In the contemporary context, there exist many different forms of birth control, with some examples including condoms, the pill, the IUD, and even permanent procedures such as a vasectomy. Yet, birth control itself has a long and complex history, hinging on and intersecting with various factors such as feminism, religion, politics, and even eugenics. In the Canadian context, contraceptives were not officially decriminalized until 1969, with the revisions to the Canadian Criminal Code. Intriguingly, just one year before, in October of 1968, the student’s society at McGill University published and disseminated their Birth Control Handbook, a manual specifically developed for students that provided thorough, in-depth information on various birth control methods and their efficacies, along with a section on abortion and its state in Montreal. This handbook, published in direct contravention of the Criminal Code—which made the dissemination, sale, and advertisement of birth control illegal—, served as a pivotal moment in the push for the legalization of contraceptives. Not only did the handbook serve to advance the birth control movement, but the second edition, published only three months after the first in January of 1969, also makes the distinct claim that the handbook will play “a major role in the liberation of women” (SSMU 1969, 1)—that, through the pill, women have the potential to be made “free agents in [their liberation] process” (SSMU 1969, 1). However, while this claim did serve as a radical assertion, the rise of student activism, Quebec’s Quiet Revolution, and second-wave feminism all allowed for the McGill Student Society’s Birth Control Handbook to assert its position as a timely and relevant provision for the women’s liberation movement.
The history of contraceptives reveals how the McGill Student Society’s Birth Control Handbook seemed to follow in line with a general trend in increasing birth control advocacy movements in Canada. Birth control access movements began well before the 1960s, with Canadian advocacy work often following the path forged before them in countries such as England and the United States. Margaret Sanger and Marie Stopes, in the United States and England, respectively, served as some of the leading promoters of birth control during the early 20th century (McLaren and McLaren 1986, 56). In fact, they both received letters in the early 1930s from hundreds of Canadians looking for advice on birth control and sexual counseling (McLaren and McLaren 1986, 24). Overall, the letters to both Sanger and Stopes exhibit how, with British and American birth control advocates one step ahead of Canadian advocates, Canadian women and men often looked to America and England for guidance on their birth control practices in the early 20th century.
However, by the late 1930s, Canada’s own movements for birth control were rising in support and strength. One prominent early Canadian advocate for birth control was A.H. Tyrer, who also turned to support from both Sanger and Stopes. Thereupon, Tyrer founded the Birth Control Society of Canada and pushed to have family planning clinics formed in Toronto (McLaren and McLaren 1986, 95). In the nearby city of Hamilton, Mary Hawkins, a personal friend of Sanger, served as another advocate for birth control access, with her work helping to establish the Hamilton birth control clinic (McLaren and McLaren 1986, 100). In brief, Tyrer’s and Hawkins’ work served as an important part of the early Canadian movements in support of access to birth control.
This advocacy work seemed to culminate in the trial of Dorothea Palmer, which was conducted for six months from 1936 to 1937. Palmer, a nurse at the Parent’s Information Bureau, was charged with violating the Criminal Code after canvassing in favor of birth control in a neighborhood in Eastview, Ontario. At the end of the trial, the judge agreed with the defense’s argument that Palmer’s canvassing was justified because it served the public good. Further, he declared that the existing Criminal Code was no longer an accurate portrayal of the sentiments of most Canadians (McLaren and McLaren 1986, 92). Overall, the Palmer trial served as a landmark case for many of the early Canadian birth control advocates.
About thirty years later, in 1963, Robert Prittie, a member of the NDP in British Columbia, made the first parliamentary attempt to amend the criminal status of birth control, introducing Bill C-64 that put forth a revision to the Criminal Code that would delete the words “preventing conception or” to decriminalize contraceptives (Appleby 1999, 16). While it would not be until 1969 when the Criminal Code would actually undergo these revisions, Robert Prittie’s attempt to legalize contraceptives in the early 1960s indicates how advocacy for birth control continued to grow from the 1930s onwards. Finally, another essential moment in the Canadian push for birth control access is Pierre Trudeau’s omnibus bill from 1967, which included a provision for the legalization of contraceptives. In general, it is clear that birth control was becoming widely accepted among the Canadian population, with robust efforts from Canadian advocates to promote accessibility to contraceptives. In sum, one of the reasons why the McGill Student’s Society was able to publish their Birth Control Handbook with few legal consequences is because of a general atmosphere that had developed in Canada recognizing the outdated nature of the Criminal Code, with a general thrust for its well-needed revision.
However, the Birth Control Handbook was still a radical publication at the time. While Canadian birth control movements began well before the late 1960s, many of them focused solely on family planning techniques for married couples; therefore, the McGill Student Society’s Birth Control Handbook may have followed the general path of an increase in birth control advocacy work, but its propositions were revolutionary as they targeted single college students instead of couples. Before the publication of the Birth Control Handbook in 1968, the main arguments in support of birth control access centered on families. For instance, the arguments made the Ontario birth controllers like A.H. Tyrer or Mary Hawkins presented birth control as a force that would support rather than subvert family and marital life, turning family planning into a respectable process (McLaren and McLaren 1986, 93). Comparable stances can be found in the submissions to the Standing Committee on Health and Welfare in 1966. One submission from the National Council of Women maintained that, “[a]s an essential element of responsible parenthood, family planning would result in ‘healthier mothers, healthier babies, and happier families’” (Appleby 1999, 56). Likewise, the Young Women’s Christian Association deemed family planning “a means of enabling parents to limit their families to a size for which they could provide” (Appleby 1999, 57). In short, it is evident that the main reasoning behind the argument for accessible birth control options before the late 1960s was bound directly to the family. Women using birth control were meant to be married and to still want and have children at some point, just in a manner that would be safer for their own health and better for the family unit as a whole.
