GWS Feminist Dialogues Speaker Series

Event Date: 
Wednesday, November 16, 2022 - 12:00pm to 1:00pm EST
Event Location: 
LI 5002 (Chancellor Paterson Library)
Event Contact Name: 
Elaine Doiron (GWS Administrative Assistant)
Event Contact E-mail: 

The Department of Gender and Women’s Studies Feminist Dialogues Speaker Series presents "Reproductive Justice Revisited:
The History Impacts of the Decriminalization of Abortion in Canada." Dr. Jula Hughes (Dean and Professor, Bora Laskin Faculty of Law, Lakehead University) will be presenting November 16, 2022.

Summary: We all know what happened: the decriminalization of abortion in 1969 didn’t accomplish much and it wasn’t until the Supreme Court of Canada declared the Criminal Code regime unconstitutional in the 1988 decision in Morgentaler that things changed for the better. The talk seeks to complicate the story by considering the impacts of these key moments in the legal history of abortion in Canada as they emerge from the historical record. I argue that important insights for the present and future of reproductive justice in Canada can be gleaned from revisiting this history as regards to barriers to access and how they might be overcome.