Bodily Self-Determinations: Re-imagining a Feminist Framework
McGill University, Leacock Building, Room 232
A panel emphasizing the importance of self-determination over one’s body. Speakers will draw from hands on experience fighting for better health resources and for meaningful accessibility.
From indigenous peoples to people with disabilities, from trans people to people seeking abortions, the common ground is the act of asserting and affirming bodily self-determination. This means that the individual should be the ultimate decision maker and definer of what happens to their own body. By connecting the dots between these often disparate struggles, this panel will contextualise recent attacks on marginalized bodies as a wider neo-conservative attack on bodily self-determination. Bridging the gap between second and third wave feminism with politics that are relevant and effective today, this panel hopes to forge and emphasize solidarity between struggles with the common goal of bodily self-determination.
Speakers:
*Carolyn Egan was a founding member of the Ontario Coalition for Abortion Clinics and helped to organize the campaign to repeal the federal abortion law and legalize freestanding abortion clinics in Ontario. She was with Dr. Henry Morgentaler in Ottawa when the Supreme Court announced its decision overturning the federal law. She works as a sexual health counselor and is president of the board of the Immigrant Women’s Health Centre in Toronto.
*Nora Butler Burke works for Action Santé Travesti(e)s et Transsexuel(le)s du Québec, a local trans health support and advocacy project at CACTUS-Montreal, and is involved in migrant justice organizing.
*A.J. Withers is a co-founder of DAMN 2025, a cross-disability organization in Toronto and an Organizer with the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty. A.J. is also the author of If I Can’t Dance Is It Still My Revolution? a zine series and website about radical disability politics. The website can be viewed at
still.my.revolution.tao.ca
*Meredith Porter is a Research Officer at the First Nations Centre of the National Aboriginal Health Organization.
*Marilee Nowgesic is the Director of Aboriginal Health Initiatives at the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada.
*Maryruth Stine is a former abortion clinic worker and counselor who helped initiate the Montreal-based reproductive autonomy campaign.
This panel is brought to you by the 2110 Centre for Gender Advocacy, QPIRG McGilll and Student Society of McGill University as a part of Social Justice Days.