time for provincial minis• federal government considered the PPFC to be ters of welfare to discuss family planning ser• a very important organization, and until the vices, they have about the same definitions as dismantling of the Family Planning Division in we [NHW and PPFC] have."52 1978, a very close association developed bet• ween the two. The PPFC actively promoted The federal government considered Serena, the use of all forms of birth control, provided which was a much smaller organization than counselling and conducted community the PPFC, to be of essentially symbolic im• education campaigns. Between 1972 and 1976, portance, but that importance was sufficient, PPFC received $2,157,000, 37% of the total however, to warrant $677,000, or 11% of the FPD grant budget. This was the largest single FPD's grant budget over four years.53 Serena grant given by the Department to any national advocated only the symptothermic method of organization. These funds enabled the PPFC birth control which requires periodic ab• to establish a national headquarters and create stinence from sexual intercourse, that being additional local affiliates. The latter eventually the only method of birth control fully com• accounted for 39% of the Division's demon• patible with the teachings of the Roman 30 stration, service and training grants. Catholic Church. Thus, Serena did not meet the fundamental criterion that grant recipients traceptive decision making. Pro-life groups provide public information on all methods of could not make too much out of the charge that contraception. However, supporting Serena the state threatened the natural role of women was politically attractive. It pleased the Roman or traditional institutions. Funding the PPFC Catholic hierarchy and deflected protests of and Serena provided the government with a pro-life groups which considered artificial con• barometer to gauge public sentiment, monitor traception immoral. FPD made this point to the impact of its limited programme, and senior management: especially to legitimize and extend its par• ticular and narrow concept of family planning From a cost-benefit point of view, against demands for more sweeping changes. assistance to Serena may be questioned The FPD itself conducted a shadow pro• on two grounds—the effectiveness of its gramme, being prohibited from developing a method of choice and its limited appeal. fertility policy or promoting contraception. It On the other hand, it may prove to be the could only respond to requests for information, most acceptable method to a significant which it carefully censored and delayed. It minority of Canadians .... Substantial acted through professional elites rather than on support of Serena will validate the gov• the population directly. It had "consultants" ernment's claim that it wishes to ensure that did not consult, but instead operated as Canadians a free choice of family plan• political firemen to chastise grant recipients ning methods consistent with the varied who annoyed an M.P. or Cabinet minister. cultural and religious pattern of this The Family Planning Division did not succeed 54 country. in drawing pro- and anti-reform protests away The Family Planning Division played a key from the government and safely on to the bu• role in the federal government's issue con• reaucracy. The increasing number of abor• tainment strategy. Through the FPD, the tions, coupled with the 1969 reform inequities, government sent reassuring messages to both made the FPD itself the target of the mounting sides in the contraception/abortion debate political controversy, attacked by one side for while doing almost nothing. Reform activists favoring immoral birth control and by the were sent the encouraging message that the other side for its ineffectiveness. government recognized their cause and their definition of the social problem. They were en• The Morgentaler Challenge couraged to believe that the government would address the consequences of its own iniquitous A major challenge to the federal govern• abortion policy by doing something tangible in ment's containment strategy came in 1973 the area of family planning. At the same time, from Dr. who subjected conservative pro-life groups were somewhat the abortion policy to punishing publicity. He mollified by the fact that the FPD neither con• admitted performing over 5,000 abortions for sidered abortion an acceptable form of birth poor people on request in his clinic and pub• control, nor intended to persuade individuals lished his practice openly in the Canadian to practice fertility control. Instead, the FPD Medical Association's Journal. In this sense he endorsed a "concept of family planning was not respectable. Arrested for violating the whereby a couple may decide according to their abortion law, he based his defence on Section own beliefs and consciences, whether they want 45 of the Criminal Code which protects anyone to use family planning methods to prevent un• from criminal liability for an operation done wanted pregnancies."55 The family, not the with care to protect the patient's health. He individual, was thus the central unit of con• was acquitted; but when the Crown appealed, the verdict was reversed. Morgentaler went to over-reacted and confused his role as a mem• prison for 18 months while his case went to the ber