In contrast, the McGill Student Society’s Birth Control Handbook was not meant solely for married couples. Instead, its target audience was young college students, many of whom were not planning to have children anytime soon and many who were also single. In November of 1967, Peter Foster, the Students’ Council’s Internal Vice-President, put forth a motion about the need for access to birth control for the McGill student body. The motion stated that “[t]he McGill Students’ Council affirms the principle that the student, like any other citizen, has the right to information and counseling about birth control, as well as to any contraceptive device he may require” (Sethna 2006, 92). This declaration exhibits how the McGill Students’ Council strayed from previous contraceptive advocacy work, noting that young students also deserve equal access to contraceptives. Furthermore, in an article by Chris Maynard (1968) for the McGill Free Press, Allan Feingold, the editor of the handbook, is quoted saying that printing the handbook “indicates that [the Birth Control Committee] believe[s] that students are responsible adults with the right to make decisions that affect their lives” (3). In sum, the McGill Students’ Society’s Birth Control Handbook contrasted greatly with the previous, family-oriented arguments in support of birth control; the handbook took a different path, affirming the right of anyone—married or single, college-aged or older—to have access to contraceptives. Thus, the Birth Control Handbook’s radical nature comes not from its support of the legalization of birth control but from the arguments themselves, which branch off from the family planning reasoning into a reasoning that is founded on the importance of individual agency and freedom of choice on when and if to have children.
Overall, one of the main factors that provided the necessary conditions for the McGill Student’s Society to make the bold claim that their handbook would play a necessary role in the liberation of women was increased student activism. As maintained by Christabelle Sethna (2006) in her article on the evolution of the Birth Control Handbook, one of the main influences for the students on the McGill Students’ Council was a New Left student movement, whose activism encompassed movements such as the opposition to American involvement in the Vietnam War or the push to democratize the university structure (91-92). In fact, through an exploration of the various McGill student newspapers, it is evident that students were highly active in multiple political sectors during the late 1960s. For instance, in a publication of the McGill Daily from November of 1968, there is a brief article detailing how an American student at McGill burned his draft card at the U.S. Consulate, stating that he wanted to separate himself from the “fascist and imperialistic nature of United States foreign policy” (1). Furthermore, another example of a student movement is the McGill Political Science Association’s two-week strike in November of 1968, which demanded a democratization of the PSA (Andrew-Gee and Colizza 2013). These instances demonstrate the mass influx of student activism during the late 60s, which did not just advocate for one movement but encompassed all the efforts for reform taking place during their time. Accordingly, feminism and women’s liberation were other sectors where student activists were promoting change. As a result, it seems that the Birth Control Handbook’s claim about the importance of the handbook and the pill itself in the process of women’s liberation was following the student activist trends of the 60s.
In addition, this new push for student reform efforts coincided with the rise of second-wave feminism and Quebec’s Quiet Revolution, two other factors supporting the handbook’s publication. Quebec’s Quiet Revolution of the 1960s was a period of mass social and political change in Quebec society. One of the main results of this revolution was the secularization of the province, with the new Parti libéral du Québec government taking over education, health care, and the social services previously run by the Catholic Church (Seljak 1996, 114). This secularization significantly diminished the Catholic Church’s influence and power in the province, especially in the political realm, which made space for new beliefs and critiques of the old traditional ways to gain more authority. As illustrated by Cheryl Gosselin (2006), the Quiet Revolution was led by a contemporary social class of intellectual thinkers and social critics who were outspoken in their criticism of the conservative political regime that had prevented progress in the province, and they “wanted to see a number of changes happen, with themselves at the helm of the Québecoise nation and its future” (36). Hence, the Quiet Revolution was both propelled by and allowed for the development of more forthright social critiques. Thus, the combination of the Quiet Revolution and second-wave feminism allowed women to assert their efforts for liberation with more force than ever before.
