APPLEBY, Brenda Margaret, RESPONSIBLE PARENTHOOD: DECRIMINALIZING CONTRACEPTION IN CANADA

Abstract

APPLEBY, Brenda Margaret, RESPONSIBLE PARENTHOOD: DECRIMINALIZING CONTRACEPTION IN CANADA. Toronto, Ontario: University of Toronto Press, 1999,301 pp., $24.95 softcover / $60.00 hardcover. Reviewed by: ANNETTE BURFOOT* Brenda Margaret Appleby provides a detailed and well researched investigation into a crucial moment in Canada's modern history: the mid to late 1960s when the exchange of contraceptive information and devices was decriminalized. Appleby's particular focus is on Christian social ethics that we find intertwines with a complex public morality concerning the control of birth. This complexity arises from medical practitioners concerned with the criminalization of their growing involvement in family planning and global pressures that equated low birth rates with social progress. The analysis of the intersection of birth control with the Canadian state has been made before, notably with Angus McLaren and Arlene Tigar McLaren's The Bedroom and the State (second edition, 1997). That this key text had to be updated from its 1980 version to include new reproductive technologies and the rise in paternity suits is testament to the continued centrality of reproduction to state politics. The recent Canadian and US federal elections also pivoted at times around that most sticky of contemporary reproductive issues: abortion. Appleby's careful examination of the period leading up to and including the 1969 Canadian legislative reform complements and extends the McLarens' work (which focuses primarily on the early part of the twentieth century and includes abortion). Appleby builds her case from a careful and thorough analysis of a selection of material from events leading up to the legislative reform, chiefly submissions to the federal government's Standing Committee on Health and Welfare. The submissions include those from the Canadian medical and bar associations, family planning and social welfare representatives, national women's groups, and churches. Some of the more interesting facts to appear in this investigation involve the varying motives of public support for decriminalizing contraception. For example, the Canadian Medical Association comes out in support of the legal reform (Canadian doctors had been dispensing contraceptive advice for years before 1969 and the development of The Pill in 1960 provided doctors with a highly effective contraceptive for the first time). However, it becomes clear from the submissions that the chief reason for supporting legal reform is the fear of physician liability under the old Criminal Code. For Appleby, the most relevant finding from the submissions is that the churches, including the Roman Catholic Church, support the state sanction of birth control as an example of responsible parenthood. Surprisingly, it was the Canadian Catholic Conference that made the argument to distinguish civil and moral law and supported the decriminalization of contraception as a move towards the common good. …