Before Morgentaler Part One: Law Breakers

CLIP You’re listening to a frequency podcast, network production in association with City News.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Hey, it’s Jordan. We are doing things a little bit differently here on the Big story just for the next two days. The team has been working really hard for a long time to bring you a special mini series. Now, I don’t wanna spoil what we have planned by talking too much about it, so I will shut up and let you enjoy their work.

CLIP My mother was one of three children, and in the twenties it was a depression, and my grandmother and grandfather really could not afford more children. And my grandmother told us later in life that she had had an abortion and it was not a safe abortion. And at the age of 36, She had a hysterectomy because of it, so I would assume from chronic bleeding because it wasn’t done safely in a proper environment, so she lost her uterus. My grandmother, at a young age.

Sarah Sahagian Many of us have heard stories like this, a story of a person who, for whatever reason, knew they couldn’t go through with a pregnancy, so they sought in legal abortion that seriously injured or even killed them. This was the world before Safe and Decriminalized abortions. There are so many reasons why people end a pregnancy, their health, their finances, not wanting to be a parent yet, not wanting to be a parent at all. And yet, decriminalized abortions are a much newer phenomenon than many of us. I am 36 years old, and I was born before the Supreme Court throughout Canada’s old abortion law in 1988. That law passed in 1969, permitted abortion only in hospitals, and only after a committee of doctors who were usually male determined that continuing a pregnancy might endanger a person’s life or health. That was referred to as the Therapeutic Abortion Committee, and even that represented significant progress. Prior to 1969, attempting to induce an abortion was an offence that could lead to life in prison. This year marks the 35th anniversary of the Morgentaler decision. A single event that changed everything. So yes, it all started with a man, go figure. Born in Poland, Dr. Henry Morgentaler was a Jewish Holocaust survivor whose father, mother, and sister were all murdered during the Nazi occupation. Henry himself was imprisoned at a concentration camp after the war. Morgentaler first immigrated with the United States and then to Montreal, motivated by his belief in a pregnant person’s right to choose, he gave up a comfortable life with a family practice in the 1960s, and he began openly performing illegal abortions.

CLIP She alone, should make the responsible decision whether she wants this pregnancy to continue or not.

Sarah Sahagian And then in 1988, RV Morgan Tyler changed Canadian history along with Leslie Frank Smoling and Robert Scott. Morgentaler had set up a clinic in Toronto for the purposes of performing illegal abortions on women who had not received certificates from the therapeutic abortion. Morgentaler and his colleagues clouded the law for the purposes of forcing a decision.

CLIP Good evening. A historic decision on abortion today, A judgment that will have a profound.

Sarah Sahagian On January 28th, 1988, that decision came down in their favor. The Supreme Court’s ruling in RV Morgan Toler found that Canada’s restrictive abortion law was a profound interference with a woman’s body. An infringement of security of the person in a five two decision abortion was finally decriminalized a full 15 years after Roe versus Wade made abortion legal across America.

CLIP Morgentaler said today it was not only a personal victory, but a victory for all women in Canada.

Sarah Sahagian Although a considerable amount of stigma continues to surround it, the truth is abortion is incredibly common. Today, approximately one in three Canadian women will get an abortion in their lifetime. It’s also a very safe medical procedure.In 97% of cases, there are no complications. As an undergraduate history student in 2005, I had a professor who argued history doesn’t just happen. It’s made by great men, and yes, he meant only men. It’s indisputable that Dr. Henry Morgentaler was indeed a great man, a man who survived a hellish youth and devoted his adulthood to helping other people access safe reproductive care. Morgentaler, who passed away in 2013. Was a giant of Canada’s abortion rights movement. He deserves his place in history. However, the story of abortion rights in Canada is bigger than even this remarkable man for whom one of the most famous Supreme Court decisions in Canadian history is named. Over the last few months, our team has spoken to women, identified people whose names you likely don’t know. But who were and are a vital part of Canada’s reproductive rights history. These are a few and only a few because there are so many of the great women who helped further the reproductive rights movement in this country. The women you meet in this documentary haven’t been centered in the story of Canada’s abortion rights movement, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t at its center.

Ruth Miller It didn’t matter how many other rights we had, this was basic, and without it, we would never be free.

Sarah Sahagian That’s Ruth Miller, a retired sexual health educator, and her words may as well be the thesis for the story you’re about to hear. I’m Sarah Sahagian, and I’ll be taking over the big story with the two-part series called Before Morgentaler. This is part one: law breakers.