As a result of increased feminist movements, sex itself was becoming separated from the act of conception. As argued by Sean Mills (2010) in “Québécois Deboutte!” the new birth control options—like the pill, which was introduced in Canada in 1961—meant that “women could [finally] separate sexuality from reproduction, could rely on reason rather than tradition to weigh options and choose which one to follow” (123). In other words, with the sexual and feminist revolutions, sex was no longer seen as just an act to make children. This shift in the general perception of the motives for sexual intercourse meant that women began to insist that to be empowered, they needed control over their own bodies and health care (Sethna 2006, 98). Consequently, in 1967, in the hearings of the federal government’s Royal Commission on the Status of Women, women refused to take a passive role, repeatedly arguing “that they needed to gain greater control over their sexuality, and that the ability to control their own fertility was a central factor in emancipation” (Mills 2010, 122-123). In fact, in the testimony from the Medical Students’ Society of McGill University, they argued that the present birth control laws were unfair as they forced women to make unpalatable choices regarding their sexuality and unwanted pregnancies (Sethna 2006, 96). These testimonies reveal how the demands for female liberation were directly tied to their sexual agency. Therefore, when put in context, the claim in the Birth Control Handbook— that the handbook, with informative and accessible information about various contraceptives, will play pivotal and essential roles in women’s liberation—can be viewed as following the second wave feminist assertions and demands of the 1960s. The handbook maintains that the pill will make women free agents because without the pill—or effective birth control methods—women would still be heavily reliant on men to prevent pregnancy. Women needed the ability to control their own bodies in order to be fully liberated. Besides, as explained in a 1968 article from the McGill Daily, the incidence of premarital sex on campuses was actually no greater than in the forties. What had changed was that people were more open about premarital sex; because of this healthier attitude towards sex, girls were beginning to worry less and enjoy sex more (Marcus 1968, 12), with easy access to contraceptives allowing this full enjoyment. In sum, the combination of Quebec’s Quiet Revolution and second-wave feminism, along with the increase in student activism, created the necessary conditions for the McGill Student’s Society to affirm that their handbook, along with access to reliable and effective contraceptives, would play a pivotal role in the women’s liberation movement.
In following the general trend of increasing Canadian birth control advocacy work—which helped to develop the general sentiment that the Criminal Code prohibiting contraceptives was outdated and unfair—, the Birth Control Handbook published by the Students’ Society of McGill University became the next major step in the process towards the eventual legalization of birth control in 1969, only one year after the publication of the handbook. Overall, as the handbook’s publication coincided with various factors such as an influx of student activism, the Quiet Revolution in Quebec, and the new second-wave feminist movement, the assertion of its importance in the process of women’s liberation can be understood as both a radical, but also a timely and relevant claim to make. However, did the Birth Control Handbook’s claim actually come to fruition? Of course, the handbook was not the only necessary factor in the process of women’s liberation, and the complete liberation of women has still not been met even in the present-day; however, the handbook still was a massively important part of giving women some agency and control over their own bodies in the late 1960s and onwards. In addition, the handbook’s impact has been great. The handbook reached a wide audience, with sales numbered in the millions both domestically and internationally (Sethna 2006, 90). Furthermore, many individuals in that audience were university students in desperate need of the comprehensive information provided by the handbook. Therefore, the impact of the Birth Control Handbook, especially in giving women some more agency over their own sexuality, cannot be denied.
References
Andrew-Gee, Eric, and Christina Colizza. 2013. “An oral history of the 1968 Political Science student strike.” McGill Daily, April 4, 2013. https://www.mcgilldaily.com/2013/04/an-oral-history-of-the-1968-political-science-student-strike/.
Appleby, Brenda M. 1999. Responsible Parenthood: Decriminalizing Contraception in Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Gosselin, Cheryl. 2006. “Remaking Waves: The Québec Women’s Movement in the 1950s and 1960s.” Canadian Woman Studies 25 (3): 34-39. https://cws.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/cws/article/view/5881.
Marcus, Willa. 1968. “A pill in time saves nine.” McGill Daily 57, no. 63, January 22, 1968. Montréal: McGill University, Daily Publications Society.
Maynard, Chris. 1968. “Contraceptive advice available next week.” McGill Free Press 2, no. 3, September 23, 1968. Montréal: McGill University, Daily Publications Society. http://mcgill.worldcat.org/oclc/428089611.
McGill Daily. 1968. “McGill student burns draft card.” 58, no. 27, November 6, 1968. Montréal: McGill University, Daily Publications Society. http://mcgill.worldcat.org/oclc/428089611.
McLaren, Angus, and Arlene T. McLaren. 1986. The Bedroom and the State: The Changing Practices and Politics of Contraception and Abortion in Canada, 1880-1980. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart Inc.
Mills, Sean. 2010. “Québécois Deboutte!” In The Empire Within: Postcolonial Thought and Political Activism in Sixties Montreal, 119-137. McGill-Queen’s University Press. https://books-scholarsportal-info.proxy3.library.mcgill.ca/uri/ebooks/ebooks3/upress/2013-08-23/1/9780773583481.
Seljak, David. 1996. “Why the Quiet Revolution was ‘Quiet’: The Catholic Church’s Reaction to the Secularization of Nationalism in Quebec after 1960.” The Canadian Catholic Historical Association Historical Studies 62: 109-124. http://www.cchahistory.ca/journal/CCHA1996/CCHA1996Contents.htm.
Sethna, Christabelle. 2006. “The Evolution of the Birth Control Handbook: From Student Peer-Education Manual to Feminist Self-empowerment Text, 1968-1975.” Canadian Bulletin of Medical History 23, no. 1 (Spring): 89-117. https://doi.org/10.3138/cbmh.23.1.89.
Students’ Society of McGill University. The Birth Control Handbook. 1969. 2nd ed.
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