No Place for the State

The Origins and Legacies of the 1969 Omnibus Bill

Edited by Christopher Dummitt & Christabelle Sethna
Categories: 2slgbtq+ Studies, Legal History, Public & Social Policy, Canadian History, Law & Society
Publisher: UBC Press
Hardcover : 9780774862424, 300 pages, April 2020
Paperback : 9780774862431, 300 pages, October 2020
Ebook (PDF) : 9780774862448, 300 pages, April 2020
Ebook (EPUB) : 9780774862455, 300 pages, April 2020
Ebook (MobiPocket) : 9780774862462, 264 pages, April 2020
Buy Direct
View Table of Contents

Table of contents

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

No Place for the State is an incisive study that offers complex and often contrasting perspectives on the Trudeau government’s 1969 Omnibus Bill and its impact on sexual and moral politics in Canada.

Description

“There’s no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation,” Pierre Elliott Trudeau told reporters. He was making the case for the most controversial of his proposed reforms to the Criminal Code, those concerning homosexuality, birth control, and abortion. In No Place for the State, contributors offer complex and often contrasting perspectives as they assess how the 1969 Omnibus Bill helped shape sexual and moral politics in Canada. Fifty years later, the origins and legacies of the bill are equivocal and the state still seems interested in sexual regulation. This incisive study explains why that matters.