Sarah Sahagian Hi. Hi. Should we leave our boots outside? Okay. Hi, would you like us to leave our boots outside? I’m at Sandy Fanners house in Toronto. She and her friend Sherry Krieger have agreed to talk to me about their time fighting for abortion access in Canada as Toronto based abortion counselors. Both women have worked alongside Henry Morgentaler at points in their careers. In the 1970s, Sandy was also the co-director of something called the Birth Control and BD Information Center in Toronto. She and her fellow activists were committed to changing Canada’s laws, so people who didn’t want to be pregnant didn’t have to be.

Sandy Throughout this time, if you had a, you know, a, if you had money, or b, if you had a gynaecologist or, or somebody you know, that was sympathetic, you know, you would call it a D and c. You call it a d and c. You go in and they take care of it. But I mean, you know, that would be the case for, you know, middle class women who, who knew, knew doctors who had those kinds of things. But you know, if you are 15 years old and you’re from, you know, God knows. Not from downtown Toronto and not with sympathetic parents, or if you didn’t have anybody to tell and then it would be very problematic. I mean, so basically, um, it’s not like abortion isn’t something that hasn’t existed for a few thousand years, so, well, since the beginning of Exactly.

Sarah Sahagian Sandy and Sherry are in their seventies now. But when they got involved in the movement, they were young women making their way up in the world.

Sandy I became involved, I’m trying to remember exactly, it was certainly an offshoot of the women’s movement, which I became involved with when I was still in, in university as an undergraduate and a graduate. And I can’t, I’m trying to remember my own personal history, but I, I know that in.

Sarah Sahagian A lot was at stake for pregnant Canadians before the Morgan decision when they didn’t have time to wait for therapeutic abortion committee to hear their case, where if they feared the answer would be no. Some women even traveled to Buffalo for aboritons. Sandy and Sherry helped people cross the border to the US to safely terminate their pregnancies.

Sandy When we were sending people all always to the states for abortions. Mm-hmm, because over a certain amount of weeks mm-hmm, we didn’t do them here, 24 over 23 6. And so we would have to tell them what they had to say at, at the border. Yeah. Don’t say you’re going for an abortion. Tell them this, tell them that. Whatever. Always we had, uh, even when we went for conferences, when we were crossing the border, they say, what are you going for? Pleasure.

Sarah Sahagian Our research couldn’t unearth records of how many people made that journey for legal reasons, it’s likely they weren’t kept, but we know what happened. And often abortion rights organizations would help pregnant people figure out how to access terminations in American cities. They knew which doctors were sympathetic, and reliable. People crossing the border into America for abortions were told to pretend they were seeing an art exhibit for the day, or going on a shopping trip in the hopes of avoiding being turned away by a border guard.

Sandy The problem with crossing the border is that you are literally at the mercy of the border guard. I mean, it’s completely random and they.

Sherry For whatever reason they, they can decide.

Sandy So, you know, I mean, there’s no reason to think there’s any sympathy there for you. Well, and you’re certainly, you know, you can’t say you’re going for a medical, you know, the whole thing was just very precarious.

Sarah Sahagian I mean, were people scared when they were crossing the border? Were they worried that they would be denied access or that they’d be found out?

Carolyn Carolyn will give you that, that history. I, uh, I came to Toronto, uh, when I was quite young at 20 or so, and, uh, I was, uh, very interested in the politicals going on.

Sarah Sahagian That was, that’s Carolyn Egan. She has been an organizer of Toronto’s International Women’s Day march since the 1970s. In recent years, you may have seen her interviewed on TV as an advocate for the Ontario Coalition for Abortion Clinics. She’s famous for her gorgeous, long white pony. Carolyn was deeply involved in the abortion rights movement and was even with Dr. Morgentaler in Ottawa when the Supreme Court delivered the Morgentaler decision. She described what it was like crossing the border to access abortion.

Carolyn You know, that was a scary experience for them going across the board. Now you didn’t know you didn’t need a passport at that point. Right. And that, that all came in after 9-11 and all, so it was, it was not that hard. But I think everyone gets a little bit nervous as you, as you go through a border crossing. And uh, I think for them both going down for the abortion itself, it was very nerve wracking for them. I mean, they did it, they knew they had to do it, wanted to do it. And once they got through the border and they were greeted with, uh, such graciousness, if I could put it that way. And, uh, Kindness. And so they were the ones who really felt that anxiety, that pressure and that fear, I think, crossing a border. And some of them had never crossed a border before, you know, so it was, it was unsettling for sure. But yeah, I don’t know the numbers, but hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of women, and I know that was happening in, uh, British Columbia going down to the US as well.

Sarah Sahagian But crossing the border was a temporary solution. There was a bigger fight still going.