of the Government and his role as depart• Supreme Court. In a split 6-3 decision of that ment head. As a Government member his job Court, he was pronounced guilty of not ap• was containment of the issues, but as head of plying the 1969 reform law. While in prison, the Justice Department he had to respond to he was charged again. This time, basing his the legal challenge raised by Morgentaler. defence on the common law concept of necessity, he was again acquitted. Morgen- The medical profession retaliated im• taler's case became a cause ceTebre that spot• mediately. CMA President Dr. Bette Stephen• lighted the federal government's responsibility son complained directly to Prime Minister in the eyes of activists for either permitting Trudeau, demanded an official definition of abortions or restricting them. Morgentaler's "health", and threatened that doctors might act was a political one which threatened state withdraw from abortion committees: "To ask control by opening the door to abortion on these physicians to continue to serve in this demand. capacity under the condemnation and implied threats of the Minister of Justice is unfair."58 Justice Minister Otto Lang intervened, con• In reply, Trudeau pointedly reminded the sistent with past federal practice, by shifting CMA that it had little grounds for complaint: responsibility away from the government. He warned the medical profession that too many most of the provisions of the law were abortions threatened the 1969 compromise by significantly influenced by the recom• generating political controversy directed at the mendations of the Canadian Medical government. Unless the medical profession Association in 1966 and 1967 .... I do restricted the number of abortions, the strategy not see any way abortion committee of containment, which served the interests of decisions can be avoided, even given both the doctors and the state, could be lost. some iron clad definition in the law of the Through a ministerial memorandum issued in concept of "health". No matter what October 1974, he declared that the abortion wording of any such definition might be, law was to be applied "strictly: that social and the decisions of the hospital abortion economic considerations were not to be taken committees would still concern very dif• into account in determining whether a ficult human situations. In fact, one of the pregnancy lawfully could be terminated."56 benefits of not having a rigid definition of According to an official in the National Health conditions under which hospital abortions and Welfare Department, "Lang tried to in• may or may not be performed is that it timidate hospitals by warning their adminis• leaves sufficient latitude for hospital abor• tration against too liberal application of the tion committees to make just decisions in abortion law. The warning went out as a con• the many borderline and unique cases fidential memo, but of course it was leaked."5' which inevitably will arise in the course of the committee's deliberations.59 Many wonder why Lang so openly tried in• timidation. The reason will probably never On January 9, 1975 Stephenson publicly called become clear; he was accused of allowing his for Justice Minister Lang's resignation unless personal beliefs to interfere with his ministerial he clarified government policy. duties. But it is clear that his department was taking the political heat generated by Morgen• Lang's statement generated additional con• taler's trial. It is more likely, therefore, that he troversy at the time that the federal govern- merit was trying to dampen it, and so he had to early manoeuvrings put it, "There was blood deny it: "I have made it clear that health is a in the halls over what it [the Committee] would broad word that certainly includes mental and actually do. No way would Justice allow it to other factors."60 The price extracted by the find fault with the law. The government medical profession for his change of view was a was not about to blame itself. That's why the formal government inquiry into the entire supporting studies are still locked up in the question of abortion, "including a patient vaults."63 The formula to resolve the difficulty profile, guidelines for facilities, procedures and for the Committee came in the form of a personnel."61 In September, 1975, the govern• national patient survey which detailed the ment appointed the Committee on the epidemiological nature of abortion, but Operation of the Abortion Law under the blamed medical, hospital and provincial ob• chairmanship of Robin F. Badgley. stacles for preventing the law's equitable operation. The Badgley Committee on Abortion Law The Committee's primary conclusion repro• The Committee was a creature of the federal duced exactly the federal government's claim Justice Department which was responsible for that responsibility for abortion policy did not the operation of the abortion law (but not fer• rest at the federal level: "It is not the law that tility policy) and which had opposed all at• has led to the inequities in its operation or the tempts to make abortions available to every• sharp disparities in how therapeutic abortions one. It drew the Committee's terms of refer• are obtained by women within cities, regions, ence very narrowly to ensure that the final or provinces. It is the Canadian