La Belle Province: An analysis of why Quebec’s abortion access came to be

Despite abortion being decriminalized in Canada in 1988’s Supreme Court case R. v. Morgentaler, accessing an abortion is very different for Canadian women, depending on where they live. In some provinces, notably on the East Coast, abortion is extremely difficult to access. By contrast, other provinces have made it reasonably simple to access abortion. One of these provinces is Québec. Québec offers exceptional abortion access, hosting 46 of Canada’s 94 abortion facilities. In fact, “[n]o other province comes close to providing the same level of access” (Vogel, 2015). Scholars have connected abortion access in Québec to a unique form of progressive Québecois feminism. However, this brand of pro-abortion feminism seems to be in conflict with Catholicism, the religion of 75% of Québeckers (Riga). This presents a puzzle in the development of abortion attitudes and access in the province. How and why does Canada’s most Catholic province also host the nation’s best and most progressive abortion access? In this essay, after a brief discussion of the history of abortion in Québec, I will explore how the nationalism and Catholicism unique to Québec have created the environment of abortion access that exists today. I will use a reproductive justice framework in this discussion. Reproductive justice, as defined by Kimala Price, “recognizes the importance of linking reproductive health and rights to other social justice issues…. Although reproductive justice activists acknowledge that an emphasis on gaining legal rights, lobbying, and electoral politics is not necessarily a bad thing, they argue that there has to be an intersectional analysis and the acknowledgment of oppression in order for women to truly gain freedom” (Price, 2010, p. 43). Using this lens, it is important to first acknowledge that while abortion has taken center stage in reproductive discourse, and will do so in this essay, it is only one of many elements of reproductive freedom over which women must have autonomy and should be studied academically. Literature shows that “[t] he progressive treatment of abortion in Québec began long before it did in the rest of the country” (Johnstone, 2018, p. 96). In fact, before the Supreme Court’s 1988 decision, Québec had liberalized abortion regulation so much that after R v. Morgentaler, not much in Québec actually changed (Johnstone, 2018, p. 98). Québec’s liberalization can be dated back to the 1960s, a period of Québecois history known as the Quiet Revolution. The Quiet Revolution was a series of political reforms undertaken by the provincial Liberal government from 1960 to 1966. It was a “far-reaching campaign of accelerated state intervention… in the areas of education, economic management, health and social services” (Gavreau, 2005, p. 3). The liberalization and modernization of society during the Quiet Revolution meant that by the 1960s and 1970s, “Québec feminism was already radical, politicised and successful in transforming a pre-existing network of women’s organisations into a vibrant contemporary, second wave movement” (Connolly, 2005, p. 79). This vibrant and well-organized movement pushed to improve abortion access in Québec, which, up to that point, had mainly taken place in anglophone hospitals in Montreal (Stettner, 2016, p. 38). In 1973, Dr. Henry Morgentaler, a physician and abortion rights activist, was first arrested for providing illegal abortions in Montreal, and quickly became a symbol of the pro-abortion cause in Québec. Surprisingly, he was found not guilty, a verdict which “shed light on the changing social climate in the province” (Johnstone, 2018, p. 58). Throughout the 1970s, Morgentaler was acquitted in Québec courts several times, which strongly suggested “the degree to which the abortion law was out of touch with social attitudes in Québec, which had been transformed by the Quiet Revolution” (Stettner, 2016, p. 48). The refusal of Québec juries to convict Morgentaler contributed to public acceptance of abortion as a woman’s right, and the procedure being seen as socially necessary and acceptable. A turning point in the fight for abortion liberalization in Qué-

