Can we talk about abortion?

MISE À DAY

I can't wait for March 8th. Not because it's International Women's Day. 

But because that's when you can see on the Crave platform: Disobey: Chantale Daigle's choice.

The Daigle affair took place 34 years ago, but I remember it like it was yesterday, because it marked for life. 

I hope that the broadcast of this series in six episodes, produced by Sophie Lorain and Alexis Durand-Brault, will be the occasion for a balanced and intelligent debate on abortion.

LA END OF TABOOS

Chantale Daigle wanted to have an abortion, but the father of her future child, Jean-Guy Tremblay, had obtained an injunction to prevent her from freely disposing of her body.&nbsp ;

Chantale Daigle had to go to the United States to terminate her pregnancy. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court, which ruled in her favor. Thanks to her courageous fight, Chantale Daigle became a heroine.

In 1989, as a young journalist in the newsroom of Radio-Canada where only that was talked about, I remember very well having been traumatized, like many Canadian women, by this blatant history of denial of women's rights. Many of us wondered: “What if this happened to me? “. I was 23, Chantale Daigle was 21…

But 34 years later, there is no point in sticking your head in the sand saying: “The abortion debate is over in Quebec, the question is settled, we put the key in the door and threw the key”.

There remains a gray area, a malaise in the face of certain abortions. In the 1980s, the slogan of feminists was: “We will have the children we want”. 

But in 2023, the question we must ask ourselves is: “What do we do with late abortions? What about selective abortions? »

As a feminist, we want to defend women's rights. It's logic. But what about the rights of little girls who will never see the light of day because their mother was told that “in her culture, we don't want girls”?

That's good more complex than a pro-life fight c. pro‐choice.

Want an example?

My colleague Héloïse Archambault reported in 2021, in the midst of the pandemic, the following situation: “Although abortion is an unrestricted right in Canada, Quebec women who wanted to terminate a pregnancy after 23 weeks had long been sent to the United States. United at the expense of the Ministry of Health and Social Services (MSSS). The reason ? No hospital wanted to offer the service here. However, the closure of the border to the south, in March 2020, forced the network to treat these women. »

LET'S TALK!

The broadcast of the series, written by Isabelle Pelletier and Daniel Thibault, will be an opportunity to talk about this delicate question.

Not to question the principle itself. But to have a balanced discussion on the modalities surrounding this intervention which is not insignificant. 

Without falling into one extreme (ultraconservatives and religious groups) or the other. 

Canada won't turn into Gilead (the fictional state in The Scarlet Handmaid, where women are forced to procreate), just because we talk to each other frankly about abortion.