people, their report would not condemn the government. health institutions, and the medical profession, The Committee could not analyze or make who are responsible for this situation."64 recommendations on the underlying policy of Cabinet alerted the Department of National the law.62 The Justice Department employed Health and Welfare to the Report in Decem• Badgley for the same purpose that the Depart• ber, 1976, three months before its release, and ment of National Health and Welfare used the directed them to not refer to the report publicly FPD—to deflect the political controversy away except in response to direct inquiries, and then from the government and on to a "neutral" to cite only this conclusion.65 The Family Plan• commission; a strategy carefully designed from ning Division's Director backed this with a the beginning to give the rhetoric to reformers directive to FPD people to remain silent about and the policy to elites. All sides—doctors, pro- the report.66 This was not merely because of and anti-reformers, and the Provinces—would the law's gross inequities. Previous studies had make their case to the Committee rather than reported the grief and frustration forced upon to the federal government, which, for its part women who sought a legal abortion.67 This of course, would remain silent lest it interfere time, the report's official status and excellent with the Committee's work. documentation generated intense political pressure from all sides of the abortion debate. To be credible, the Badgley Committee That pressure was directed not on the Justice could not deny the obvious social problem Department, but on National Health and caused by the government's elite-permissive Welfare and the FPD. abortion policy. A considerable struggle oc• curred over exactly how it could explain the The Badgley Report did link the high de• abortion problem without implicitly criticizing mand for induced abortion with systematic de• the abortion law. As one witness to many of the ficiencies in federal government policies ad- ministered by the FPD, especially "diffuse and thousand copies of that report ought to be ineffective" efforts in public education on con• everywhere."70 traception. The Report argued convincingly for a national population policy, which had The Political Response to the Badgley been specifically removed from the FPD's Report terms of reference. Finally, the Report clearly linked the reduction of abortions to effective Marc Lalonde, Minister of National Health prevention: "The critical social choices are and Welfare when the Badgley Report was between two sensitive issues, induced abortion tabled, reluctantly opted for the strategy of and family planning .... The results of this pregnancy prevention. The Report had so inquiry clearly indicate the need for greater aroused the public that another gesture by the public effort and more resources to be allocated Family Planning Division was necessary in or• by all levels of government and voluntary der for it to continue to contain and deflect the associations for the support of family planning controversy away from the government. 68 programs." These conclusions could not be Lalonde had already informed (in late April of ignored, but the Family Planning Division's 1975) provincial ministers of welfare that response set it on a collision course with other family planning services were not a priority in politically oriented sectors of the federal gov• his department, but now he could not appear ernment, particularly the Prime Minister's Of• insensitive to the government's own findings. fice and Cabinet, which were determined to According to one National Health and Welfare keep the federal profile as low as possible. official, "Attempts to alter the provisions of the Criminal Code were politically risky. We Initially, opinions were divided within the knew he could not move Cabinet on that FPD over how to respond to the Badgley point."71 The Division did not change its Report. Some feared that widespread research programme, and proposals to resur• distribution of the report would only produce rect the national fertility survey were axed additional political pressure on the Division to early, thereby eliminating the possibility of the expand its activities, which in turn would national population policy which the Badgley mobilize anti-abortion groups. One senior of• Report considered a sine qua non of any effec• ficial attacked the Badgley Report: "Birth con• tive preventive strategy. "The Minister trol information is readily available from doc• feared," according to one senior manager, tors as is abortion counselling. There is no "that a [fertility] survey would draw attacks by necessity for the federal government to become anti-abortion elements who could claim the involved with activist programmes of dissemi• government was going to dictate people's nation of birth control information. Most private sexual activities. Instead we continued women's anxieties over pregnancy are better paying out to university-based researchers and 69 dealt with by a psychiatrist." Others in the demographers to cover the Division from Division thought that the Report provided a political heat."72 Lalonde approved the "policy window" through which the govern• minimum possible incremental response at the ment could respond: "Badgley is