-bec came in November 1976— two months after Morgentaler’s third acquittal—when the Parti Québecois (PQ) came into power. Led by René Lévesque, the PQ was a left-wing nationalist party that supported abortion access. “In defiance of federal law, the new government quickly granted immunity from prosecution to all doctors qualified to perform abortions,” effectively decriminalizing abortion (Stettner, 2016, p. 48). The PQ government also instituted funding for most abortions at this time, and voted for “free abortions upon request” for Québecois women at its 1977 party convention, although Lévesque vetoed the vote due to concerns that the stance would be too politically divisive. The provincial government’s support for abortion “strengthened pro-choice activism in the province,” with many Québeckers coming to agree with Lévesque that, when it came to abortion, it was time to “get out of the dark ages… and start to do something positive” (Johnstone, 2018, p. 97). Since the 1970s, as well as since abortion’s decriminalization nationally in 1988, progressivism towards abortion in Québec has continued to outpace the rest of Canada. Successive governments have continued to create “exceptionally progressive services under the umbrella of health care” (Johnstone, 2018, p. 115), and “unlike other provincial governments, the National Assembly of Québec has not remained silent on the issue of abortion” (Johnstone, 2018, p. 99). “The acknowledgement of abortion as a matter of women’s rights is evident in all aspects of Québec society, including its National Assembly” (Johnstone, 2018, p. 96), which continues to pass pro-abortion motions, such as one in 2010 which “reaffirm[ed] the rights of women to freedom of choice and to free and accessible abortion services and ask[ed] the federal Government and the Prime Minister of Canada to put an end to the ambiguity that perurban counterparts. This is very uncommon in other Canadian provinces, which provide abortions, but where it is extremely challenging for rural and/or low-income women to access abortion services. By contrast, due to the CLSC model, half of Québec’s abortion facilities are in rural areas, and for over 40 years, “Québec has dedicated funds to establish abortion clinics in underserved areas” (Vogel, 2015). As seen through reproductive justice, in order for women to achieve true autonomy, it must be easy, private and cost-effective for all to access an abortion, regardless of their geography. Thus, not only is Québec a leader in numerical access, it is also a leader in equitable access. Taking a reproductive justice lens, it is worth noting that Québec’s focus on gender equality and abortion’s role in that movement is monolithic. The govern-

“IT MAY SEEM THESE TWO THINGS CANNOT EXIST SIDEBY-SIDE, AND IN SOME WAYS THEY CAN-NOT—“IN CATHOLIC JURISDICTIONS, THE DECLINE OF A RELIGIOUS NATIONAL IDENTITY IS LIKELY TO FAVOUR A LIBERALIZATION OF ABORTION RIGHTS”—BUT IN ACTUALITY, THE STRENGTH OF CATHOLICISM IN QUÉBEC HAS CONTRIBUTED TO ABORTION ATTITUDES, ALBEIT IN A RATHER BACKWARDS WAY.”

sists in relations to this question” (Johnstone, 2018, pp. 99-100). Currently, abortion in Québec is administered by two types of public medical facilities: hospitals and CLSCs, community health centres with abortion services. Many CLSCs are located outside urban areas, allowing for rural women in Québec to have similar abortion access to their ment openly acknowledges the oppression that women face in society, but omit intersectionality in that acknowledgement. As in the rest of Canada, women of colour, low-income women, women with disabilities and LGBTQIA2S+ people face greater and different oppression than white, cisgender, middle-class women. The feminist movement has historically

