(Quebec) The Minister of the Status of Women, Martine Biron, as well as representatives of Québec solidaire and the Parti Québécois, will participate on Saturday in a counter-demonstration organized by community groups and unions in response to people who gather under the banner “Marche pour la vie au Québec”, which is in fact an anti-abortion group.
In a press scrum on Friday, Mme Biron recalled that she plans to table an action plan next fall to improve accessibility to abortion across Quebec. Currently, this access is limited depending on the region. The minister, however, excludes tabling a bill, which she had mentioned in the past, in the context where groups stressed to her that a legislative initiative risked rolling back the right to abortion.
Quebec does not know how many people will join the anti-abortion demonstration on Saturday, which will be held in front of the Parliament building in Quebec. In an open letter published Friday in The dutythe general coordinator of the Quebec Birth Planning Federation, which supports the pro-choice counter-demonstration with 400 other organizations and individuals, responded that she urges “all people in favor of bodily autonomy to refuse any attempt to limit the right to abortion.”
“There is a broad consensus in Quebec in favor of women’s right to choose,” underlined Martine Biron. On its website, the organizers of the anti-abortion march write that “abortion is the killing, before birth, of a little girl or a little boy made in the image and likeness of of God “. The one who presents herself as the “leader” of the march says she is a “fervent preacher of the Gospel”.