a preventive federal level, continuing the effort to force the mandate. It legitimizes a preventive strategy onus for major policy changes on to the prov• which fits perfectly with what we are trying to inces. do. Its horrible findings, especially in the last chapter, demonstrate that nothing is being After arranging for a federal-provincial con• done in the area of prevention and clearly links ference of health ministers for June 1977, La• prevention with curative treatment. Fifty londe revealed the federal position on March 4th. The FPD would abandon its "response to the Feds were up to the old game of putting request" stance and actively promote the idea responsibility on the provinces. He [Lalonde] of family planning. It would send family plan• made it sound like the government was about ning inserts with Family Allowance cheques, to set up street clinics where 14 year olds could begin a media campaign and prepare a guide get abortions on demand. We [the FPD] on sex education for public schools. The received over a half million pieces of mail over 75 federal change in style, however, would have that speech, most of it negative." The federal to be matched by major provincial changes of deputy minister of Health and Welfare ordered substance. Provincial governments were asked the Family Planning Division to not im• to review age of consent laws for contraceptive plement the proposal but to maintain its usual 76 counselling, and discuss the "feasibility of information-on-request policy. From March establishing women's clinics affiliated with of 1977 until its final dismantlement in 1978, hospitals to provide family planning, fertility the FPD was to find itself under almost con• counselling, cancer screening, abortions, gener• tinuous political attack by anti-abortionists, al maternal health, breast self-examination in• which made the Division a target for political struction and related community services in• strategists in other sectors of the government. cluding counselling in parenting and family life."73 The federal carrot was that these ser• Sensing the direction of political response, vices would be included as shareable costs with the provincial governments backed away from the provinces in the newly proposed Social Ser• Lalonde's proposals to increase the number of vices Act. approved hospitals, create more abortion com• mittees, provide contraceptive information This interventionist position died the mo• and establish women's clinics. According to a ment it was announced. Abortion had never participant, family planning had no priority at been mentioned during initial conference prep• the 1977 federal-provincial conference of arations. More importantly, no advance health ministers: "Only , Alberta and warning and persuasion had been given to the had made a public commitment to press to help ensure that the proposal would be family planning prevention services. They in reported sympathetically. "The statement particular feared the backlash generated by should have emphasized women's primary Lalonde would spill over on to them. The health services," according to one frustrated provinces wanted to let current procedures official. "Instead, the press picked up the continue. It was much too dangerous to try 77 story, led with the abortion aspect and ignored and effect changes now." The provincial everything else."74 This is scarcely surprising ministers merely agreed to review the findings since the Minister used the term "abortion" of the Badgley Report vis-a-vis their own no less than five times in his announcement. provinces. Federal officials considered that When the state makes such a move, the in• agreement essential in order to convince the tention may be to either simply test the provinces to act on the other measures. political climate, or to intervene and change the mixture of opinion, position and activism By late summer of 1977, there were wide• that makes up that climate. spread rumours of an imminent federal elec• tion, and Monique Begin replaced Lalonde as In this case, the anti-abortionist forces were Minister of National Health and Welfare. thoroughly mobilized; provincial reaction was Begin was regarded within the Liberal Party as thoroughly negative as well, for the statement strong on women's issues, but weak in admin• smacked of federal duplicity: "It looked like istrative skills. Her feminist image symbolical- ly reassured pro-reform activists as the govern• policy implied in the Report: "There was a ment withdrew the proposed Social Services great fear of a political uproar that would Act and proceeded to dismantle the Family follow any attempt to expand preventive Planning Division. Constant attacks by anti- programmes, and the absolute impossibility of abortion groups kept her in the political revising the abortion law. They all agreed it spotlight at a time when election rumours filled was not timely to act and generally wished the the air and the government's popularity was issue would simply go away."81 particularly low. In October the Ottawa Journal reported that she was considering a depart• The Family Planning Division is Aborted mental review of federal legislation including abortion, and that rekindled the political fire The seminar was the last major initiative un• storm. "The whole mess erupted all over again dertaken by the