marginalized many of these women, and the fight for abortion in Canada has been shrouded in the legacy of forced sterilization and eugenics, which were extremely traumatic for many Canadian women, especially Indigenous women. While the CLSC system is a good start in providing local and accessible care, in order to operationalize abortion as part of the greater reproductive justice movement, Québec must acknowledge the differences in experience that intersectionality creates and move towards creating sustainable and culturally appropriate access to all reproductive rights, for all women. Québec is heavily Catholic, a religion that is openly and oftentimes virulently anti-abortion. Given this, why does Québec have such a progressive take on abortion? There are two driving forces behind this phenomenon: nationalism and Catholicism, which have played on each other to form today’s climate on abortion in Québec. Over the last 100 or so years, and especially during the latter half of the 20th century, there was a powerful nationalist independence movement in Québec. Scholarly work on nationalist independence movements have shown that they can “open up opportunities for women’s movements to mobilize and engage directly in the nation-building process” (Beauregard et. al., 2020, p. 3) and can “become a powerful carrying structure for feminist politics” (Beauregard et. al., 2020, p. 2). This is because as nationalists look towards building a new society, women’s movements may see an opportunity to imbue this new society with feminist principles. Moreover, nationalist identities quickly and easily become enmeshed in public policy, “[b] ecause public policies in advanced industrial societies are typically formulated by governments tied to national boundaries’’ (Kozlowska et. al., 2016). As a form of public policy, social policies like abortion can thus “become contested yet powerful national symbols or, at the very least… framed and understood as expressions of concrete national norms and identities’’ (Kozlowska et. al., 2016). For independence movements that situate themselves on the left, abortion and other progressive social programs can therefore become “link[ed to] secession debates on equality, welfare and justice issues” (Beauregard et. al., 2020, p. 2). “A common ideological positioning supportive of a social justice agenda thus creates an affinity between independence and feminism,” where feminist movements can use nationalism as a vehicle to further their goals, and where nationalists may “make direct appeals to women’s groups and feminist movements in an attempt to gain allies” (Beauregard et. al., 2020, p. 2). This was certainly the case in Québec. As shown by the razor-thin margin in the 1995 Québec referendum, throughout the second half of the 20th century, nationalism was strong in Québec. Many prominent Québecois were enthusiastic about creating a distinct nation in Québec, which nationalist leaders envisioned as being a left-wing socialist state that stood apart from conservative English Canada. Québec feminists, the majority of whom were also left-wing, as evidenced by their fight for gender equality, recognized the opportunity this provided to promote feminism in the province. They formed a close alliance with the PQ, a major reason why it was a PQ government to decriminalize and fund abortion for the first time both in Québec and across Canada. Finding similar values as left-wing movements, Québecois separatists worked heavily with feminists, and “the Québec feminist movement has directly and actively engaged in the fight for independence” since the 1960s (Beauregard et. al., 2020, p. 2). Québecois feminists used the province’s nationalist sentiment to their benefit “by combining discourses about the liberation of women, Québec, and society” (Johnstone, 2018, p. 97). For many feminists, “women’s liberation from patriarchy came to be viewed as possible only through [Québecois] sovereignty” (Beauregard et. al., 2020, p. 2). It was successfully argued by feminists that only through the eradication of patriarchy could the independent and socialist state that Québec nationalists wanted be truly realized. The linking of feminism with the popularity of nationalism legitimized feminist ideas, including about abortion legality and access. Québecois feminists made it clear that women’s equal participation in society required bodily autonomy and access to abortion. They were unapologetic in demanding that abortion access was integral to feminism, so much so that after Lévesque vetoed the right to free and accessible abortions in the PQ’s 1976 platform, many feminists left the party in protest (Beauregard et. al., 2020, p. 5). Clearly, Québec feminists

