Canada’s unions are expressing solidarity with advocates in the United States who are fighting to protect reproductive rights.
The Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) commits to protecting our own hard-won gains and to fill the gaps in access to sexual and reproductive health and rights in Canada, including abortion.
We can’t take abortion rights in Canada for granted. There is an alarming and well-funded effort by anti-choice groups in Canada to elect politicians who support restrictions on reproductive health services and rights. As members of the CLC, we will resist any attempt to take us backwards and support the efforts to improve access.
Canada’s unions have a deep and longstanding commitment to sexual and reproductive health and rights. Unions and labour activists joined the call to decriminalize birth control and abortion in the 60s and 70s. Since the 1988 Morgentaler decision, the labour movement has worked with feminist organizations and other allies to resist attempts to introduce new restrictions to abortion rights and access.
Canada’s unions have long called for public coverage of medical procedures and medication to allow people to decide whether and when to have children, promote maternal health, affirm their gender identity, and meet other sexual and reproductive health care needs. They have also called for better access to abortion services in regions where it remains difficult to obtain sexual and reproductive health care. Unions continue to support comprehensive sexuality education, access to health care for trans people, and protections for pregnant people in unsafe working conditions.
Access to abortion services remains a problem, especially in rural, remote and Indigenous communities, for young people, for those with precarious immigration status or who don’t have the means to travel. In some provinces, like New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island such services are virtually non-existent on account of provincial policies that restrict access or impose limits on funding. The lack of access to sexual and reproductive health care and rights has disproportionate impacts on people who experience various forms of marginalization, such as Indigenous women, Black and racialized women, women with disabilities, trans and non-binary folk, immigrant, migrant and refugee women.
Canada’s unions will not tolerate any attempt to roll back abortion rights.
Published on 24 June 2019