FPD. The division could no just when we were recovering from the La• longer effectively contain the political conflict londe fiasco. Anti-choice groups dredged up in light of the cumulative effects of the Badgley her old speeches from before she was Minister Committee, Morgentaler, Lalonde and Begin. and branded her with them as representing Moreover, political strategists realized that current policy. She became paranoid over general economic issues were displacing social abortion and just withdrew."78 Departmental questions as the most serious threat to the gov• officials ordered officials in the FPD to em• ernment's fragile popularity. Social policies phasize provincial responsibility in family were subordinated to the priority of economic planning and wait until after the election restraint. Levels of government spending before developing new policy.79 became prime targets of the Parliamentary Opposition. Against a backdrop of rising in• In June of 1978, the FPD hosted a meeting flation, taxes and uncontrolled government with provincial health bureaucrats to discuss spending, "women's issues" no longer cap• the provincial reviews of the Badgley Report tured the public's or the media's attention in and to share information on provincial preven• the late 1970s. "We knew in the fall of 78," tive programmes. Considerable manoeuvring according to a Liberal political advisor, "that occurred to circumvent the Cabinet's prohibi• the state of the economy was a far more tion on discussing abortion or the Badgley dangerous area and that social programmes Report. All participants agreed beforehand were relatively expendable."82 In the birth that no decisions or recommendations would control/abortion issue, the government be made, nor advice offered. The meeting was switched from a strategy of containment to one billed as a "seminar" and funded out of the of abandonment by dismantling the FPD and FPD's budget in order to circumvent financial curtailing the activities of its subsidized in• review by Treasury Board, which would have terest groups, all under the guise of economic 80 prevented the meeting. restraint. The Prime Minister's Office em• barked on dramatic, highly publicized spend• Only Saskatchewan and Ontario completed ing cuts in current social programmes to make provincial reviews of the Badgley Report. The the public "feel" the restraint personally. Re• other provinces shelved their reviews in light of ductions were aimed at controversial pro• the political controversy and denied an agree• grammes like unemployment insurance or at ment had been reached. They acknowledged policies where active pressure groups would be the case made by the Badgley Committee for affected, like the Family Planning Division. prevention, but emphasized the political dif• Reduced spending in these and other areas ficulty of implementing the kind of corrective dramatized the federal government's commit- ment to economic restraint while conveniently Assistant Deputy Minister for Social Services reducing programmes which generated on the welfare side of the Department. The political controversy. The FPD had the grants officer, along with the remains of his smallest constituency in terms of voter budget and the nurse consultant, were placed strength, yet aroused intense political protest under the Director-General for Health Ser• because of the nature of its activities. From a vices. The -community education consultant political standpoint, the FPD was now vulner• and the resource centre clerks reported to the able and unnecessary. Director-General for Health Promotion. Both operated within the Health Services and Pro• When it withdrew the proposed Social Ser• motion Branch, which operated primarily in a vices Act in the fall of 1977, the federal govern• consultant capacity to the provinces. Former ment had already served notice to the prov• FPD personnel were defined as having 20 % of inces that fertility policy was no longer a their duties devoted to family planning mat• priority, including family planning services, as ters. As of July 1979, there was only one per• a shareable cost. In August of 1978, the gov• son in the whole Department working full time ernment cut $1 million from the FPD's Family on family planning projects—a public health Planning Grants Programme. That Division's nurse processing requests for information.86 grant budget was the smallest of any in the Department of National Health and Welfare, Following the FPD's demise, plans were yet it sustained the largest single reduc• made in Ocotober of 1978 for a free vote in the tion—about 50%. The Prime Minister's Of• House of Commons on abortion and capital fice dictated about $700,000 of the cut direc• punishment. The cannabis issue was scheduled tly.83 Concurrently, the Department notified for January of 1979, but that idea was the Planned Parenthood Federation of dropped. The free-vote mechanism would have Canada, which knew that its financial support allowed the Liberal government to abandon would be gradually reduced, that its sustaining the issue altogether. Health and Welfare grant had been slashed. A senior PPFC staff Department officials saw every chance that all member related: "It happened so quickly. We efforts in the area of fertility policy could be were blocked out completely; no more con• stopped. In the words