Canada

Commons.sets countdown for choice

_ By KERRY McCUAIG

The stated intention of the Tories to
bring in a new abortion law early in the fall
session of the House of Commons has once
again brought the pro-choice movement
into the streets.

“Don’t lose the right to choose” is the
slogan leading up a campaign to keep abor-
tion out of the Criminal Code. The move-
ment’s efforts will culminate on Oct. 14, a
Day of Action On Abortion, sponsored by
the Canadian Abortion Rights Action
League and L‘Association pour le droit a
Pavortement in Quebec.

Hot pink buttons along with colourful
grey and pink posters are out advertising the
day and reminding supporters, “we are the
71 per cent majority.”

There is a cautious optimism by pro-
choice activists, buoyed by poll results
showing a solid choice majority in every
region of Canada, with the exception of the
Maritimes where pro- and anti-choice for-
ces are split. The most recent poll, released
by CTV last week, shows a wide margin of
Canadians in support of choice with minor
restrictions. Those who would ban abor-
tions remains static at 10 per cent.

Major rallies are planned for Ottawa,
Toronto and Vancouver with other events
in support of choice taking place in cities
and towns across the country.

CARAL is in the midst of a post card
campaign to Prime Minister Mulroney. The
National Action Committee on the Status
of Women is working on a paid ad to
appear in the Globe in the coming week.
Men are being mobilized through a group
called Men for Women’s Choice, featuring
such notables as Pierre Berton and David
Suzuki. The group also plans an ad listing
its backers at an early date.

The Ontario Federation of Labour and
some unions have put out calls urging their
members to support the Oct. 14 actions.

Despite active supporters, getting its “no
new abortion law” message across has been
a difficult one for the movement. Even tra-
ditional pro-choice supporters are under the
misconception that a new law would actu-
ally improve access, prevent spiteful boy-
friends from seeking injunctions, or stop
anti-choice zealots from harassing women
outside clinics.

Much of its material now argues the “no
law” case and the immediate and long term
dangers of placing gestational limits on
abortion.

Pressure to restrict the termination of late
term pregnancies is strong. When the
Supreme Court of Canada struck down the
old abortion law in January 1988, it left
Parliament the option of bringing in legisla-
tion to regulate abortion after the first tri-
mester.

Pro-choice organizations across British
Columbia are gearing up to ensure that on
Oct. 14 the Mulroney government gets the
clear message that the majority of British
Columbians are opposed to any plans to
enact new restrictive abortion legislation.

In Vancouver, the B.C. Coalition for
Abortion Clinics is expecting broad sup-
port for its march and rally on Oct. 14, the
National Day of Action on Choice.

Supporters will gather at the Queen Eli-
zabeth Theatre Plaza at 11 a.m. From the
theatre, a march will proceed down Geor-
gia and Howe Streets, and along Beach
Avenue fora 1 p.m. rally at Sunset Beach.

New Democratic Party leader Mike
Harcourt and New Westminster-Burnaby
NDP MP Dawn Black will address the
rally, together with Christine Mickle-
wright, chair of the B.C. Federation of
Labour’s Women’s Committee, and
representatives of the church community,
the coalition and Everywoman’s Health
Centre.

In Victoria, the pro-choice community
is sponsoring a noon rally on Friday, Oct.
13 as part of its support for the National
Day of Action. The B.C. legislature will be
sitting on that day and supporters are
asked to gather outside the legislative
buildings at noon.

In the Okanagan and the Kootenays,
where access to abortion has long been
restricted, newly-formed pro-choice
organizations in Kelowna, Cranbrook
and Nelson are all sponsoring events
around Oct. 14.

Rallies slated around B.C. Oct. 14

The Kelowna choice group, which
recently was unsuccessful in its first
attempt to break the anti-choice domina-
tion of the board of the Kelowna General
Hospital, will be sponsoring a rally at the

‘ plaza by The Sails scultpure at the lake-
shore end of Bernard Avenue at noon.
Participants will be asked to sign post-
cards and a banner demanding no new law
on abortion. The postcards are to be sent
to Mulroney, and other members of
cabinet. The banner will be sent to Premier
Bill Vander Zalm.

In Cranbrook, where lack of access to
abortion has forced women facing an

unwanted pregnancy to travel at their own
expense to Vancouver, Calgary or Mon-
tana, local pro-choice activists have
formed a branch of Concerned Citizens
for Choice on Abortion.

Members and supporters of the group
will be taking to the streets on Oct. 14 to
make their presence felt in the community.
They will march from the Women’s
Resource Centre at 11:30 p.m. under the
banner of “Women Celebrating Choice.”
The march will proceed through down-
town to Rotary Park for a picnic and rally.

In Nelson, A Speak Out for Choice rally
is set for Oct. 12. The time and place were
not available at press time.

$5% - s »

Robin Rowe, executive director of
CARAL, blames media and “expert” misin-
formation for centring the abortion debate
around fetal viability.

