Contributors

Aalya Ahmad is a community and labour activist and a member of the Radical Handmaids. She teaches at the Pauline Jewett Institute of Women’s and Gender Studies at Carleton University, in Ottawa. Her interests include feminism activism and cultural production in diaspora, as well as the politics and poetics of horror film and fiction. Her essay “Feminist Spaces in Horrific Places” appeared in the July 2014 issue of Offscreen.

Tracey L. Anderson taught English as a second language in China, Macedonia, Morocco, and the United Arab Emirates. Currently, she’s a freelance writer and editor based in Edmonton, Alberta, where she lives with her husband, Roland. When she’s not working with words, Tracey enjoys travel, movies, reading, and fine dining.

Jane Cawthorne is the author of the play The Abortion Monologues. She has been active in the reproductive rights movement for over twenty-five years, has taught women’s studies at Mount Royal College, in Calgary, and has been a volunteer with organizations such as Planned Parenthood Alberta, the Calgary Sexual Health Centre, and the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada. She is the co-editor, with Elaine Morin, of a literary anthology titled Writing Menopause, forthcoming in spring 2017 from Inanna Publications.

Peggy Cooke is a nonprofit staffer by day and a reproductive justice activist by . . . later that same day. In addition to her three years as a volunteer coordinator at the Fredericton Morgentaler Clinic, she has served as a board member and media spokesperson for the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada and as a fundraiser and administrator for ACORN Canada. She wants to burn prisons, although she always crosses at the lights. Founder of the blog Anti-Choice Is Anti-Awesome, she is an active commentator on the Internet.

Shannon Dea is an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Waterloo. Her areas of specialization are the history of philosophy, gender issues, and pedagogy. She is the author of Beyond the Binary: Thinking About Sex and Gender, as well as of numerous articles. An advocate of gender equity, LGBTQ inclusivity, and improved sexual health, Dea contributes many volunteer hours to academic committees and community agencies dedicated to these goals. In this capacity, she devotes much of her time to public outreach, discussion panels, media interviews, and public speaking engagements. She is the former director of the Women’s Studies program at the University of Waterloo and past president of Planned Parenthood Waterloo Region.

Carolyn Egan is a member of the Ontario Coalition for Abortion Clinics. She is president of the community board of the Immigrant Women’s Health Centre and president of the United Steelworkers Toronto Area Council. She has worked with Women Working with Immigrant Women and the International Women’s Day Committee in Toronto and has been a long-time activist in the women’s and reproductive rights movements.

Linda Gardner has served on the boards of the Canadian AIDS Treatment Information Exchange, Maggie’s: The Toronto Sex Workers Action Project, and the Gay Asians AIDS Project Toronto. A leader with the Ontario Coalition for Abortion Clinics during the campaign to overturn the federal abortion law, she has worked for many years in the area of sexual health and was the Diversity and Community Access Coordinator at Women’s College Hospital.

Laura Gillespie graduated from the University of Victoria in 2013 with a bachelor’s degree in sociology. As a burgeoning reproductive rights activist, Laura is particularly interested in examining the socially constructed meaning behind the language used in reproductive justice discourse.

Sterling Haynes is a retired GP and an octogenarian writer of stories, zany poetry, and haiku. He is the author of two collections of stories, Bloody Practice and Wake-Up Call: Tales from a Frontier Doctor, both published by Caitlin Press. He loved doing obstetrics and, over the course of his practice, delivered about three thousand babies.

E.K. Hornbeck is a feminist, doula, and radio lover living in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She has written for the Dalhousie Gazette and has been featured on CBC Radio, CKDU, and Anglican Video in Halifax. Her interests include reproductive justice, the history of science, a cup of tea, and a good book.

Clarissa Hurley is completing a PhD at the Centre for Drama, Theatre, and Performance Studies at the University of Toronto and lives in Fredericton, New Brunswick, where she works with NotaBle Acts Theatre Company. She has lectured in English, theatre, and women’s studies at universities in Ontario and New Brunswick and is currently co-authoring Roughing It in the Sacred Grove, an examination of campus-based fiction and life writing by Canadian women academics.