Carolyn What you were doing essentially was just helping someone exercise their basic human. Right. Right. And it, it felt very important to do that. You know, we would do everything we could to, uh, provide abortion. So if, if it came to, you know, bringing people to the US, then we would do that at the same time we felt the big picture was that we had to overturn the law so people did not have to go to them.

Sarah Sahagian If you could get an abortion in a hospital and in some places like a progressive hospital in downtown Toronto, this was easier than others. Things were still not perfect.

Karen I worked at the Morgentaler clinic and I worked.

Sarah Sahagian That’s Karen, who would prefer not to disclose her last name, she is a nurse whose first real job in healthcare was working on surgical abortions. She describes the experience as a lonely one for patients compared to what she saw working in abortion clinics. Later in her life.

Karen In the general hospital, there was very little dialogue. They were in the hallway on a stretcher waiting to be brought in for the procedure. So I would think that it probably would’ve been a pretty lone experience. In contrast, at a freestanding clinic, you’re awake and have conscious sedation, and you have a nurse beside you, coaching you through the procedure. Trying to divert your anxieties if you have them. It, it was more personal at a clinic, the hospital, I didn’t have a lot of dialogue with patients at the hospital. There was an anesthetist involved. The surgeon, it was kind of, rather quick.

Sarah Sahagian Many activists and healthcare providers, including Dr. Morgentaler himself, took issue with how difficult it was for people to access abortions and how dehumanizing a hospital abortion you had to beg doctors for could be. As a physician who performed illegal abortions, Morgentaler sacrificed his own safety for his pro-choice beliefs. The doctor had witnessed how in Montreal’s Royal Victoria Hospital, for example, there was an entire ward reserved for women who’d had botched abortions. In that ward, people suffered greatly, and some of them died. Dr. Morgentaler knew abortion was still illegal when he started his mission to make it safer. But his experiences being imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp taught him that not all laws are good, and sometimes it is morally. To break them in 2004, he told the Canadian press I had decided to break the laws in order to help women. A disadvantaged class of people who were being unjustly treated and exposed to terrible danger. Over the course of his career, Dr. Morgaentaler was arrested, tried repeatedly, and in 1975, he was incarcerated for 10 months in a Quebec jail for Defying Canada’s abortion law, which still sanctioned only those terminations approved by the therapeutic abortion. While he had been acquitted by the jury at trial, the Quebec Court of Appeal overturned that acquittal and imposed a conviction. Dr. Morgentaler appealed that conviction at the Supreme Court of Canada, but they upheld the conviction. On a sixth three decision, Dr. Morgentaler began serving his prison sentence in 1975. During which time he was badly beaten up by a prison guard in an anti-Semitic attack, and he suffered multiple heart attacks. By the 1980s fellow pro-choice activists like Carolyn Eagan noted Dr. Morgentaler was all but destitute and understandably, tired. But despite his personal sacrifices, he never abandoned his commitment to providing safe abortions.

Sandy We set up a clinic here in Toronto with Dr. Morgan Toler. He, at first didn’t want to do it. I mean, he’d been jailed, he had the tar attack, he was financially ruined. It had a huge impact on his family life, et cetera. And did he really wanna do it again? But in the end, he ch chose to do so, and a few other doctors joined.

CLIP If I have to be a martyr, I’m willing, uh, if I have no choice, I’m, uh, willing to suffer for this cause.

Sandy It was his resources, it was his money that set up a clinic. And, uh, of course it was raided and the equipment taken out and the doctors were arrested and we were into a real struggle for, uh, the hearts and minds of people. And we really felt that, uh, we had to build that movement in order for a, uh, jury in Ontario. To, uh, come to that innocent verdict.

Sarah Sahagian Dr. Morgentaler founded clinics across Canada over the course of his career, but in 1983, it was the Morgentaler Clinic in Toronto that would become the basis for RV Morgan and the Morgentaler decision. Carolyn remembers this time vividly.

Carolyn So it was a long struggle, five years. That was just all of our energies and, uh, across the country, coalitions, groups, uh, of all sorts and we’re fighting for this. So it was very, very much a, uh, pan-Canadian or national movement. And, uh, you know, groups like the National Organization of Immigrant Visible Minority Women, and uh, the Black Women’s Coalition and Women’s Health and Women’s Hands, another clinic, particularly geared to racialized and immigrant refugee women. And so it, it was really, really broad and Black Action Defense committee here, which was fighting police violence. Right. It was a very broad movement and that’s what had to happen, I think, to enable us to make the changes.

Sarah Sahagian Carolyn says, redefining choice was the most important part of the movement.

