No Place for the State: The Origins and Legacies of the 1969 Omnibus Bill

Introduction / Christopher Dummitt and Christabelle Sethna

Part 1: Regulation, Rupture, and Continuity

1 Because It’s 1969: The Omnibus Bill and the New Morality of the Self / Christopher Dummitt

2 “Is Abortion Ever Right?”: The United Church of Canada and the Debate over Abortion Law Reform, 1960–1980 / Katrina Ackerman, Bruce Douville, and Shannon Stettner

3 Not a Gift from Above: The Mythology of Homosexual Law Reform and the Making of Neoliberal Queer Histories / Gary Kinsman

Part 2: Activist Responses

4 “The State’s Key to the Bedroom Door”: Queer Perspectives on Pierre Elliot Trudeau’s “Just Society” in an Era of Bathhouse Raids / Tom Hooper

5 Law Reform, Liberal Democracies, and the Transnational History of Gay Liberation / Scott deGroot

6 Seeing Red: The Toronto Women’s Caucus, the RCMP Security Service, and the Campaign to Repeal the 1969 Abortion Law / Christabelle Sethna and Steve Hewitt

Part 3: Beyond the Omnibus Bill

7 Insulated from the Law: Married Women, the Pill, and the “Public Good” / Jessica Haynes

8 “Something More”: The State’s Place in the Bedrooms of Lesbian Nation / Karen Pearlston

9 Life Interrupted: The Biopolitics of Abortion and Attempted Suicide in Canada in the Late Sixties and Early Seventies / Isabelle Perrault

Part 4: Back to the Future

10 The Law (and) Unintended Consequences: Adoption and the Omnibus Bill of 1969 / Lori Chambers

11 Is That Really Necessary? The Regulation of Abortion in Canada and the Framework of Medical Necessity / Rachael Johnstone

Index