“Dr. James” is an obstetrician and gynaecologist based in Ontario. He has been involved in the pro-choice movement in many ways, first as a member of Medical Students for Choice and then as an abortion provider and a board member for several national pro-choice organizations.

H. Bindy K. Kang received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Simon Fraser University. After eleven years of social science research and three years in community health outreach, she returned to school and is currently completing a PhD in the University of British Columbia’s Interdisciplinary Studies Graduate Program. Her research interests include the intersectional influence of gender, ethnicity, and culture on health, barriers to and facilitators of health care access and delivery, and culture and identity constructions.

Kristen has a Bachelor of Social Work from Ryerson University and a background in early childhood education. A feminist and mental health advocate, she identifies as Mad and currently works for a peer-led Toronto-based mental health organization that supports individuals experiencing borderline personality disorder. She lives in Toronto with her partner and their child.

Natalie Lochwin is an activist and artist based in Toronto, where she raises her three children. A graduate of the Ontario College of Art and Design, she is a member of the Socialist Party of Ontario, serving as the party’s spokesperson and candidate in Etobicoke-Lakeshore riding in the 2014 provincial election.

Mackenzie lives in southern Ontario. Having completed an MSW degree, she currently works to support adults with co-occurring addiction and mental health concerns.

Colleen MacQuarrie, an associate professor in and currently chair of the Department of Psychology at the University of Prince Edward Island, is an academic activist and developmental health researcher who has been working in feminist community organizations for more than twenty years. Critical perspectives on social justice are central to her research, teaching, and community actions.

Ruth Miller began her career in the field of women’s reproductive rights early in the 1970s, working for the repeal of section 251 of the Criminal Code. She was for many years a board member of the Canadian Association for Repeal of the Abortion Law (CARAL) and a trustee of the Childbirth by Choice Trust. In these capacities, she created and edited material on abortion and contraception, including the 1989 publication No Choice: Canadian Women Tell Their Stories of Illegal Abortion. She served for two decades as a sexual health educator for Toronto Public Health and, since retirement, has been counselling part time at the Morgentaler Clinic.

Judith Mintz is a PhD candidate in the Gender, Feminist, and Women’s Studies program at York University, in Toronto. Her doctoral research, in which she adopts a feminist ethnographic approach, focuses on yoga and the intersections of social location and health. Her essay “Empowering Women to Become Mothers,” an examination of modern midwifery in Ontario, appeared in The 21st Century Motherhood Movement, a collection edited by Andrea O’Reilly and published by Demeter Press.

Erin Mullan is an abortion counsellor and sexual health educator with more than twenty-five years of experience in the field of reproductive health. She works from a social justice perspective and has a special interest in reducing the stigma surrounding abortion. She is also an organic master gardener who believes that helping plants grow is excellent therapy.

Jen Rinaldi is an assistant professor in the Legal Studies program at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology and holds a PhD in critical disability studies from York University. In her dissertation, she employed a postmodern feminist framework to analyze the impact of medical technologies on reproductive decision making. Rinaldi earned her master’s degree in philosophy at the University of Guelph, where her research focused on constitutional protections of same-sex marriage legislation. In her current academic work, she uses narrative and arts-based methodologies to deconstruct eating disorder recovery in relation to queer community. Rinaldi works in collaboration with Recounting Huronia, a SSHRC-funded arts-based collective that explores and documents traumatic histories of institutionalization.

Sadie Roberts holds a master’s degree in community psychology from Wilfrid Laurier University and a master’s in counselling from Acadia University. She completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Prince Edward Island, where she majored in psychology. Her research interests include reproductive justice, LGBTQ issues, and liberation psychology, as well as local food movements. She has been the recipient of grants from the Canadian Institute of Health Research and the Ontario Graduate Scholarship Program.