Carolyn And I think that always differentiated us from the US movement because when we spoke of choice, we were speaking of a whole range of issues. The right to childcare, the right to a decent job, the right to be free of racist and sexist harassment, the right to be free of coerced and forced sterilization. That was, particularly affected indigenous women, women with disabilities, black women. We had anecdotal evidence of this and, and some more, uh, what do I say, academic or scholarly evidence of that as well, as well as full access to free abortion. So all of those were contained in the framework that we put forward as we were fighting, you know, because what we always said is that, uh, sure. Abortion was a. And, uh, if you were middle class or had access to a private gynecologist cuz there was extra billing, then you could pay extra and get an abortion through a gynecologist. But for the indigenous woman of the immigrant woman, the racialized woman, the low income woman, the young woman, woman from rural Ontario, these are the people, people who were most vulnerable, who did not have the access. And they were the ones who were, uh, most at risk in these situations. And so I think that guided us very much, who we were fighting for, who we were fighting with, it really guided us through the struggle.

Sarah Sahagian Outside of the clinics themselves, plenty of lobbying, protests and other forms of grassroots activism continued going strong in the seventies and eighties. One big name in reproductive rights advocacy was CAROL, which stands for the Canadian Association for the Repeal of the Abortion Law. Ruth Miller, the retired sexual health educator, whose awards offered us a thesis earlier, was an active player in this association.

Ruth In 1973, my family moved to Ottawa and I got word that an organization was going to be set up called CAROL, the Canadian Association for the Repeal of the Abortion Law, and I went to the very first meeting of CAROL. It was held, funnily enough, in a Catholic high. and I was involved with CAROL for many, many years. We would hold meetings every Monday night in various offices. We would lobby, we would write letters, and then Norma Scarborough came along and she was, you know, our presidents and, and, uh, we all just took this on and made it part of our lives for many, many, many years.

Sarah Sahagian Ruth Miller continued attending meetings when she moved back to Toronto in 1973. As she describes them, the protests she and her fellow activists organized over the years were well totally lit.

Ruth Every time the right to life would. The what they called the committee of a million or something. We would be there counter demonstrating. We hired, we hired airplanes a few times. We carried banners behind them and we called, the first time, I think we called it the committee of the other 22 million, because at the time there were 23 million Canadians.

CLIP I wish to repeat our slogan, which says, every child they want a child, every mother, a willing mother.

Sarah Sahagian By the time R v. Morgentaler came around in the 1980s, it wasn’t the doctor’s first day in court. As you recall, it wasn’t even his first day at the Supreme Court. By now, possibly because the court had the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which was passed in 1982. Its decision was different, on a five two decision, the court found Canada’s abortion law was unconstitutional on the grounds that it violated a woman’s right to security of the person. As outlined in section seven of the Charter Canada’s abortion law was officially struck down, and with it went the therapeutic abortion committees that decided who could end a pregnancy and for what reasons. Here’s Carolyn again.

Carolyn When they gave their decision and it was clear that we had won and the, uh, federal law was overturned, it was joyous. It was just, uh, I mean, I can’t describe how we felt. I mean, it was just unbelievable because, uh, I mean, we were so aware of what was at stake, and it was an extraordinary moment.

Sarah Sahagian Back in Toronto, the celebrations only ramped. And when we got there, and there’s a picture, there’s many pictures of Henry speaking on the steps of the clinic, et cetera, and there were probably a few thousand people in the streets just leaping, singing, just joyous because, of the reality, the concrete reality of what had been won, but also the real understanding that people can fight for change if they, you know, bring that collective strength together and make real differences in people’s lives. Carolyn isn’t the only person who remembers the day of the decision.

Sandy Well, we all went crazy . We, we, we were absolutely in heaven. We, we couldn’t believe it though. I guess we could believe it because we had worked up for a long time. It wasn’t just CAROL as you know, it was O C A C, so there were many different groups working for this, and all of us had a, had a role to play.

Sherry Oh, well, we went nuts. We were screaming outside on Harbord Street. I remember my window gave on to Harbord Street and we just were opening windows, screaming and just yelling at whoever went by. You know.

Sarah Sahagian Later that night, there was an epic party at the house of Morris Manning, Dr. Morgan Caller’s lawyer. But the fight didn’t end in 1988 when the decision was made. Credible threats against Dr. Morgentaler’s ife continued, and in 1992, his Toronto clinic was bombed.

CLIP Police say an early morning fire at the Morgenteler abortion clinic was the work of an arsonist. Police from 14 division say some kind of incendiary, similar to a Molotov cocktail, was thrown against the front door of the clinic around 2:00 AM.

Sarah Sahagian Sherry Krieger, who we heard from earlier, describes remembering what happened.

