Abortion Rights: Giving Teens the ‘Information They Need to Have’

• My Body, My Choice: The Fight for Abortion Rights
• Robin Stevenson
• Orca Book Publishers (2019)

The week after Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration, award-winning author Robin Stevenson began working on her new book for teenagers, My Body My Choice: The Fight for Abortion Rights.

The timing was critical for Stevenson, who had witnessed the impact of misinformation and stigma about abortion on young women as both a social worker and author.

Today, anti-abortion rhetoric has only increased, putting providers and activists at risk, stigmatizing access to reproductive rights, and kickstarting the removal of fundamental human rights from women.

As the reaction against recent abortion bans in Alabama, Georgia, and Iowa reaches a ferocious peak, the premiers of Alberta and Ontario, as well as right-wing politicians in B.C. and elsewhere in Canada, have courted anti-abortion advocates.

The Tyee spoke with Stevenson about the journey of writing her book, the differences between the U.S. and Canada, and the importance of providing honest information about abortion to young adults. Our interview is edited for length and clarity.

The Tyee: While you were researching and working on this comprehensive book, was there anything that surprised you about abortion or its history?

Robin Stevenson: I guess what most struck me was how many people had been fighting for so long to achieve the rights that we have now, both in Canada and in the U.S.

I think because I write for young people and spend a lot of time speaking with young people — realizing that for people who are teens and young adults now, they’ve grown up during a time when abortion is legal and, while not always 100 per cent accessible, it’s a very different time than older people might remember.

I was struck by both the long, long fight of how many people had worked incredibly hard to achieve these rights, and how around the world, how many people are still standing up for reproductive rights, and just how passionate and determined and dedicated those people are.

Why did you decide to write your book for teens and adolescents?

The history of the fight for abortion rights — because we’re going back to the ‘60s and ‘70s and ‘80s — which while relatively recent, is not something that teens were here to experience. I think it’s important that they know that history.

I think it’s important that we’re not complacent about abortion rights, and that we recognize that the reason we have those rights is [because of] people who fought hard to achieve and protect them, and that we need to be vigilant that rights don’t protect themselves, and that this is a fight which is ongoing.

It’s a fight that this generation and young people are going to have to pick and continue, and they are doing so.

I think this is information they need to have.... And also, my experience with young people, both as a social worker and as an author, is that they very much want that information. They want to have these conversations, they want to know about activists, what they’re doing, and they want to be able to speak up for themselves and for their rights.

We’ve certainly seen that in Canada; for example, in Ontario with the recent cuts to sex education. We saw thousands of high school students walking out of schools, demanding comprehensive education. I think that young people are clearly saying that they need more of this information.

Reading the book, it reminded me of how little I learned during my own sex education during middle and high school. There were a lot of things that I learned. And as someone who likes to think she’s very educated about feminist issues and reproductive rights, I was like, wow, the school system really didn’t do us any service.

Absolutely. I think people are often hesitant to talk to young people about a lot of issues, really. But I think that we need to give young people a lot more credit and a lot more respect, and that we need to give them access to information.

What struck me was the link between the history of abortion and racism. Some people argue that the intersection of these two are a thing of the past: forced sterilization is no longer a race issue. Within your own research and while you were writing this book, do you think an intersection still exists right now? Does that look different from what it used to?

I think there’s absolutely an intersection right now. If you look at what’s happening in the U.S. right now with abortion bans and restrictions being placed on abortions, that always affects the most marginalized people. People who have money have always been able to find a sympathetic solution or be able to travel to access abortion services. People who don’t have money are the people most badly hurt by these restrictions.

Many of the states that are passing these bans are in the southern U.S., which have a larger population of people of colour. And I think that consistently what we see is that people of colour are the most affected by these types of bans and restrictions.

Look at the situation in Alabama, with the ban that was just passed. That’s a state that has a large black population. More than half the state is female, and yet that ban was passed by 25 white men. In a state where less than 25 per cent of the population would actually support that kind of ban.

With Canada, we like to pretend that we’re very multiculturally inclusive and that we have a lot of respect for marginalized communities. Is there anything happening in Canada that’s similar to the U.S. in terms of access to abortion?

The legal situation in Canada is very different. Abortion rights are more secure in Canada than they are in the U.S.; those rights are protected.

The challenges in Canada have been around access and funding. In Prince Edward Island, it’s only quite recently that people are able to access abortion there without having to travel out of province. In New Brunswick right now, the provincial government only funds abortions provided in hospitals, not in clinics.

And again, those types of things mean that people have to take more time off work, they have to travel, and there’s a cost associated with traveling, access, medicine and the procedure. People who are more marginalized and have less money [will face barriers].

