‘Perseverance and bravery’
Islander Kate McKenna writes book about Island’s abortion history
Charlottetown native, journalist and first-time author Kate McKenna has chosen a contentious topic for her first book.
“No Choice: The 30-Year Fight for Abortion on Prince Edward Island” takes a look at what it was like to be a pro-choice advocate during the fight to lift the province’s abortion ban and discusses the struggles and roadblocks the advocates faced throughout their decades-long fight.
McKenna says her book is about much more than abortion.
“It’s a great story of perseverance and bravery and what happens when a small group of people continuously fight for what they believe is right,” McKenna told The Guardian, adding it’s an important story with information Islanders should know about.
“I think that it’s an uncomfortable subject for a lot of people, and people might not seek out information about this, but it’s an important part of Island history. It’s one thing that made P.E.I. (unusual from) the rest of Canada, and I think people deserve to know why.”
In January 2016, abortion rights activists gave the government notice they would be filing a lawsuit to force the province to provide local abortion access to Islanders.
In March of that year, Premier Wade MacLauchlan said he wouldn’t fight the lawsuit and announced plans for a new women’s reproductive health centre that would offer a number of services, including abortions.
Before she was a journalist, McKenna, who now works for the CBC in Montreal, was one of the founders of the P.E.I. Reproductive Rights Organization (PRRO), which started in 2011.
While working with PRRO, McKenna met the women involved in the more than 30-year fight and learned what it was like to be involved in the prochoice movement during the 1980s.
“(I heard) what it was like to be on what was, at that point, maybe not the most popular side and kind of what a lot of these people had to put up with just to have their opinion out there,” she said. “So, as a journalist, I always found that to be kind of the story of a lifetime.”
McKenna said the process of writing the book was challenging, taking time after her day job to spend the evenings writing, but she said she had to keep going.
“That just pales in comparison to what some of the women in my book went through in trying to get these services here,” she said. “At least I knew once the book was done, it was going to get published, so I was working for a goal. But the people in the book were just working and trying so hard to push the issue forward and were coming up against wall after wall after wall.”
Colleen MacQuarrie, active feminist and associate professor of psychology at UPEI, has fought for abortion rights in the province for years and says McKenna’s book captures an important time in Island history.
“(‘No Choice’) provides an interesting perspective of the groundswell of change we were able to create in this province by documenting the harms of the lack of abortion services, communicating those harms to the public and engaging people’s hearts, as well as minds, to create advocacy and action,” she said.
“The five-year period we were actively documenting the evidence and creating communication strategies was an important cultural transition period in P.E.I. and it is wonderful to have a book that pulls the story together.”
“No Choice” comes out in May and can be pre-ordered online at Fernwoodpublishing. ca/book/no-choice.
“At least I knew once the book was done, it was going to get published, so I was working for a goal. But the people in the book were just working and trying so hard to push the issue forward and were coming up against wall after wall after wall.” Kate McKenna