Sherry Our entrance, of course, was in the back alley. We were literally in the back alley. We had a steel door on the basement level because we’d have deliveries made there and whatever in the basement level. Somebody the person, or a hole in the steel door and poured in gasoline. I think that’s how it happened, and because of combustion and the whole. Was just blue.

Sarah Sahagian Sherry told me they were lucky. The explosion happened at night and the clinic and the street it was on were both empty. No one was seriously hurt, but it was clear would go to great lengths to stop the work that was being done there for security Doctors started wearing bulletproof vests and the fence was put up around the clinic on occasion when the fence was locked. Sherry remembers scaling it to get to.

Sherry And so we would drive our cars around to the back to park and they would all be there screaming and yelling. And we had this big, big, very, very high fence, one of those metal fences. And sometimes we’d have to scale it to get into the back. And one time I was wearing my new barrel leather pants and it got caught on the top, and there they went. And, uh.

Sarah Sahagian A less funny story is how protestors would follow Sherry as she was arriving at the clinic to do her work as a counselor. It wasn’t uncommon for those protestors to be armed with anti-Semitic signs.

Sherry When we worked on Harbord Street, they would follow us into cafes or wherever we were having our lunch on the street and start screaming and yelling at us while we’re having our cafes. They had followed workers home, you know, would call, I’m my name, just, I took it out of the phone book and those days we had phone books. Yeah. Um, because I went on television once and when I came home I picked up the phone and it was. Baby killer and you know, all kinds of stuff.

Sarah Sahagian When I asked Sherry if all this intimidation ever made her reconsider going to work at the Morgan Toddler Clinic, she simply told me no. After speaking to all of these intrepid women, I felt humbled and not in the disingenuous way, celebrities feel humbled when they win an award. I felt well and truly humbled. I am not sure if I would’ve been brave enough to flout the laws to help pregnant people access abortion care before it was decriminalized. And thanks to their bravery, I don’t have to. I now appreciate that the right to choose is a gift previous generations gave us. Meeting these women isn’t just awe-inspiring. It’s also life affirming, years later, people like Sherry and Sandy are still friends. There was a job opening.

Sandy And the reason I did that was because I, um, it wasn’t a cold thing. There was an ad in the globe and Mail for a counselor at uh, at the clinic.

Sarah Sahagian At the Morgenteler clinic?

Sandy Yeah. Yes. Um, in Toronto. The one, yeah.

Sherry Well, I hired her.

Sandy She hired me. Oh, wow. I didn’t know that. Yeah. Yeah, I know Sandy. Yeah. That’s a cool story.

Sarah Sahagian It’s a very cool story. Yeah. Yeah. So, so it was kinda Sandy and Sherry’s belief in abortion rights brought them. And today they still get together for garden parties in the summer, and it’s a story that reflects the strong feminist community that mobilized around abortion rights in Canada. One thing we would like to note is that as diverse as we know the abortions movement in this country was we were only able to get white women who were involved in this fight to speak with us. There are many reasons for this. When we reached out to experts on racialized subject matter or activists, some said they were too busy to speak with us. One said she didn’t feel comfortable. Others have passed away, including Sharon Hall, a well known black activist in Toronto. This reflects the truth about feminist activism. Which is that the struggles of racialized women are heavier and more time consuming than white women’s. While I do not know if individuals who decline to speak to us feared public criticism or attacks, it’s also true that racialized people are more likely to face reprisals when they speak up and are less likely than white women to receive adequate protection from the authorities when they’re threatened. In the end, historical records like this do not necessarily show us who was involved in a major national movement, but who chooses or who has the choice to speak up Today, people who need them can access abortions at clinics and in hospitals. In 2015, RU486, the abortion pill was also approved for those nine weeks pregnant. There’s also the strange fact that America, a country where Canadian women used to cross the border seeking terminations, saw its Supreme Court overturn Roe versus Wade, in June 2022, decided in 1973, many of the women we interviewed talked about what an inspiration that decision was to them as young activists in Canada America at the time was something of an abortion rights role model, and now, it’s tempting to say that the opposite is true, that Canada is a shining example of reproductive freedom for all. And while our situation is certainly better than America’s, anyone who has researched abortion access in this country for any length of time knows that RV Morgenteler represented progress. All this and more on part two of before Morgentaler, which airs tomorrow, right here on the Big story. Five years ago, it was unthinkable that Roe v. Wade would’ve been overturned, and so we cannot discount the impossible. We saw it and we saw it disappear. It was here and then it was gone. If we target those populations and make sure that they have access, I mean then that list everyone’s boats and, and everyone can have better access.