http://rabble.ca/rabble_interview.shtml?x=16451&url=

Even in 1995, when I heard about it, in Manitoba or Saskatchewan (that's where I'm fuzzy) it was still illegal for a married woman to have an abortion without the written consent of her husband.

[ October 25, 2002: Message edited by: Lima Bean ]

I think there might be something on this in "Toronto's Girl Problem" by Carolyn Strange. It's a great book.

There's wild stuff in there. There's a story about social reformers in the 20s doing a survery of Toronto working girls, and on their survey, they classified any girl who accepted a hot chocolate from a man while skating, or pretty much allowed a man they didn't know well to buy them anything as an "occasional prostitute."

edited to add the decade

[ October 25, 2002: Message edited by: Alix ]

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I don’t know but I tend to feel that they won’t give me a chance to tell my case in court. They came up with this new ruling that no case could proceed against the Crown that happened before 1964. This blocked my case from going to the courts. The question is whether I will try to join in the appeal to that ruling. I would be very surprised if the ruling is overturned, though — there would be so much stuff coming up from other people who have been abused.

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My hair curled while I was reading this interview. I would like to see this woman join in the appeal, and I'd be willing to help, if that's possible. We owe her. One question the interview left me with: What happened to the baby she had during her abduction by the state? Was she allowed to keep him?

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Lima Bean, I thought that men could still give a woman trouble about getting an abortion if the man was claiming to be the child's father -- has that changed anywhere/everywhere?

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The Supreme Court of Canada says:

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There does not appear to be any jurisprudential basis for this argument. No court in Quebec or elsewhere has ever accepted the argument that a father's interest in a foetus which he helped create could support a right to veto a woman's decisions in respect of the foetus she is carrying. A number of cases in various jurisdictions outside of Quebec have considered this argument and explicitly rejected it: Paton v. British Pregnancy Advisory Service Trustees, supra; Medhurst v. Medhurst, supra; Whalley v. Whalley (1981), 122 D.L.R. (3d) 717 (B.C.S.C.); Mock v. Brandanburg (1988), 61 Alta. L.R. (2d) 235 (Q.B.); Doe v. Doe, 314 N.E.2d 128 (Mass. 1974); Jones v. Smith, 278 So.2d 339 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 1973). We have been unable to find a single decision in Quebec or elsewhere which would support the allegation of "father's rights" necessary to support this injunction. There is nothing in the Civil Code or any legislation in Quebec which could be used to support the argument. This lack of a legal basis is fatal to the argument about "father's rights".

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It is a case called Tremblay v. Daigle and I unfortunately to not know how to insert a link to the site properly.

[ October 25, 2002: Message edited by: kropotkin1951 ]

I remember especially that Chantal (?) Daigle couldn't wait for the court (ok: was that a Quebec court she was facing in the first place?), and headed down to the U.S. to get the abortion in time.

But I'm glad that things have been settled this way. Whew.

I don't know if you read this passage:

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The Freedom of Information Act came out in 1987 and I started doing my research in 1989 to get my documents. I didn’t get a case file until 1993. They had to find these things in the archives. In 1996, I got a report that had evidence as to how I was treated in the Mercer Reformatory. So, then I was in a position to do something.

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... but the upshot is, she couldn't even seek justice, in a practical sense, until 48 years after the incident. So the passage of time is not significant. The clock began ticking in 1987.

Edited to add:

As for the common assertions in such cases that "no-one knew it was wrong," or "it was in accord with the values of the time," Velma Demerson said this:

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I found a document in the archives from 1941 in which it was admitted that we shouldn’t have been arrested, we didn’t have a right of appeal and so forth. But they continued to allow women to be arrested.

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So that doesn't wash, either.

[ October 26, 2002: Message edited by: 'lance ]

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Does that mean we should all go after the government.

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Ministerial Resignations, 1867 to Date

1978.01.27
FOX, Francis
Solicitor General of Canada
Liberal
Signed the husband's name on a hospital document to procure an abortion for a woman with whom he had had an affair

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This scandal wouldn't have been a scandal if the woman involved had been able to have an abortion without her husband's permission.

As for the Daigle case, last I heard, the Crown was trying to have her former boyfriend declared a dangerous offender in 2000:

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CALGARY (CP) A lay chaplain who befriended Jean-Guy Tremblay while he was in jail says she was terrified by the anger he displayed as a guest in her house after his 1996 release.
 Hope Fleming, a member of the First Assembly Church, was testifying Tuesday at a sentencing hearing in which the Crown is asking to have Tremblay declared a dangerous offender.
 Tremblay, 36, was convicted last December of several charges -- including unlawful confinement, assault causing bodily harm, uttering threats and criminal harassment -- involving Monilaws and another Calgary woman ...

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[ October 26, 2002: Message edited by: writer ]

I confess, I can't help it -- if I were ever in that situation, or worse, one of my sisters was, I would need restraining, followed by anger-management classes.

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The victime is still alive. That alone makes seeking justice worthwhile.

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Bingo.

Of course there are limits. Had this woman been complaining that her long-dead great-great-grandmother was treated this way in the 1830s, or that she was, say, turned down for a government job in 1939 because of her sex, I would agree that it's been too long. But she herself was thrown in jail - an abusive jail, too - just because someone - her father? the local authorities? - didn't like her choice of boyfriend. For such an enormous injustice, 62 years isn't a very long time.

[ October 27, 2002: Message edited by: Smith ]

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That didn't happen to my parents or
grandparents; how about yours?

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No, it didn't, but it did happen to my great-great-great grandparents in Russia. I guess I have a case against their government. In addition, I feel I have personal injustice issues with the Harris Tories in Ontario, and the Chretien government, so if I institute lawsuits, I assume that I can count on your support in paying me a multi-million dollar settlement?

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so if I institute lawsuits, I assume that I can count on your support in paying me a multi-million dollar settlement?

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Tell me more about what Harris and Chretien have done to you; and I might very well support you -- but for multi-millions, no.

I doubt it's money she's after so much as a public acknowledgement that what they did to her was wrong, even in the historical context of the time.

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My point is (for the third time) that there are altogether too many people who wish to place a claim on our tax money.

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Please define or describe "too many."

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Although I feel that this woman is perfectly justified in her claim (for the third time - for those of you who are comprehensionally challenged), there are too many 'historical' claims that, if fully addressed, would cost the government billions of (our) dollars...

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Name three, please. No, name two. Then kindly explain (1) why, even if they'd cost "billions" of dollars, they'd be unjustified, (2) whether they'd be justified if they were to cost mere millions, instead of billions, to settle, and (3) how big a claim has to get, monetarily, before it's converted from a justified to an unjustified one.

In short, mandrake, where -- in a rhetorical phrase we hear rather too often from opponents of historical redress -- would you draw the line?

Edited to add:

It's dawned on me that the feminism forum wouldn't necessarily be the best place to carry on in this vein, and it'd be off-topic on this thread besides. So I've started a spin-off thread over here.

[ October 27, 2002: Message edited by: 'lance ]

A decade after this legislation goes up in flames, I married a person of another race than mine. I had no idea that I'd come that close to being at risk of imprisonment. Regardless of the legal changes, I still lost jobs, got denied apartments, and listened to a lot of caring friends tell me that they had concerns for my children's safety on their future schoolgrounds. It may not have been imprisonment in a physical sense, but it felt like that at times.

I used to proudly boast that canucks had a better race record than americans....our marriage is still illegal in several states. I guess that's a recent phenomenon.