The other issue in Canada more recently is around abortion pills and funding, and access to abortion pills, which hopefully has the potential to make abortion a lot more accessible to people in more remote areas, but again that potential needs to be actualized.

For many marginalized peoples, racialized or not, the cost of raising a child can be a financial burden. There seems to be a lot of discourse about anti-abortion ideologies and yet, the reality seems to be very anti-life. Where does this hypocrisy comes from?

I think that the hypocrisy of the anti-abortion lobby is embedded in a lot of number of ways.

First, things that we actually know would lower the rate of unwanted pregnancies and the rate of abortion are comprehensive sex education, access to free contraception, and support for people who are raising young children. None of those things are things that are actually advocated for by the anti-abortion lobby. In fact, the anti-abortion lobby tends to be opposed to comprehensive sex education and make it more difficult for people to access contraception. So, there’s certainly hypocrisy in that.

I think there’s also hypocrisy around the issue of talking about being pro-life but doing very little to actually ensure that people have the support they need to make a choice about whether they want to have a child, to be able to afford to raise that child in a safe community, to have that child be safe from say, gun violence. I think there’s hypocrisy on any number of levels that is being raised.

Again, thinking about the U.S., access to healthcare and healthcare for people who are pregnant and delivering children, it’s a huge issue. And the rates of [maternal] mortality among black women in the U.S. are very high.

I think those are all things that, if one is concerned about life, that one should be addressing as opposed to merely trying to force people to continue pregnancy and to give birth against their will, which is pretty much what we’re seeing right now.

A lot of people might say, you know what’s happening in the U.S. will never happen in Canada, but we have seen anti-abortion rallies in Toronto, and even in B.C., some MLAs have taken stances with pro-lifers. Do you think that it’s inevitable that this might become a reality for Canada, and is there perhaps a way to prevent it from happening?

Canadians should not be complacent. I think that people have been fighting to protect these rights and need to continue protecting these rights. I think that it’s very concerning when politicians make statements which undermine the Charter rights of Canadians, which is what we’re seeing from people like [BC Liberal MLAs] Laurie Throness and Rich Coleman, Doug Ford, Andrew Scheer, Jason Kenney, you know any number of Canadian politicians who are clearly not in support of abortion rights and access.

I think that with the federal election coming up, people need to ask those hard questions, and ask not just about whether people would reopen the abortion debate but ask, “What are you or what is your government going to do to protect people’s rights to access abortion, to expand access to abortion to ensure that all Canadians can access abortion services, and those services are fully funded?” To push for clear answers to those questions.

I do think it’s really important that we be vigilant and continue to speak up. I also think there’s a real concern that when you have the kind of rhetoric we have right now coming out of the U.S. that emboldens the anti-choice movement in Canada and increases the amount of stigma around abortion. This is an incredibly common medical procedure. One in four women have an abortion by the age of 45. It’s not something there should be silence around. And nobody should feel or have to feel ashamed for making the decision that is right for them.

I think that pushing back against the stigma around abortion is really important. A lot of people lately sharing their stories about having abortions and talking about why they made these choices and what it meant for them to be able to access that choice, I think those stories are incredibly powerful and I have a great deal of respect and gratitude for everybody who’s been stepping up and sharing those stories.

In your book, a lot of the stories you include are of women who’ve had abortions in the past, and they were able to pursue their goals and build a better future for themselves. Were there any women you spoke to who had abortions and spoke about how difficult it was on their mental health, or perhaps they were not necessarily confident about it, post-abortion?

I would say that the majority of people that I spoke to while I was writing the book, their stress was more around being able to access the procedure.... Their primary feeling after having the procedure was relief that they’d been able to make that choice.

But certainly, statistically, an unwanted pregnancy is a very stressful event, and whether you choose to continue that pregnancy or to terminate that pregnancy, there’s a similar percentage of people that will experience depression for example, whether they could terminate or continue the pregnancy.

But the fact [is] that having an unwanted pregnancy in itself is a difficult, stressful event. The majority of people experience relief for being able to access the procedure.

Is there anything you’d like to add?

I would say that abortion often gets portrayed as controversial. And I don’t think it should be. I think that when we’re talking about a procedure that is this common, where we all know many people who had abortions, where it’s an essential part of our healthcare system and constitutional rights, this shouldn’t be controversial.

What should be controversial is the fact that in 2019, anti-choice groups are speaking to force people to continue pregnancy and give birth against their will.

I think it should be controversial that they want to ban a medical procedure, which we know from having seen around the world and other countries and from our own history, that you can’t ban, that you can’t actually ban abortion.

All you can do is make it illegal and make it less safe.