‘It could happen here’

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This article was published 02/10/2021 (1831 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Reproductive justice issues are not just American issues; a group of Manitobans gathered on the steps of the province’s decision-making centre Saturday to assert reproductive rights are a concern for Canadians, too.

“Get off my uterus,” the hundreds-strong crowd cried in unison from the steps of Manitoba’s legislature at a rally for reproductive justice in solidarity with Texans facing limitations to their abortion rights.

Rally attendees bore signs advocating for safe, legal abortions, decrying legislators restricting abortion access, and asserting “my body, my choice.”

Saturday’s rally coincided with the Women’s March on Washington in the United States, where thousands marched to the U.S. Supreme Court in support of abortion access and to speak against the court’s decision to allow Texas’s six-week abortion ban (which limits abortion access to people pregnant less than six weeks, stripping access for nearly all people seeking abortions). Hundreds of similar rallies took place across the United States Saturday, according to reports from CBS News.

While the American political battle for reproductive rights was the backdrop for Manitoba’s gathering, speakers brought the issue home, acknowledging recent and historic attacks on reproductive rights for Indigenous, Black, women and gender diverse people in Canada.

“It does matter,” NDP MLA Nahanni Fontaine said to the assembled crowd. “It matters what happens here.”

Fontaine, who organized the rally with Women’s March Winnipeg chapter leader Vivienne Ho, reinforced reproductive rights have been challenged both historically and in recent years on home soil, particularly for vulnerable community members like racialized and gender diverse people.

“I would suggest that almost for the whole movement BIPOC women and gender diverse folks have been completely absent, and I would suggest in many respects dismissed and silenced and erased,” Fontaine said in an interview after the rally.

“For me as an Indigenous woman it was important to centre BIPOC voices today who face a myriad of different, other -isms on top of reproductive regressive policies. It’s important we understand these issues affect different folks in a variety of different ways with huge, long-lasting consequences.”

Speakers such as Elder Leslie Spillett, director of the abortions program at women’s health clinic Blandine Tona, union activist Gina Smoke and NDP health critic Uzoma Asagwara, decried Canada’s historic and recent forced sterilization of Indigenous peoples, limited access to reproductive health care services for people in remote communities, and conservative politicians who have attended or supported anti-choice initiatives.

“I think we all understand even though this is happening in Texas — it could happen here,” Tona told the crowd.

Fontaine said her time in the legislative assembly has demonstrated Canada’s reproductive rights and abortion access are “fragile;” Manitoba’s legislative assembly has twice voted down Fontaine’s Bill 207 — the abortion process buffer zone act — which would mandate a 50 to 150 metre protection area free from anti-abortion protestors around women’s hospitals and clinics. During Saturday’s rally, Fontaine noted the legislature will vote on the bill again this Thursday.

Asagwara noted the Progressive Conservative government in Manitoba has placed reproductive health issues under the portfolio of the minister for the status of women, rather than minister of health.

Paige Mason, who works with the abortion rights coalition of Canada, helped recruit signatories Saturday to a petition for the buffer zone act.

“Abortion is, under the Canada Health Act, classified as an essential service,” Mason said. “So they should be able to access that service free from harassment, free from someone telling them they’re a murderer, that they’re a terrible person, and seeing this graphic and often false imagery.”

Mason said she was happy and encouraged by the diverse turnout at the weekend event, and by the number of people eager to join the petition for Bill 207.

“In Canada especially we like to think that because our politicians aren’t so overtly anti-choice that our rights are protected,” Mason said. “The fact is that they like to introduce anti-choice legislation quietly. When these laws in the States go into effect, they embolden the conservatives here to introduce legislation.”

Laure Moody and her child Leia Moody-Lepine attended the rally in what has become a notable symbol at reproductive justice events: Handmaid’s Tale outfits.

The red robes and white caps, drawn from HBO’s TV interpretation of the Margaret Atwood novel The Handmaid’s Tale have become symbols of women’s oppression since the Women’s March movement began in 2017.

Laure Moody noted Canada has “imperfect access” to reproductive health care, and worries conservative politicians could push that access further and further away for vulnerable peoples if given the chance.

“It’s great that it’s legal, but you need to be able to find it when you need it and for a lot of women in Manitoba that’s not a reality,” Moody said.

“The reality is that we have opportunities and access to health care here that women up north don’t have. They’re already living in their version of The Handmaid’s Tale.”

julia-simone.rutgers@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @jsrutgers