Once a month, The duty challenges history buffs to decipher a topical theme based on a comparison with a historical event or figure.
It has been almost a year since the US Supreme Court overturned the judgment Roe v. wade, which protected access to abortion. This decision sent shockwaves right to our doorstep, causing Martine Biron, our Minister responsible for the Status of Women, to give a militant and inspiring start to the project to enshrine the right to abortion in Quebec law. It is time to reclaim our history of the struggle for contraception and access to abortion.
The fights of Henry Morgentaler and Chantal Daigle were judicialized and highly publicized. Yet they weren’t the only ones struggling. Who knows the name of Donna Cherniak, a young McGill student who offered our grandmothers and mothers the freedom to choose, by any means at her disposal? We caught up with her to document her memories of that tumultuous time.
Disaster
In 1964, sociologist Colette Moreux, from the University of Montreal, asked 90 Quebec women if they would agree to keep the child of their unmarried daughter at home: for 89 of them, it was unthinkable. An unwanted pregnancy is a disaster in Quebec where our mothers grew up.
Quebecers know that the world is changing. Women are demonstrating in the United States to claim control over their bodies, and the pill is increasingly accessible there. In the Vatican, a committee reflected on the question – it opted for the status quo in 1968. Despite everything, contraception remained a highly taboo subject, especially among French-speaking Catholics.
This denial has a significant social and human cost. Abortion, performed clandestinely in private homes and motel rooms, carries serious risks. The column of miscellaneous facts testifies to this regularly. In August 1966, Patricia Boisvert was found near Saint-Eustache under a pile of leaves. In March 1968, Rona Martin suffered a fatal hemorrhage. Another unfortunate, unidentified, was abandoned in a car in the parking lot of a shopping center.
Rare voices are raised: we must try to prevent unwanted pregnancies by improving sex education and allowing access to contraception. If these precautions fail, women need to be given safe options.
Activist
Young Donna Cherniak arrived in Montreal in 1967 to study psychology at McGill University. She is 17 years old. “It was a very conservative environment, especially in the girls’ residences! At supper, we weren’t allowed to wear pants. We had an evening curfew. You had to sign a register and say where you were going. Coming from a Jewish family in Ontario, she is not afraid of sin. She is seduced by the counter-culture.
A very left-wing student council is elected. He formed a committee responsible for writing, under the supervision of a gynecologist, an information manual on contraception. New boyfriend of Donna, Allan Feingold, is one of them and he offers her to join the team.
This manual, The Birth Control Handbook, was distributed in October 1968 at McGill, Concordia and Loyola College. It includes medical texts, illustrations, but also more political sections about women’s right to control their bodies. However, at the time, the distribution of information on contraception was subversive. “It was a big, big hit ! Donna laughed.
The manual will change the lives of many young people by providing them with the sex education they have been deprived of until now, but it will also change the life of the student in two unexpected ways.
Editor
“In the summer of 1969, recalls Donna Cherniak, American newspapers wrote that if you sent 10 cents to our address, you could receive the manual. We came back from vacation and there were boxes and boxes waiting for us, full of envelopes with dimes! » The manual becomes a bestsellerprinted in 50,000 copies.
Some shipments to the United States are confiscated under the Comstock Act, which prohibited the circulation of obscene or contraceptive-related items in the mail — the same law that is being invoked today to prohibit the mailing of the abortion pill.
In 1970 the Handbook is adapted by French-speaking sympathizers under the title For birth control. “We added an analysis of the influence of the Church, of medical control,” explains Cherniak. The success is just as spectacular. “I don’t know how many people have said to me, ‘I got a copy when I was in college, in CEGEP. I saw your photo on the back page!” »
The reissues follow one another. In 1971, the manual has already reached 2 million copies! With the Montreal Women’s Center and other activists, a small publishing house was founded, the Montreal Health Press-Les Presses de la santé de Montréal. The feminist collective will publish manuals on menopause, sexually transmitted infections and sexual assault, always in both languages.
Abortion Counseling
THE Birth Control Handbook will have another major consequence on Donna’s life: as soon as it was published in 1968, she and Allan began to be asked to help young women in need of an abortion, at a time when it was still illegal.
The couple contacts the Dr Henry Morgentaler, who performs abortions at his clinic, and two other doctors. Their apartment becomes an SEO service. “People came to us, we explained to them what was going to happen and we sent them to one of the three clinics. We helped people from the Maritimes, Ontario, New York, and elsewhere in the United States! »
At the time, it was estimated that in Quebec, 10,000 to 25,000 clandestine abortions were performed each year. They are expensive: $302 ($2,700 in constant dollars) on average for the services of a doctor, and $155 ($1,400 today) for a non-professional. Those who perform abortion face heavy prison sentences. The pregnant woman herself faces two years behind bars.
Performed clandestinely, the operation is high risk. In 1966 alone, complications from self-abortion and abortion were the leading cause of hospitalization for women in Canada: 45,482 admissions.
That year, the Dr Serge Mongeau exhibits in the Photo-Journal the consequences of having recourse to abortion, as told anonymously by 122 women.
Curettages for the wealthiest, and intra-uterine douches, dubious serums or knitting pins for the others. Peritonitis, perforations of the uterus, hemorrhages, infections, embolisms, anemia, sterility, excruciating pain. One of the women found herself between life and death. Another had to receive 14 blood transfusions. One of the cases ended with removal of the uterus.
In 1969, the Trudeau government amended the law governing birth control. The new measure is intended to be resolutely progressive, but in Quebec, it solves nothing.
Abortion is permitted exclusively in a hospital environment and subject to the approval of three doctors, who must ensure that it is intended to protect the health or the life of the mother. Very few doctors volunteer. In 1970, 180 abortions were performed in Anglophone hospitals in Montreal. In French-speaking establishments, only one. Until recently managed by religious communities, they do not cooperate.
Free and free abortion
The Dr Henry Morgentaler continues to practice in his private clinic, therefore illegally. He will even serve a prison sentence to defend his vision of abortion: safe, accessible, free of any judgment. Donna, who went into medicine and became the DD Cherniak, go work for him. “Henry Morgentaler was not just an activist. He was an excellent doctor. He had perfected the aspiration method, which was less invasive and safer. His fight will change mentalities.
In the street, Quebec women chant “we will have the children we want!” “. From 1975, Quebec will gradually cease to persist in the Dr Morgentaler and open access.
In 1989, Chantal Daigle will win in the Supreme Court the right to dispose of her body and, by extension, the decriminalization of abortion in Canada.
The perpetual taboo
After a successful career in family medicine and obstetrics, Donna Cherniak is now 74 years old. She is obviously concerned about the rollback of the right to abortion. “Women have always had abortions, and they will continue to do so, under all kinds of conditions. The reproduction of women is a bit taboo, it’s never a priority. »
Until 2000, each new edition of the Birth Control Handbook opened with an updated introduction. “It made me realize that each generation has to face the question of contraception, with its identity, with its sexuality. It’s never settled. »
To propose a text or to make comments and suggestions, write to Dave Noël at [email protected].