tionalism required gender equality and gender equality required abortion access, convincing many Québeckers who believed in Québecois nationalism to also support abortion. The power of these links is supported by not only academic literature, but the complementary trajectory of abortion access and nationalist sentiment in Québec, both of which gained momentum after the Quiet Revolution. It is impossible to talk about Québec without speaking of Catholicism, as it is such a critical part of Québecois society. Further, “religion is not outside of nationalism but embedded in it,” as “religion helps define the boundaries of the nation” (Kozlowska et. al., 2016). This is certainly the case in Québec, where the Catholic majority population differentiates it from most other provinces in Canada. As Catholicism is often outspokenly anti-feminist and anti-abortion, it is counterintuitive that Canada’s most Catholic province also provides the most abortion access. It may seem these two things cannot exist side-byside, and in some ways they cannot—“in Catholic jurisdictions, the decline of a religious national identity is likely to favour a liberalization of abortion rights” (Kozlowska et. al., 2016)—but in actuality, the strength of Catholicism in Québec has contributed to abortion attitudes, albeit in a rather backwards way. Scholars show that abortion liberalization in Québec was “the product of a long political struggle, which took place after decades of highly restrictive and punitive abortion policies backed by the Catholic Church” (Kozlowska et. al., 2016). Thus, the strong progressive tradition in Québec of the last 50-60 years, from which abortion access came, can be seen as a backlash to Catholic Church domination. Prior to 1960, Catholic values formed the roots of Québecois society, and the Church was the backbone of all Québec institutions. This had a deep effect on the role of women in Québecois society, as Catholicism “institutionalize[d] the traditional nuclear family as the foundation of the nation,” (Kozlowska et. al., 2016) which includes a subservient, domestic mother figure. Feminist scholars have argued that “the social body constrains the way the physical body is perceived” (Brown, 1992, p. 223). In Québec, society was “[d]ominated by a male-centred, sex-negative conservative Roman Catholicism… [which] ideologically manipulated women into believing that their bodies were linked to all that is lower and should therefore remain hidden, unspoken” (Brown, 1992, p. 223). The Church told society that the female body and its functions—menstruation, pregnancy, and giving birth—were taboo (Brown, 1992, p. 223). Thus, open discussion of women’s bodies became extremely stigmatized, and women were shamed and guilted into traditional, restrictive roles, in service of God. Since the discussion of the female body was so frowned upon, it was impossible for women to gain bodily autonomy. The female body was owned by religious society, and women were regarded as “loyal and compliant servants of the Roman Catholic Church” (Gervais, 2012, p. 385). However, as the province’s clerical elite “vigorously” defended traditionally restrictive roles for women, “the inconsistencies between feminism and Catholicism [were] exposed and the discrimination faced by women… in the Roman Catholic Church

[became] better known” (Gervais, 2012, p. 385). There began to be an “excruciating tension with the institutional church” for many Catholic women in Québec. By the midpoint of the 20th century, feminism had begun to take hold in newer and stronger ways, and it became clear that Catholicism as it had traditionally been practiced in Québec was no longer consistent with a feminist consciousness. Moreover, it was not only feminists who were fed up with the Church’s role in society. “By 1960, because of its very traditional character, and its clericalism and alliance with political conservatives, Catholicism had become increasingly unpopular with a rising middle class of professionals, academics, and administrators devoted to secular and technocratic ideals of economic progress and political modernization” (Gavreau, 2005, p. 5). The backlash to Catholicism in the 1960s was a direct cause of the reforms taken during the Quiet

