Aborting Law: An Exploration of the Politics of Motherhood and Medicine

Andrea Levan is an associate professor and co-ordinator of the Women’s
Studies Program, Thorneloe College, Laurentian University.

This book explores how the abortion issue in Canada has been
constructed. It examines how the abortion law of 1969 affected women,
and how women’s groups (particularly the Ontario Coalition for
Abortion Clinics) organized to change it. The first few chapters, which
consider the philosophical underpinnings of abortion law, are somewhat
heavy going but do establish a clear framework for the analysis that
follows. Kellough argues that both the liberty rights (which are based
on the principle of individual autonomy) and the welfare rights (which
are based on the principle of the need to equalize disadvantage) that
form the basis of contemporary legal codes fail to recognize the
attentive care that all individuals need before they can become
autonomous. Because it is taken for granted that women will provide this
care, their decision to have an abortion is usually perceived as
self-interested.

Kellough develops an interesting comparison of the differences between
the American and the Canadian abortion experiences. American women won a
recognition of their right to make private abortion decisions, but not
the right to health services unless they could pay. In Canada, health
care was universally provided, but women’s right to decide was never
acknowledged. Through different means, the net result in each country
was the same: it was difficult for some women to obtain abortions.

In Canada, Therapeutic Abortion Committees gave the medical profession
control of decisions about whether or not women should have abortions.
Kellough traces the impact of this situ-

ation on women’s lives. She examines the legal reasoning behind the
Morgentaler defences, the activists’ ambivalent feelings about
Morgen-taler’s actions, and the problems of pursuing reform in the
legal arena. She concludes that some of the contradictions faced by
activists derived from a fundamental contradiction in the legal
discourse itself between autonomy and unrecognized gendered assumptions
about care.

This book makes an important contribution to the theoretical literature
on abortion by providing an insightful analysis of the contradictions in
the legal discourses. It also enriches the historical record by
detailing the impact of the 1969 Canadian abortion law, and the
strategies that activists developed to change it.