An Abortion Law Preformed

This article engages the transcribed testimony of Carolyn Egan and Janice Patricia Tripp in R v Morgentaler as a critical moment of lawmaking. There is something revealing, often amusing, and sometimes devastating, when a lawyer asks a non-lawyer, in this case, a social worker: “What is the law?” The article focuses on those moments in their testimony when Egan and Tripp answered questions about the 1969 abortion law that made the law itself, its rules and procedures, the subject of examination, and in doing so, constructed new meanings of the law and social action in relation to it in the tradition of critical legal pluralism and its prefigurative politics. Egan and Tripp testified to the power of the 1969 abortion law in the everyday lives of people and used this experience to challenge the idea of law itself and the institutions of its making

An Abortion Law Preformed

This article engages the transcribed testimony of Carolyn Egan and Janice Patricia Tripp in R v Morgentaler as a critical moment of lawmaking. There is something revealing, often amusing, and sometimes devastating, when a lawyer asks a non-lawyer, in this case, a social worker: “What is the law?” The article focuses on those moments in their testimony when Egan and Tripp answered questions about the 1969 abortion law that made the law itself, its rules and procedures, the subject of examination, and in doing so, constructed new meanings of the law and social action in relation to it in the tradition of critical legal pluralism and its prefigurative politics. Egan and Tripp testified to the power of the 1969 abortion law in the everyday lives of people and used this experience to challenge the idea of law itself and the institutions of its making

The Law of Stigma, Travel, and the Abortion-Free Island

In 1988, the Supreme Court of Canada decriminalized abortion in R. v. Morgentaler. 1 Almost immediately thereafter, the Maritime province of Prince Edward Island (“P.E.I.”) passed a legislative resolution opposing the provision of abortion services on the Island except to save the life of a pregnant woman.2 P.E.I. is a small pastoral province of rolling hills and ocean coves in the St. Lawrence Gulf, and since 1988, through various regulatory actions, its government has honored this policy promise to keep the Island abortion-free and to preserve its moral landscape.3 The Confederation Bridge, an 8 mile bridge connecting the island with the mainland, tells a story of abortion travel in Canada—women’s long crossings over menacing, ice-covered waters, their feats of ingenuity, and their durable and reinforcing supports in this crossing. It is the story of a bridge built to break some women under their own weight, while allowing others to cruise past. It is the story of a problem and a solution to that problem. It is the story of a public controversy over how abortion challenges Islanders’ sense of themselves, their past and their future—the Islander way of life

Abortion rights beyond the medico-legal paradigm

Abortion rights in international law have historically been framed within a medico-legal paradigm, the belief that regulated systems of legal and medical control guarantee safe abortion. However, a growing worldwide practice of self-managed abortion (SMA) supported by feminist activism challenges key precepts of this paradigm. SMA activism has shown that more than medical service delivery matters to safe abortion and has called into question the legal regulation of abortion beyond criminal prohibitions. This article explores how abortion rights have begun to depart from the medico-legal paradigm and to support the novel norms and practices of SMA activism in a transformation of the abortion field. Abortion rights as reimagined in SMA activism increasingly feature in human rights agendas related to structural violence and inequality, collective organising and international solidarity, and democratic engagement

Understandings of self-managed abortion as health inequity, harm reduction and social change

This commentary explores how self-managed abortion (SMA) has transformed understandings of and discourses on safe abortion and associated health inequities through an intersection of harm reduction, human rights and collective activism. The article examines three primary understandings of the relationship between SMA and safe abortion: first SMA as health inequity, second SMA as harm reduction, and third SMA as social change, including health system innovation and reform. A more dynamic understanding of the relationship between SMA, safe abortion and health inequities can both improve the design of interventions in the field, and more radically reset reform goals for health systems and other state institutions towards the full realisation of sexual and reproductive health and human rights

Harm reduction or women's rights? Debating access to emergency contraceptive pills in Canada and the United States

This article compares the ethical pivot points in debates over nonprescription access to emergency contraceptive pills in Canada and the United States. These include women's right to be informed about the contraceptive method and its mechanism of action, pharmacists'conscientious objection concerning the dispensing of emergency contraceptive pills, and rights and equality of access to the method, especially for poor women and minorities. In both countries, arguments in support of expanding access to the pills were shaped by two competing orientations toward health and sexuality. The first, "harm reduction," promotes emergency contraception as attenuating the public health risks entailed in sex. The second orientation regards access to pills as a question of women's right to engage in nonprocreative sex and to choose from among all reproductive health-care options. The authors contend that arguments for expanding access to emergency contraceptive pills that frame issues in terms of health and science are insufficient bases for drug regulation; ultimately, women's health is also a matter of women's rights.15 page(s

Abortion Law in Transnational Perspective : Cases and Controversies /

Abortion Law in Transnational Perspective offers a fresh look at significant transnational legal developments in recent years, examining key judicial decisions, constitutional texts, and regulatory reforms of abortion law in order to envision ways ahead.Abortion Law in Transnational Perspective offers a fresh look at significant transnational legal developments in recent years, examining key judicial decisions, constitutional texts, and regulatory reforms of abortion law in order to envision ways ahead.Electronic reproduction.Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.Rebecca J. Cook is Professor of Law Emerita and codirector of the International Reproductive and Sexual Health Law Program at the University of Toronto. She is editor of Human Rights of Women: National and International Perspectives and coauthor of Gender Stereotyping: Transnational Legal Perspectives, both available from the University of Pennsylvania Press. Joanna N. Erdman is Assistant Professor and MacBain Chair in Health Law and Policy in the Schulich School of Law at Dalhousie University. Bernard M. Dickens is Professor of Law Emeritus and codirector of the International Reproductive and Sexual Health Law Program at the University of Toronto. He is coauthor of Reproductive Health and Human Rights: Integrating Medicine, Ethics, and Law and Reproductive Health: Case Studies with Ethical Commentary.Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher’s Web site, viewed June 24 2015

Medication Abortion in Canada: A Right-to-Health Perspective

The right to health under the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, to which Canada is a signatory, entitles women to available, accessible, and acceptable abortion care. Abortion care in Canada currently fails this standard. Medication abortion (the use of drugs to terminate a pregnancy) could improve abortion care in Canada, but its potential remains unrealized