Journalist recounts struggle for abortion access in new book
‘No Choice: The 30-Year Fight for Abortion on Prince Edward Island’ launching Sunday
A journalist and former P.E.I. resident, Kate McKenna sheds light on the long struggle to provide access to abortion on the Island in her new book, “No Choice: The 30-Year Fight for Abortion on Prince Edward Island.”
Abortion was made legal in Canada in 1969, and in 1988 a supreme court ruled that criminalizing abortion was unconstitutional. Despite this ruling, providing access to abortions was not constitutional.
However, the procedure falls under Canada’s Health Care Act, which all provinces must deliver. P.E.I. was the exception. McKenna illustrates how the influence of the Catholic Church and the Right to Life movement worked to lobby government officials, doctors and even to assume roles on hospital boards in order to prevent abortions from being made available to women on the Island. Instead, women would have to travel to New Brunswick, Halifax, or even Montreal, paying out of pocket; or they had to face humiliating referrals with doctors in order to take dangerous medications to have the procedure done. McKenna describes the stories of many women who were given little to no information about what was happening to their bodies, and some who were outright refused medical care during and after their procedures. Not only was the prolife stance of the province a human rights abuse and a failure of Canada’s health care system, it caused direct physical harm to P.E.I. women, she says.
McKenna introduces readers to the brave activists who fought for women’s rights and prochoice, risking being ostracized and fired from their jobs, and who often paid to take women off the Island to have the procedure performed. McKenna is a journalist with the CBC. She was a finalist for two Canadian Association of Journalism Awards and a silver medal winner of the Atlantic Journalism Award in enterprise print reporting.
She will celebrate the release of her book with a launch on May 6 at the Charlottetown Rodd at 7 p.m.