Martha Solomon, a British Columbia–based educator, activist, and writer, holds a master’s degree in women’s studies and history from the University of Toronto and has taught philosophy and women’s studies at the postsecondary level in both Canada and the United States. Passionate about social justice and equity, she is especially drawn to the intersection between art and activism. She is the cofounder, with photographer Kathryn Palmateer, of the award-winning Arts4Choice project, dedicated to ending the silence and stigma surrounding abortion through narrative and image. Exhibits based on the project have travelled to Toronto, Ottawa, Calgary, and Portland, and a book, One Kind Word: Women Share Their Abortion Stories, appeared in 2014 from Three O’Clock Press.

Shannon Stettner is an activist-academic who has been involved in the abortion rights movement for many years. She holds a PhD in history from York University and presently lectures on gender history in the Department of Women’s Studies at the University of Waterloo. She was active on the planning committee for Abortion: The Unfinished Revolution, an international interdisciplinary conference held in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, in August 2014. The author of numerous publications, she also served as the Canadian Manuscripts editor at the Canadian Bulletin of Medical History.

Karen Stote is assistant professor of women and gender studies at Wilfrid Laurier University, where she teaches courses on the history of Indian policy and Indigenous-settler relations, feminism and the politics of decolonization, and issues of environmental and reproductive justice. She is the author of An Act of Genocide: Colonialism and the Sterilization of Aboriginal Women and has collaborated on various public education projects on issues surrounding Indigenous-settler relations.

Nick Van der Graaf is a journalist and long-time pro-choice activist with the Ontario Coalition for Abortion Clinics. He works as a patient escort at an abortion clinic and is a board member of the BCVD sexual health clinic in Toronto. He has written on women’s rights and abortion politics for the Huffington Post and for magazines such as On the Issues and NOW.

Bernadette Wagner is a writer, a mother, and a community educator and organizer who lives in Regina, Saskatchewan. Her work has been featured on radio and television, in film and on the Web, in schools, on stages, and in the streets, as well as in journals, anthologies, newspapers, and magazines. This Hot Place, her first collection of poetry, appeared from Thistledown Press in 2010. She maintains a multi-author blog, The Regina Mom, devoted to women’s issues and political activism.

Laura Wershler is a Calgary-based sexual and reproductive health advocate, writer, and speaker. She has been involved with pro-choice organizations at the local, provincial, and national levels for more than twenty-five years, serving on the board of the Planned Parenthood Federation of Canada and as the executive director of Sexual Health Access Alberta. She writes about a wide range of sexual and reproductive health issues from a sociopolitical perspective and is presently an active member of the Society for Menstrual Cycle Research, an interdisciplinary organization that supports research into the role of menstruation in women’s health and well-being.

Shannon West lives the adventurous life of stay-at-home mom to three kids on the autism spectrum and an incontinent dog. She’s married to a wonderful man who bakes scones and lets her sleep in on weekends. She has a master’s degree in linguistics that she feels she should mention because it was expensive. She’s a feminist, a Christian, and a socialist, although not necessarily in that order. She blogs under the name Luna at feministchristian.blogspot.com and @heading_west on Twitter.

Ellen Wiebe, a clinical professor in the Department of Family Medicine at the University of British Columbia and the medical director of Willow Women’s Clinic, has been an abortion provider in Vancouver since 1977. The author of more than sixty research papers on abortion and contraception, she was the first to provide medical abortions in Canada, spearheading clinical trials of RU-486 long before the drug was approved by Health Canada. She has also assumed a pioneering role with regard to the right to die. In February 2016, she secured judicial authorization to assist in the death of a Calgary woman suffering from late-stage ALS.

Jess Woolford is an essayist, memoirist, and prize-winning poet whose reflections on abortion and reproductive anxiety have appeared in Social Politics, Prairie Fire, and Contemporary Verse 2. Her work has also been featured in anthologies, including A/Cross Sections: New Manitoba Writing and In the Company of Animals: Stories of Extraordinary Encounters. Although she grew up in Vermont, Woolford now calls Winnipeg home.