Pro-Choice Counter Protest to Anti-Abortion "Caravan"

When: THURSDAY, JUNE 28^TH, 6:30pm
Where: St. Vincent de Paul Church, 268 Roncesvalles Ave, Toronto

TORONTO, June 27, 2012 /CNW/ - Supporters of the anti-choice movement are traveling the country in the hope of overturning a woman's constitutional right to legal abortion services. The Ontario Coalition for Abortion Clinics (OCAC) and the CAW are organizing a peaceful demonstration to meet the anti-choice supporters as they arrive in Toronto.

The real Abortion Caravan took place in 1970, as members of the Vancouver Women's Caucus traveled across the country, stopping along the way to gather women's stories and concerns in order to make their voices heard in Ottawa, the Caravan's last stop. Protesting legal restriction on access to abortion, members of the Caravan shut down the House of Commons, the first time it had adjourned because of a gallery disturbance in its history.

The "New Abortion Caravan" (a project of the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform (CCBR), a subsidiary of the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform, an American organization), is appropriating the language of the real Abortion Caravan to oppose the rights that the women in 1970 fought so hard to ensure. Canada, where abortion is fully legal, has a strong pro-choice majority.

As Carolyn Egan of OCAC says, "The issue of woman's legal right to safe and accessible abortion services has been settled in 1988 by the Supreme Court of Canada." "The only question that remains is whether women across Canada have the ability to exercise this right", said Egan, "Not all provinces provide equal access to this necessary service" particularly, there are serious problems of access in the Maritime provinces that the federal government, whose job it is to enforce national healthcare standards of coverage, refuses to address. 

One of the protest organizers, Jordana Greenblatt, of OCAC, says: "The debate is over; safe legal abortion is here to stay in Canada." "We should be focusing on ensuring that all people have equal access to safe, legal, free, and local abortion services—to exercising their legal rights," said Greenblatt, "By trying to move the conversation backwards, the CCBR is wasting everyone's time." What's more, she is revolted by the CBR methods, which involve displaying placards and billboards and distributing postcards of graphic images of fetuses and of historical genocides, such as the Holocaust and the Rwandan genocide. "As a Jewish woman," she says, "I am appalled that they would exploit the historical genocide of my people to try to challenge my rights as a human being, guaranteed under the Charter."

Carolyn Egan 416-806-7985