With the seemingly imminent repeal of Roe v. Wade in the United States, it's time to refamiliarize ourselves with Canada's long-fought history for abortion access.
Sarah Lawrynuik
Senior Producer
Tristan Capacchione
Audio Editor & Technical Producer
Cherise Seucharan
Reporter, CANADALAND
Kieran Oudshoorn
Managing Editor, Podcasts
Hosted by Jesse Brown
With the seemingly imminent repeal of Roe v. Wade in the United States, it’s time to refamiliarize ourselves with Canada’s long fought history for abortion access. And explore how that story is anything but ancient history, with one provincial ban being overturned as recently as four years ago.
Today’s episode features just a few of the people who have been on the frontlines of that fight as well as a historian who studies nothing but reproductive justice.
Featured in this episode: Christabelle Sethna, professor in the Feminist and Gender Studies Faculty of Social Sciences University of Ottawa; Deb Miller, retired family lawyer and abortion access advocate; Colleen MacQuarrie, professor of psychology at the University of Prince Edward Island and abortion access advocate; Autumn Reinhardt-Simpson, PhD candidate at the University of Alberta and abortion doula.
“…you have this attempt to actually change the Aurora Borealis. to affect it physically. This was called Project Waterhole. So they sent up a rocket with 100 kilograms of explosives, and exploded it in the Aurora Borealis band. Within two seconds, they had created a 40 kilometer wide hole in the Aurora Borealis.” - from The Forgotten Need to Probe the Sky
“Here's something that not many people know about the baby business. There are ‘leg-men.’ We call them ‘leg-men’ though some of them are women, who make it their business to find pregnant women who are not married. The leg-men look for them in a million and one places. They meet them in bars and parks and cafes and all over. They hear things.” - Eugene Moyneur (ex-wrester, ex-bodybuilder, baby-smuggler)
“My job is to smuggle black market babies out of Canada and into the US. I’ve been at it off and on for the past 5 years. Maybe there’s an easier way to make a bankroll, but I don’t know it.” - Eugene Moyneur (ex-wrestler, ex-bodybuilder, baby-smuggler)
“Elon flipped out. He saw Substack as sort of like the number one competitor to X at the time. He banned discussion of the word Substack. And to this day, there's a lot of people who when they want to talk about Substack on Twitter, they write like, S star star B, like, like we're Voldemort or something.” - Chris Best, Substack co-founder and CEO