of one official, a free vote sultation, no more access."84 Reducing the would have "mobilized the huns" to reinstate Family Planning Division's programmes was a the old abortion ban. A general revolt against purely political act: "Their purpose was to the idea of a free vote in Parliament developed send a message to activists in the health and rapidly among the PPFC, certain other welfare area, particularly the anti-choice National Health and Welfare Department of• people, that the government knew that ficials, the 's Women's Catholics were Liberals too. To the other side, Commission, the Liberal Party's Women's the government was giving notice that it was and Youth Commission, and a few Members backing off on the issue of family planning, of Parliament from both sides of the House. period."85 The government retreated.

Following the budget cut, the federal gov• Conclusion ernment dismantled the FPD. With the budget cuts, reorganization and the freeze on hiring, In the 1960s, became a mass the FPD virtually ceased to exist. From its in• movement and an important element in the ception in 1972 until September of 1978, the wave of agitation which challenged and sought Director of the Division reported to the to reform a traditional fertility/abortion system serving the middle class but not the poor. illegal and had no place in the state's concept Public attacks on the informal system of abor• of family planning. It redirected the protests of tion and contraception control led the medical both sides with the argument that effective profession to ask the state for relief which authority, and therefore responsibility, for preserved their monopoly. This aid took the health lay with the doctors and provincial form of the 1969 abortion reform law. It soon governments. The Division spoke to all sides of became evident that the law operated the issue while avoiding substantive action on inequitably and public attitudes continued to its own. By funding the Planned Parenthood polarize on the abortion/fertility issue. The Federation of Canada and Serena, the state en• state then moved through virtually its entire couraged the growth of a conservative and repertoire of symbolic responses in pursuit of cautious reform movement, and created a an effective strategy to contain the issue; a seemingly autonomous response to its initia• strategy that would preserve the elite-permis• tives—a response to which the government sive system without damaging the govern• could in turn appear to respond but which it ment's popularity. actually controlled.

The federal Cabinet created the Family The political issues raised by Dr. Morgen• Planning Division as a lightning rod to chan• taler, however, redirected the controversy nel political controversy into a bureaucratic squarely back to the federal government via its agency which spread a message of concern Justice Department. In turn, the Justice De• while doing little. The political lightning partment responded with the creation of the passed through the FPD, thus insulating the Badgley Commission on the Operation of the government from an issue that might otherwise Abortion Law. Its Report gave the rhetoric split the Liberal Party's Parliamentary caucus, and the facts to the reformers but absolved and Cabinet, or threaten the government's elec• preserved the policy for elites. The Report toral popularity. neatly shifted responsibility and thus the blame on to the provincial governments and the med• Although it became the arena of conflict at ical profession. the federal level, the FPD had almost no sub• stantive functions. It provided contraceptive From the mid 1960s to the late 1970s, the information to an elite constituency, but not ef• state succeeded in containing the volatile abor• fectively. It helped maintain the dominant tion issue, as well as avoiding any substantive view of abortion as an unacceptable form of fertily policy, until reformist energies simply birth control, and propagated the myth that ran out of steam or were suffused into the abortion and birth control were two different political and economic conservatism of the late things. The FPD did keep lines of com• 1970s. Then the federal government aban• munication open; it listened sympathetically to doned the issue, judging it safe to "throw it in• reformers, encouraged their good works and, to the streets". The issue has come full circle. when necessary, explained why nothing could The controversy remains. The hard core of ac• be done. It also monitored the anti-abortion tivist reformers is still as committed as ever, activists by directing their protests onto itself. but without a large public following their ef• Thus everyone concerned could either talk to forts have shifted to the very local level. Today the Family Planing Division or yell at it. But it the conflict centres on individual hospitals actually did very little. The FPD is an excellent where pro- and anti-reformers battle each case of what may be termed a symbolic agency. other for control of hospital boards, a matter It told anti-reformers that abortion was still safely outside the area of federal jurisdiction. Enough middle- and upper-class women S. Zimmering, Abortion Today (Springfield, 111.: University of Illinois Press, 1973). An excellent cross-cultural analysis with the fortitude and money qualify