Body autonomy: Our right to health

I sit across the table from my Amma – Icelandic for gramma – in her home in Vancouver. She’s 96 years old and I love her dearly. We sit chatting about her childhood as my 9-month-old daughter smiles lovingly at her and they giggle at small miracles – my gramma bangs on the table, my baby repeats the movement. It’s fun for all of us.

I am the 100th President of the Federation of Medical Women of Canada (FMWC), a title that perpetuates my ongoing imposter syndrome. I didn’t have time to take on this role (really, what parent does), but I did it because it’s something I had to do to ensure my three daughters have rights. Things have really changed since my Amma was 9 months old, but there is still a lot of work to do.

My grandmother is brilliant (I still can’t beat her at a game of Scrabble). Her degree hangs above her washer and dryer at home, an irony not lost on me or the other female members of my family. She raised four children and supported my grampa. Within those roles, she was pushing the envelope on equality in her relationships and within society. Women of her time were fighting to ensure their own rights. After all, it was not until 1930 that women were considered “persons” under the law in Canada.

However, that advocacy did not include racialized women and trans women, thus making our current advocacy as important now as it was in 1924 when the FMWC began.

As a doctor in Canada, I never thought that I would have to worry about reproductive rights for my daughters. However, the overturning of Roe vs. Wade in the United States, the looming potential re-election of Donald Trump and the continued and growing advocacy in our own country from pro-life groups that are not evidence-based have put that clearly into focus.

As the president of a women’s health organization, we need to be at the forefront of advocating to ensure all women keep autonomy over their bodies so that they can make choices about their health based on clinical evidence. When they lose this, their health suffers. Women who are denied abortion are more likely to die than those who have an abortion. Reduced access to full-scope reproductive health has negative impacts on women of colour, further perpetuating already existing health disparities. This was not lost on the many attendees at the recent Democratic National Congress in the U.S. who wore white in support of women’s right to abortion, contraception and equal rights and have experienced the effects of legal and policy changes over the past two years.

As a doctor in Canada, I never thought that I would have to worry about reproductive rights for my daughters.

The FMWC began in 1924 when six female physicians recognized the need for their own organization to advocate for women’s rights within the medical profession and for women and girls’ health in general. They had already encountered barriers to participating in the profession of medicine. In 1865, one of our founders, Emily Stowe, was told by the Vice-Principal of the Toronto School of Medicine “the doors of the university are not open to women, and I trust they never will be.” She replied, “Then I will make it the business of my life to see that they will be opened, that women will have the same opportunities as men.”

Stowe was educated in the United States and returned to Canada in 1867 to become our first female physician. One of the main goals of the FMWC was to have equal representation in medical school, and with more than 55 per cent of medical students in 2020 identifying as female, that has been achieved. However, there are still gaps that need to be overcome – the gender pay gap, the lack of surgical representation and of women in leadership positions.

There also continue to be large gaps in women’s health – in 2020, only one per cent of health-care research and innovation outside of oncology was invested in female-specific conditions; rates of trauma are higher as 44 per cent of women experience some form violence in their lives; diagnoses, as with cardiovascular care, are often delayed or missed altogether.

I worry that given the current political climate, it could get even worse for women here in Canada as it has in the U.S., where states with abortion bans have higher rates of maternal mortality, especially for women of colour.

As a woman and a physician, I believe that health is a human right. To maintain health, we need to maintain body autonomy – the right for all persons to govern what happens to their bodies without external influence or coercion. When we take away equal access to health care, including reproductive health care, it worsens health and exacerbates inequities. Women should always be allowed to make health decisions that are best for them and their futures. After all, it supports the advancement of women in society and improves economies.

As the President of the FMWC, I get the honour of wearing the Arnhem Medal that consists of a staff, Asclepius the god of healing and a single wing symbolizing the spread of peace through the alleviation of disease. As a physician, I work with patients using scientific evidence to help them heal. This includes honouring their decisions about which treatments they choose to have or not to have, and ultimately what they want for their own bodies. We can’t allow women to lose body autonomy because they will lose their health.

As Stowe once asked for, we, like men, want to have control over our bodies and our own health. I want that for myself, for my daughters and for the female and female-identifying patients I work with.​​