
The Abortion Caravan
Description
From award-winning CBC radio documentarian Karin Wells comes The Abortion Caravan, shortlisted for the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing and winner of the Ontario Historical Society Award's Alison Prentice Award.
In the spring of 1970, seventeen women set out from Vancouver in a big yellow convertible, a Volkswagen bus, and a pickup truck. They called it the Abortion Caravan. Three thousand miles later, they "occupied" the prime minister's front lawn in Ottawa, led a rally of 500 women on Parliament Hill, chained themselves to their chairs in the visitors' galleries, and shut down the House of Commons, the first and only time this had ever happened. The seventeen were a motley crew. They argued, they were loud, and they wouldn't take no for an answer. They pulled off a national campaign in an era when there was no social media, and with a budget that didn't stretch to long-distance phone calls. It changed their lives. And at a time when thousands of women in Canada were dying from back street abortions, it pulled women together across the country.
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Person
Karin Wells is a well-known CBC radio documentarian and a lawyer. Her books tell the often overlooked stories of remarkable Canadian women, including The Abortion Caravan, shortlisted for the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing, and More Than a Footnote. Karin lives in Port Hope, Ontario.