A Therapeutic Abortion Committee (commonly known as a TAC) refers to a Canadian committee of three medical doctors who would decide whether an abortion fit an exemption to the Criminal Code of Canada, which only permitted lawful abortion if continuation of a pregnancy would cause a woman medical harm. TACs were almost always composed of men, due to fewer women practicing medicine and even fewer having these types of high level positions. This code was ultimately was struck down and invalidated by the Canadian judicial system in R. v. Morgentaler in 1988.
After the Roe v. Wade decision in the United States Supreme Court in 1973, many Canadian women found it much easier to travel abroad to seek medical treatment for unwanted pregnancy. Some women continued to resort to illegal abortions, often by unqualified practitioners, or even attempted to perform the procedure upon themselves. Sometimes this had dangerous or even fatal consequences (see Abortion in Canada).
Read more about Therapeutic Abortion Committee: Canadian Law
Famous quotes containing the words therapeutic, abortion and/or committee:
“As a science of the unconscious it is a therapeutic method, in the grand style, a method overarching the individual case. Call this, if you choose, a poet’s utopia.”
—Thomas Mann (1875–1955)
“[The Republicans] offer ... a detailed agenda for national renewal.... [On] reducing illegitimacy ... the state will use ... funds for programs to reduce out-of-wedlock pregnancies, to promote adoption, to establish and operate children’s group homes, to establish and operate residential group homes for unwed mothers, or for any purpose the state deems appropriate. None of the taxpayer funds may be used for abortion services or abortion counseling.”
—Newt Gingrich (b. 1943)
“What are men celebrating? They are all on a committee of arrangements, and hourly expect a speech from somebody. God is only the president of the day, and Webster is his orator.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)