EDITORIAL

Nurses need support

When business can’t beat workers down on its own, it inevitably resorts to its
friends in the legislatures and the judiciary.

That’s what happened in 1983 when the United Nurses of Alberta were still
holding strong after 28 days on the picket line. The sitting Tories brought in Bill
44, outlawing the right to strike for hospital workers, and imposed binding
arbitration. It only delayed the inevitable. The legislation, coupled with deep
cuts in funding for health care, caused workers’ wages to fall behind while the
quality of patient care deteriorated.

In 1988, nurses have again taken a stand and are defying a bad law to bring
attention to the crisis in health care. This time the state is trying to smash their
union by depleting its treasury. It can do more.

The union was frank with its members from the outset. A leaflet circulated to
all nurses warned of the possibilities of individual charges, heavy fines, even jail
terms. In addition, strikers could be fired or disciplined at work, it stated.

UNA president Margaret Ethier is sticking to her vow that nurses won’t
return to work without a settlement — and the growing picket lines around
hospitals indicates this is not an idle threat.

Why is business so interested in holding down nurses wages? Why is it
scrambling to have Alberta Premier Don Getty “teach them a lesson?” Because
the more government spends on people, the less there is to spend on the
corporations.

Alberta Federation of Labour president Dave Werlin outlined the scenario in
a letter of support to UNA. “(Government) continues to build new hospitals as
shrines to Tory MLAs in their constituencies even though there is a shortage of
nurses and a starvation of government funding that major hospitals are being
forced to close hundreds of beds while Albertans linger on hospital entry
waiting lists. And of course, while all of this is going on, the Tories still have
money to build golf courses for the elite and escalate their hand-outs to major
corporations like Suncor, Syncrude and Champion Forest Products, to name
but a few. As well, major American oil companies like Esso, Chevron and Shell
have been granted royalty relief worth many millions.”

Public support to date has been encouraging, but more is needed. Getty’s
Tories should be condemned in every union hall, in every women’s meeting, in
every health care centre across this province. Everyone has a stake — don’t let
the nurses fight alone.

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EDITOR
Sean Griffin

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Dan Keeton

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Pro-choice activists barely had time to
bask in the euphoria of the Jan. 28
Supréme Court decision on abortion,
when Ottawa announced that new restric-
tions were in the offing. <

Less than a day passed between the
decisive 5-2 ruling and the government's
edict that it would begin eredrafting
replacement legislation, a signal that abor-
tion could again become a criminal

News Analysis

Kerry McCuaig

offence. ’

The Mulroney government argues it has
been mandated by the court to establish
new guidelines. The majority ruling does
give a woman “absolute” autonomy over
reproduction “in the early stages,” but it
also lays some responsibility on the state
for protecting a late term fetus.

The pro-choice movement argues that
improved access would eliminate the need
for most late-term abortions. In reality,
women only terminate an advanced preg-
nancy in the most extenuating of circum-
stances: if a fetus is severely deformed or
her health is endangered. As such, the
proposition that abortion should remain a
health matter, to be decided by a woman
in consultation with medical profession-
als, stands.

The issue Mulroney and his cabinet
have studiously avoided is accessibility. It
was the lack of access to abortions that
contravened the Charter of Rights and
Freedoms and threatened the “life, liberty
and security of the person,” the Supreme
Court decided.

But whacking abortion out of the crim-
inal code has not made it any easier for a
woman seeking an abortion today than it

was last week. B.C.’s infamous health min-
ister, Peter Dueck, promptly announced
things would proceed as usual. The pro-
vince’s medicare plan would cover only
those abortions approved by a therapeutic
abortion committee within an accredited
hospital — the conditions set out in the
old legislation. :

Prince Edward Island, where no abor-
tions have been performed since 1982, said
its hospitals would not accept patients
requiring the procedure. And in a provoc-
ative thrust, the head of the province’s
medical association warned that any
attempts to set up a free standing clinic
would be trashed.

No provincial health minister has
ordered hospitals to open their facilities to
women seeking abortions. After a week of
waffling, Ontario has been the only juris-
diction to take concrete steps. Health Min-
ister Elinor Caplan promised the prov-
ince’s health care plan would cover all
abortions, including those performed in
private clinics. She plans to meet with Dr.
Henry Morgentaler, the man behind the
Supreme Court decision, to discuss fund-
ing for his two Toronto clinics. While a

step in the right direction, this doesn’t
answer the needs of women outside of the
city.

Interestingly, Manitoba, the other pro-
vince where Morgentaler awaits prosecu-
tion for ‘attempting to procure a
miscarriage,” has been mum.on its inter-
pretation of the ruling. Both Ontario and
Manitoba dropped the charges facing the
doctor and his colleagues. As a small con-
solation, the police returned the equip-

-ment seized in the 1983: raid on the

Winnipeg clinic.

Activists harbour no illusions about
being able to hang up their picket signs.
Waiting in the wings is the Charter chal-
lenge, initiated by fundamentalist Joe
Borowski, to establish the fetus as a person.
The court has agreed to_hear the case,
beginning this summer. Given the ruling’s
interest in protecting the fetus in the latter
months of pregnancy, the Borowski find-
ing could shape any new abortion law.
Women’s groups will be represented in the
proceedings through the Women’s Legal
Education and Action Fund, so the strug-
gle continues in both in the political and
judicial areas. —

Activists don’t advocate a hands-off
approach for Ottawa. “The federal
government has a responsibility to act asa
leader on this issue,” says Robin Roe,
national co-ordinator of the Canadian

Fight for freedom on choice far from over |

Abortion Rights Action League. “It must

use the power it has in the Canada Health
Act to encourage the provinces to provide
services. It should make it clear that a
woman has a right to free abortion in her
own community.”

Those who have been involved over the
long haul say the decision has not altered
their agenda. “Our goal is still equal access
to abortion, through public funding of
women’s health clinics,” Roe says.

She cites figures showing clinics are the
most cost-effective way of delivering the
service. A hospital abortion costs between
$600 and $1,000, where clinics can run on
a non-profit basis for $300 an operation. A
clinic setting, she says, is more appropriate
to providing abortion and birth control
counselling, which hospital representa-
tives admit they are ill-equipped to do.

Such clinics would not be limited to
performing abortions. The pro-choice
movement has advocated a series: of
publicly-funded, community-based pro-
grams providing a full range of gynecolog-
ical and obstetric care.

But abortion is only one plank in a
program of equality rights. Women need
universal child care, parental leave, affir-

mative action, equal pay and affordable |

housing. These along with other social
changes, must be present to exercise real
choice in our lives.

4 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, FEBRUARY 10, 1988