THE HEALTH LAW & POLICY SEMINAR SERIES
presents
Joanna Erdman
University of Toronto
In the Back Alleys of Health Care:
Abortion, Equality and Community in Canada
Thursday, November 22, 2007
12:30 - 2:00
Solarium (Room FA2) - Falconer Hall
84 Queen's Park
The decriminalization of abortion in Canada ensured neither its availability nor accessibility as an integrated and publicly funded health service. While Canadian women are increasingly referred to or seek abortion services from single-purpose clinics, their exclusion from public health insurance often render these services inaccessible. This article considers denied funding for clinic abortion services from the perspective of the Canadian constitutional guarantee of sex equality. The article focuses on the 2004 Court of Queen's Bench judgment in Jane Doe I v. Manitoba, which framed denied public funding for clinic abortion services as a violation of women's equality rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Access to abortion services historically has been protected in Canadian law as a security of the person or liberty interest. This judgment is thus a significant development in the jurisprudence. Nevertheless, the Court's equality analysis remains tethered to liberty-based values of autonomy, freedom, and self-determination. Part I of the article evaluates this liberty-based approach and considers why it may be especially ill-suited to the abortion funding context. In an effort to offer an alternative, Part II develops a model of equality analysis emphasizing values of self-respect and self-worth attained through relationships with others and by the recognition of others. This model of equality, premised on the social dignity of equal community membership, is developed with reference to the work of U.S. constitutional scholar Kenneth Karst and his principle of equal citizenship. Part III returns to the equality analysis in Jane Doe I to evaluate denied funding for clinic services according to the proposed community-membershiop model of equality. The exclusion of clinic abortion services, and by extension the women who require them, from a fundamental institution of community membership - a universally accessible and comprehensive health system - is demonstrated to perpetuate and promote the view that women are less worthy of concern, respect, and consideration as members of Canadian society.
Joanna N. Erdman, BA (Toronto) 2001, JD (Toronto) 2004, LLM (Harvard) 2006, is Co-Director of the International Reproductive and Sexual Health Law Programme and Director of the Health Equity and Law Clinic. She has published in the areas of access to reproductive health care, Canadian health care policy and human rights law. Her research focuses on sex and gender discrimination in the regulation, structure, and financing of health care systems. She has addressed the legal protection of reproductive health at the Equality and Reproductive Rights Symposium (Columbia Law School), Medical Student for Choice Conference, and the Ontario Women's Health Council. She has also guest lectured at the Joint Centre for Bioethics (University of Toronto) and Osgoode Hall Law School. In 2003, Joanna interned with the International Program at the Center for Reproductive Rights. In 2005 - 2006, she articled with the Toronto law firm Fasken Martineau. Joanna was admitted to Law Society of Upper Canada in 2005.
A light lunch will be provided.
For workshop information, please go to our web site at http://www.law.utoronto.ca/healthlaw/index.htm or contact Nadia Gulezko at n.gulezko@utoronto.
