(rdnewsNOW/Josh Hall)

By Josh Hall (Twitter: @Vancan19)

"our body, our choice"

Pro-choice rally takes place in Red Deer’s downtown

Jul 9, 2022 | 3:30 PM

A group championing pro-choice rights took to Red Deer’s downtown Saturday afternoon.

The rally was in response to the recent repeal of Roe v. Wade in the United States on June 24. The ruling, which guaranteed a woman’s right to an abortion anywhere in the country, lasted 49 years before its overturning.

“Obviously, a person’s body — and that means anyone with a uterus — is their own body, and other people need to mind their own business,” says rally organizer Cheryl Jaime. “What happened in the United States is absolutely disgusting and very disappointing because it changes the lives of so many people. Plus, people can be very complacent being in Canada thinking something like that can’t happen here; we’re very fortunate to have the health care that we do.”

Jaime notes the province’s political history as reason enough to not be complacent about it.

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Jaelene Tweedle, who also attended the rally, agrees, harkening back to a 2018 controversy involving Red Deer Catholic Regional Schools busing students to an anti-abortion rally in Edmonton.

The school division’s board chair at the time was now Red Deer-North MLA and Education Minister Adriana LaGrange.

“We definitely are at risk here. There were a number of MPs who voted for restricting abortion access, and we see even here in this province, when the UCP was questioned in the legislature recently if they could at least commit to protecting rights here, but they wouldn’t make that statement,” says Tweedle.

Tweedle is alluding to a June 2021 vote in which Bill C-233 — which aimed to restrict doctors from performing an abortion based on a fetus’s sex — was defeated 248-82 in the House of Commons; the 82 being Conservative Party MPs.

In Alberta, MLA Leela Aheer was the lone UCP leadership candidate to condemn the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

Tweedle describes those who aren’t pro-choice as actually being pro-birth, not pro-life.

“To me, this all says a lot as far as nothing being guaranteed,” says Tweedle. “We don’t want to look back at some point, if something happens, and have to ask ourselves why we didn’t do something when we had the chance.”

She adds that people can’t just stand back on this issue because they simply believe it doesn’t affect them.

“I don’t think that’s how we make change and protect everyone in society,” Tweedle says.

For Jaime, the cause is in fact personal, she shares.

“Access to abortion is something that’s absolutely integral,” she says. “I did get pregnant at a very young age, and it was life-altering what I had to go through. Thankfully, I had a choice, which many millions of people in the United States don’t at this time; which is shocking because it’s 2022.”