Clips of premature infants in hospital
incubators included in coverage of the
Chantal Daigle case left the erroneous
impression that the 20-week-old fetus the
Quebec woman carried could survive out-
side the womb. The earliest a fetus has been
known to survive, and then only with medi-
cal support, is 23 weeks.

Pro-choice activists also bristle at new
found government and media interest in
fetal viability when both sectors largely
ignore the status and needs of children
already born.

“Where is government concern for the
potential fetus, let alone workers, when it
comes to eliminating reproductive health
hazards in workplace? Where is its concern
when it comes to ensuring access to day

care, affordable housing, equal pay for
women and all those other things needed if
the choice to have and raise a child is to be
really free?” asks the Ontario Coalition for
Abortion Clinics in a newly released posi-
tion paper.

“For a government that demonstrates
such limited commitment to those children
already born and the conditions in which
they are raised to claim a concern for the
protection of the unborn fetus is deeply
hypocritical,” it charges.

The state’s so-called concern for the fetus
indicates how strongly it wishes to exert
power over all women. In demonstrating
this power, poor women are its usual victims.

Evoking visions of The Handmaid’s
Tale, Margaret Atwood’s futuristic novel of
a United States overtaken by right-wing
religious fanatics, official, so-called respec-
table bodies have recommended the legali-
zation of surrogate motherhood. The

Angry woodworkers staged a lunch-
hour demonstration outside the down-
town Vancouver offices of Sauder Indus-
tries Ltd. to protest that company’s
closure of two Vancouver manufacturing
plants and the re-location of one of them
south of the border.

Members of Local 1-217 of the Interna-
tional Woodworkers-Canada, bolstered
by more than 100 delegates to the union’s
national convention, heard national pres-
ident Jack Munro and local representative
Gary Kobayashi say Sauder’s move con-
firms the warnings about the Canada-U.S.
Free Trade Agreement.

Some participants staged a brief occu-
pation of the company’s lush offices in the
Canada Trust building.

Sauder Industries plans to close its Pre-

Sauder fight linked to free trade

Finished Panel and Moulding divisions
this fall, laying off about 100 TWA
members. Meanwhile, construction of
Sauder’s new moulding plant is under way
in Ferndale, Wash.

In an interview Kobayashi said the free
trade pact allows the company to import
Canadian raw resources for the Washing-
ton plant, and to export the finished pro-
duct back to Canada, tariff-free.

Kobayashi said the plant will likely
operate non-union and pay lower wages.
He said company chair Bill Sauder admit-
ted to Local 1-217 officials in a recent
meeting that the Vancouver plant was
making a profit, but that the company
could realize greater profits in Washing-
ton. :
Sauder has purchased several plants in

‘ ducts to the U.S., slap a countervailing

the state, including a door-manufacturing
firm in Seattle. Utilizing state labour laws,
the company laid off the unionized
employees and hired back less than 51 per
cent of work force, thereby decertifying
the plant. Wages will be as low as $6 per
hour, Kobayashi said.

That poses a threat to Sauder Door
Division employees in Vancouver who
earn IWA rates of between $15.40 and
more than $21 per hour, he said.

Delegates to the union’s third annual
convention adopted a resolution demand-
ing the provincial and federal government
stop the export of unfinished wood pro-

tariff on U.S. wood products entering
Canada, and compensate victims of run-
away industries.

Ontario Medical Association distributes
information counseling its members to refer
to their pregnant patients as the “environ-
ment” for the fetus and to act as an the
advocate for the unborn in the case of any
doctor-patient dispute. Courts in Canada
have twice incarcerated pregnant women,
and ordered caesarian sections, “‘in the best
interests of the fetus.”

The OCAC document, citing a study in
the New England Journal of Medicine,
found that all court-ordered procedures
were performed on pregnant women receiv-
ing welfare and 81 per cent of the victims
were Black, Asian or Hispanic.

The explosion in reproductive technol-
ogy further eroding women’s ability to con-

_trol their bodies makes the choice movement
even more adamant that any criminal res-
trictions on abortion would only have far-
reaching, dangerous repercussions.

To counter the machinations of the pro-
life lobby, which has the support of about
two-thirds of the Conservative caucus, the
choice movement is pushing its program for
accessible and comprehensive sex education
and birth control counselling to the fore.
This, it argues, would reduce the need for
abortion, but it also grabs the moral high
ground away from pro-lifers whose opposi-
tion to abortion doesn’t coincide with sup-
port for such programs.

An added feature in the abortion debate
has been concerns raised by organizations
representing disabled persons. They are
particularly opposed to any law which
would name fetal abnormality as grounds
for abortion, arguing that such an exception
would only further erode the already tenu-
ous position of the physically and develop-

. mentally handicapped in society.

Given its opposition to any law, the cho-
ice movement has little difficulty agreeing
with the disabled on this issue. But the
debate has also nudged choice supporters
into campaigning more vigorously for the
economic and social support to allow
women real choice about whether or not a
_pregnancy should be carried to term.

Pacific Tribune, October 9, 1989 « 3