No, 19 Criminal Law Amendment Act 1968-69 (week 12 slide 11)

Prior to 1968, the Criminal Code made it an offence to offer to sell, advertise, or have in one's
possession for the purpose of sale any "medicine, drug, or article intended or represented as a
method of preventing conception or causing abortion or miscarriage. After enforcing this act, the
bill partially decriminalised homosexual acts and allowed abortion under certain conditions.
Impact:
Since then, woman started to have the autonomy of their body and reduce the number of
childbirth. This changes the family pattern in Canada from a big size to smaller size and woman
can have more time for them to work outside their home.
1Declining birth rate; smaller families.
2. “Marriage crisis.”
3. More married women working outside the home.
4. More working mothers  more children in day care.
5. Changing roles of men and women within the family.
6. Declining population  increased immigration 
increased diversity of family structure.
7. Declining birth rate  Seniors in need of care are
less likely to live with family.

No. 31 ‘petty theft’ as described by Campbell (week 8 reading: Campbell the obligations of
family)
-Petty theft was a common problem in the Great depression, this was a way for children or
teenagers to add to the family income. Most of them were boys and they were either too young to
find paid work or who could not find temporary work in the depression economy. , yet they still
felt the pressure to help their families economically. Local adults from the neighbourhood not
just the parents, approached children to steal and sell various goods and children knew whom
they were going to sell to.
-E. Wight Bakke’s survey of unemployed families in Connecticut found that as parents
increasingly relied on children’s earnings in the face of male unemployment, the harder it
became to discipline them. (92)
-Expectations regarding children’s labour could occasionally lead to conflict among family
members an the state over the age at which children should be allowed to stay out of school and
work at paid labour.
Impact: compulsory school enrolment by the 1920s, it was not until the 1960s that the deeply
rooted patterns of children’s labour began to shift.

No. 32
Leilani Muir (week 7, video :The sterilization of Leilani Muir)
1944, was born in Calgary, Alberta in a neglective family. 1959, she was asked to go to surgery
to remove her appendix but actually her tubes were cut. Being sterilized because is feeble-
minded. She is one of the victims, 40-50 years ago didn’t have the choice to choose or reject.
“IQ test” not valid: allow the government to eliminate the immigrates as well as stupid people.
Impact:
Live case:
How the state intervention:
The State admits violate her rights and body by giving compensation to her.
family is influenced. The family can’t be carried on because they are sterilized.
Her willingness to speak up encourage people to tell the truth.

No. 34 Royal Commission on New Reproductive Technology (Baird Commission)

Appointed 1989. (Week 13, 28th Nov, slide 15)
• Final report, Proceed With Care, delivered 1993
• Recommended that “core values” be used to evaluate NRT:
• individual autonomy
• equality
• protection of the vulnerable
• respect for human life and dignity
• non-commercialization of reproduction
• balancing individual and collective interests

Incorporates values of “human, individuality, integrity, dignity and rights”

-Insists on informed consent and non-discrimination
-Asserts that “the health and well-being of children born through the application of assisted
human reproductive technologies must be given priority in all decisions respecting their use”
Impact:
1. Raise concerns of personal choice or public eugenics?
2. Raise concerns of who has the right to determinate or keep the fetus?

 there are some bans: not allowed to create hybrid or choose the gender

Part B Q4
How did the expectations placed on mothers change from the 1910s through to 1980s?

Thesis: expectation on mothers has drastically changed after the intervention of the state by
legalizing the contraception in 1969

Before 1969 After 1969

1. Rigid gender roles in the family: 1. Smaller families, mother can work
mothers are expected to take care of outside and drop their children in day
everyone in the household and all the care. No rigid gender role in the
housework. ‘the duty of bring up family.
children does not belong to the state
but rather to the mother.’ Charles A
Hodgetter 1921. (Arnup, 2002P.247)
1b. the church also emphasis the
importance of the role of mothers, they
were asked ‘to stay home to take care of
their children and sacrifice public life to
stay home and raise their children’(block,
2005, P. 40.)
Tino Block, “families that pray together,
stay together”: religion
2. Woman are expected to reproduce at
home and have a lot of children
especially after WWI, baby boom.
(never have divorce)
Film: things I cannot change: the
mother has to take care of ten children
and she has no way to work for extra
money so they all have to live in
poverty.
3. People tend to get married because of
the norm and culture
1b. day care service, drop their children
during the day then go to work.
2.marriage crisis: divorce act: if divorce,
children can live with the mother and the wife
could get half of the husband asset.
Or woman tend to have late marriage.
Mothers are not the one to reproduce only
but to nurture a family with love and care.
3 People get married because of love
and believe in sexuality.
Sexual revolution, reclaim control
of their body, if life of the mother
is at risk, they could choose to
abortion in hospital: legalized.