for abor• is provided by M. Potts, P. Diggory, and J. Pell, Abortion tions under the 1969 law to keep pro-abortion (London: Cambridge University Press, 1977). Recent groups weak and disorganized. At the same Canadian experience is provided in E.W. Pelrine, Abortion in Canada (: New Press, 1972). time, anti-abortion activists are mollified by Illegal abortions in Canada were estimated to be between the federal government's withdrawal from the 20,000 and 120,000 from 1955 to 1966, based upon ex• area of contraception and because abortions trapolations from U.S. rates and the medical opinion that one in three pregnancies is interfered with in some way. remain illegal except under restricted circum• "Legislation on the Social Services: A Brief Presented by stances. The Canadian Medical Association the Planned Parenthood Federation of Canada," Decem• retains control over abortion delivery, while ber, 1975, p. 2. The Departement de Demographie de 1'Universite de Montreal placed the number of illegal abor• individual medical practitioners continue to tions at 100,000 in 1971, two years after the abortion law diffuse responsibility on to abortion com• reform. mittees and hospitals. Finally, the federal and 4. C. Swinton, "Population and Family Planning: An Over• provincial governments can each serve up the view," in B. Schlesinger (ed.), Family Planning in Canada: A Source Book (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1975), other as the whipping boy should some pp. 9-16. pressure group demand action. Working-class 5. J.J. Lederman and G.E. Parker, "Therapeutic Abortions women and those isolated in rural areas are left and the Criminal Code," The Criminal Law Quarterly, vol. 6 (1963-64), pp. 38-39. to fend for themselves and to do what they have 6. Graham E. Parker, "Bill C-150: Abortion Reform," The always done. Criminal Law Quarterly, vol. 11 (1968-69), pp. 268-272. 7. Interview number 3, August 9, 1979. 8. Parker, op. cit., p. 268. 9. See, for example, Richard Simeon, Federal-Provincial NOTES Diplomacy: The Making of Recent Policy in Canada (Toronto: 1. This study was made possible by a research grant from the University of Toronto Press, 1972). University Council for Research at St. Francis Xavier 10. See, for example, K.D. McRae, "Consociationalism and University, Antigonish, Nova Scotia, and Dr. Collins the Canadian Political System," and S.J.R. Noel, "Con- wished to thank Dr. Jon Alexander of Carleton University sociational Democracy and Canadian Federalism," in for insightful editorial criticisms. Kenneth McRae (ed.), Consociational Democracy: Political Ac• commodation in Segmented Societies (Toronto: McClelland and 2. The research for this study was based on federal and provincial governments' public documents such as those Stewart, 1974). See also Robert Presthus, Elite Ac• noted in the following footnotes; internal memoranda of the commodation in Canadian Politics (Toronto: Macmillan, federal government; documents and publications from such 1973), and his Elites in the Policy Process (Toronto: Mac• organizations as the Canadian Conference of Catholic millan, 1974). Bishops, Planned Parenthood Federation of Canada, and 11. G.E. Parker, "Abortion: A Review of CMA Policy," numerous 'right to life' groups; press clippings from eleven CMA, December, 1977. newspapers and magazines; and some ten interviews. The 12. The anti-abortion faction within the CMA is currently on interviews were conducted in Ottawa between August of the ascendency. As of 1979 individual physicians who per• 1979 and October of 1980. Some of the respondents wished sonally oppose abortion are not required to inform a to remain anonymous because of their positions within the women seeking an abortion of their views, nor to refer her Department of National Health and Welfare, and they in• to another doctor who might be sympathetic. cluded medical and policy advisors. Several of the in• 13. Quoted form Pelrine, op. cit., p. 32. terviews were conducted with senior officials in the Planned 14. Family Planning Evaluation Report, Department of National Parenthood Federation of Canada. Health and Welfare 1977. Hereafter cited as Evaluation 3. The development of anti-abortion legislation, according to Report. Jane Mohr, was primarily due to medical associations' 15. Quoted in L. Dulude, Abortion in Canada: Background on the astute political action to secure monopoly control over Proposed Amendments to the Criminal Code (Ottawa: Canadian medical practices. A number of sources focus on the British Advisory Council on the Status of Women, 1975), p. 7. and American experience*, but there is little on the 16. The delays, cost, regional inequities of access—all the evolution of abortion legislation in Canada. See J-C. horrors reported by the Committee on the Operation of the Mohr, Abortion in America: the Origins and Evolution of National Abortion Law, were well documented before the Badgley Policy, 1800-1900 (New York; Oxford University Press, Committee confirmed them. See Pelrine, passim; also 1978) and G.J. Barker-Benfield, The Horrors of the Half Report of the Royal Commission on the Status of Women in Canada; Known Life: Male Attitudes Toward Women and Sexuality in and Schlesinger, op.cit., part six, pp 201-240. Nineteenth Century America (New York: Harper and Row, 17. I say appeared to increase because cross-cultural studies have 1976). For an analysis of recent trends see J. Saltman and found that open abortion laws function to transfer the "demand" from illegal unsafe abortionists (for which ac• 46. Evaluation Report, p. 145. curate counts are impossible to obtain) to legal safe con• 47. Memorandum from the Deputy Minister of National ditions; see Potts et.al., op.cit., p. 132. Health and Welfare to the Minister of Health and Welfare, 18. Robert Presthus has found that close to half of all federal March 24, 1971. Evaluation Report, p. 18. departments inspire such groups to make claims on their 48. Interview number 6, August 12, 1979. resources. R. Presthus, Elite Accommodation in Canadian 49. Ibid. Politics, op.cit., pp. 78-9. 