Revolution. Among many political and social reforms, the period is most notable for “usher[ing] in changes that put an emphatic secular stamp on government and society” (Chew, 2009, p. 84). The Quiet Revolution purposefully secularized Québec by reducing the influence of the Catholic Church across society, politics, and the economy. The government removed Church control of education and healthcare services, secularizing and modernizing these services in a complete overhaul of Québec’s public sector. Throughout the Quiet Revolution and the rest of the 20th century, Québecois women’s bodies became a battleground when it came to religion. Abortion, especially, became a lightning rod, as it represented the most evil subversion of both the stigmatization of women’s bodies and conventional roles of women as mothers. Scholarly literature shows that high levels of Catholicism are anathematic to abortion access, and so as Québecois women began to increasingly identify with feminism in the 20th century, they began to question the validity of Catholicism’s stifling and sexist rules. Feminism showed women that they should have control over their bodies and reproductive systems, while Catholicism told women the opposite. And after decades of subjugation, women were tired of the stigma and subservience ascribed to their bodies, and thus they participated heavily in the Quiet Revolution, working toward a more secular society where women were free to operate their own bodies, including obtaining an abortion. However, it cannot be ignored that many Québeckers remained Catholic. Further, prior to 1960, feminism was alive and well in Québec, even under a strictly religious society. The fact that so many women were able to use Catholicism to their advantage, when the religion itself so strongly opposes abortion and other feminist tenets, is an oft-ignored narrative. Scholars find that throughout the 20th century, and especially before the Quiet Revolution, “women in Québec may in fact have been strategically investing in the Catholic faith in very large numbers… for their own personal need for emancipation and expression in the public sphere” (Connolly, 2005, p. 79). Catholic women, and especially nuns, were encouraged to form Catholic women’s organizations and spend time with other Catholic women. In the 1930s, for example, the Church created various Catholic Action movements, which enlisted thousands of young women, encouraging them to identify beyond the home and showing them the power of organizing. The Church encouraged this with the intention of propping up its own ideals, but women in Québec subverted this in order to use their networks to gain power as a collective force to further women’s rights. Nuns, especially, became interesting figures in this story. In most other monotheistic religions, women are not given substantial respect or power, but nuns are seen as highly respected members of the Catholic community, are highly educated, and are tasked with the responsibility of providing healthcare and education. This inadvertently elevated women within the Church, and created a class of women who, while still loyal to religion, were educated and active in society outside of the home. To this day, “many ‘Catholic feminists’ remain ‘Catholic’ and are thus affiliated with the institutional church, but only to the extent that they may enrich their essentially feminist spirituality with select aspects of Catholicism that they still find meaningful” (Gervais, 2012, p. 388). Catholicism has not been extinguished from Québec society by any means, but to the extent that it exists, women have used it as a tool for comfort and activism on their own terms, refusing to be defined by the traditional views the Church imposed on Québec society for decades. Although women in Québec have found resourceful ways to adjust religion to feminism, in remembering years of Church-instituted restriction, Québecois feminists

have a strong reason to adamantly support secularization and abortion access for women. This history is unique to Québec—no other Canadian provinces have gone through a period similar to the Quiet Revolution—and thus provide a strong basis for Québec’s unique abortion attitudes. Unsurprisingly, there is a lack of literature on how Québecois women of other faiths have interacted with both their own religions and the dominant Catholic faith in their journeys for autonomy. In the literature on Catholic women and abortion in Québec, there are also very few mentions of the other oppressions instituted by the Catholic Church, such as the residential school system, and how these oppressions interacted with reproductive movements such as that of abortion. This unfortunately mirrors a pattern across academia and traditional feminism, where some narratives are privileged over others. The white, middle-class, married women dominating the feminist movement and who lead the backlash to the Church in 20th century Québec are not the only story, but their privilege means that the literature has much to say about their journey, and very little to say about women who had different experiences. Moreover, while freedom for white, Christian women is prized in Québec, policies such as Bill 21 show that the same attitude is not afforded to other women, specifically those of religious minorities. “[T]he assumption that feminists were all on the same side is a further deep misunderstanding of the structure and heterogeneity of the Québec women’s movement,” and of society in general (Connolly, 2005, p. 80). If we are going to be pro-reproductive justice, rather than just pro-choice, we must give more weight to historically untold stories and expand the narrative of which women are ‘deserving’. To this day, abortion access in Québec exceeds that of any other province in Canada. While this may be surprising given the province’s traditional Catholic background, it is shown that religion and nationalism ultimately popularized progressivism and secularism, creating an environment where abortion access flourished. However, there is still work to be done. Reproductive justice shows us that abortion is only one element of women’s reproductive freedom, yet it is still a singular focus for many Québecois (and Canadians). Moreover, while Québec is progressive when it comes to abortion, narratives from women of colour, low socioeconomic status, and the LGBTQIA2S+ community are still absent from mainstream narratives. The impressive access in the province is no doubt a highly dignified stance, and standpoint for other Canadians to emulate, but it in no way should signify an end to the movement for reproductive justice and freedom in Québec.