50. Evaluation Report, p. 155, 207. 19. Evaluation Report, p. 8. 51. Brief to the Minister of National Health and Welfare from the Plan• 20. Ibid. ned Parenthood Federation of Canada, PPFC, March 14, 1979, 21. Letter from the Minister of National Health and Welfare to pp. 5-6. the Planned Parenthood Federation of Canada, October 9, 52. "Social Services Legislation: A Report of a meeting to 1970. discuss the brief presented to the Federal Government on 22. Evaluation Report, pp. 10-11. proposed Social Sevices Legislation," PPFC, January 26, 23. Record of Cabinet decision, July 30, 1970. Evaluation 1976. Report, p. 12. 53. Evaluation Report, p. 207. 24. Evaluation Report, p. 81. 54. "FPD Summary on Recommendations to the Deputy 25. Memorandum to Cabinet, July 14, 1970. Evaluation Report, Minister for fiscal year 1972-73." Evalution Report, p. 202. p. 127. Elipses are inserted by the FPD. 26. Department of National Health and Welfare, "The De• 55. Report of the Committee on the Operation of the Abortion Law, partmental Family Planning Educational-Informational op.cit., p. 414. Emphasis added. Effort as of January, 1972." 56. Quoted in CMA Journal, vol. 112 (1975), p. 494. 27. Memorandum to Cabinet, July 14, 1970. Evaluation Report, 57. Interview number 5, August 10, 1979. pp. 127-128. 58. Dr. B. Stephenson (President, CMA), "Abortion: An 28. Memorandum from Cabinet, July 14, 1970. Evaluation Open Letter," CMA Journal, vol. 112 (1975), p. 495. The Report, p81. CMA reprinted Stephenson's letter to the Prime Minister 29. Evaluation Report, p. 82. and his reply of November 12, 1974. 30. For the medical profession's criticism of hospital 59. Letter from P.E. Trudeau to CMA President, CMA Jour• therapeutic abortion commitees see R.M. Boyce and R.W. nal, ibid., p. 497. Osman, "Therapeutic Abortion in a Canadian City," The 60. Ibid, p. 494. Canadian Medical Association Journal, V. 103 (1970), p. 461; 61. "Abortion—A Review of CMA Policy," CMA, December, E. Wilson, "The Organization and Function of 1977, p. 1. Therapeutic Abortion Committees," Canadian Hospital, 62. Terms of reference are stated in Chapter 3 of the Badgley vol. 48 (1971), p. 38; and K.D. Smith and H.S. Wineberg, Report, pp. 27-43. "A Survey of Therapeutic Abortion Committees," The 63. Interview number 1, August 8, 1979. Criminal Law Quarterly, vol. 12 (1969-70), pp. 279-306. 64. Badgley Report, p. 17. 31. Royal Commission on the Status of Women in Canada, 1970, p. 65. Cabinet Record of Decision, December, 1976. 286. The Commission also linked contraception to demand 66. Interview number 6, August 12, 1979. for abortion (see pp. 275-286). For a discussion of other 67. Bouma and Bouma, op.cit.; Pelrine, op.cit.; Status of Women problems associated with the abortion law (confirmed but Report, op. cit.. not discussed in the Badgley Report), see Pelrine, op.cit., pp. 68. Badgley Report, pp. 25-6. 38-45, and G.D. Bouma and W.J. Bouma, Fertility Control: 69. Interview number 3, August 9, 1979. Canada's Lively Social Problem (Toronto: Longman Canada, 70. Interview number 6, August 12, 1979. 1975), pp.84-6. 71. Interview number 1, August 8, 1979. 32. Evaluation Report, p. 99. 72. Interview number 5, August 10, 1979. According to the 33. Interview number 1, August 8, 1979. Badgley Report, the FPD approved only 3 of 7 research 34. Evaluation Report, p. 88. proposals dealing directly with induced abortion, p. 417. 35. Ibid, p. 109. 73. Statement by the Honourable Marc Lalonde, Minister of National 36. Ibid, p. 119. Health and Welfare, March 4, 1977, p. 5. Emphasis added. 37. Ibid, p. 120, 125. 74. Interview number 1, August 8, 1979. 38. Ibid, p. 81. 75. Ibid. 39. Report of the Committee on the Operation of the Abortion Law (Ot• 76. Interview number 1, August 8, 1979. tawa: Department of Supply and Services, 1977), p. 417. 77. Interview number 5, August 10, 1979. Hereafter cited as the Badgley Report An analysis of the 78. Interview number 1, August 8, 1979. report follows later in this paper. 79. Ibid. 40. Evaluation Report, p. 70. 80. Interview number 6, August 12, 1979. 41. Ibid, p. 65. 81. Ibid. 42. Ibid, p. 177. 82. Interview number 10, October 6, 1980. 43. Badgley Report, p. 417. 83. Interview number 7, August 13, 1979. 44. Evaluation Report, p. 165. 84. Interview number 2, August 9, 1979. 45. A directive in the Division blocked publication of com• 85. Interview number 7, August 13, 1979. pleted research. The author of this paper was unable to ob• 86. The reorganization was outlined in chart form during in• tain even a bibliography of completed work. terview number 8, August 15, 1979.