She Wanted to End Her Pregnancy. Her Abusive Partner Took Her to Court

T hey met at a RadioShack in Montreal in November 1988. She was barely twenty, a waitress new to the city. He was five years older, a big man, six foot three, with a moustache. He seemed nice enough. Chantale Daigle might have been a young, small-town girl—she was from Chibougamau, eight hours north of Montreal—but she knew her own mind. She lived with Jean-Guy Tremblay for five months, and it turned out he was not so nice. She got pregnant. One night, he knocked her to the ground and said that he would “bring her into line once and for all.” “I am not going to stay.” She said it to herself at first. “I do not want this relationship or the baby of this relationship.” When she told Tremblay that she was leaving and she was going to have an abortion, he went to court to try to stop her. The self-proclaimed pro-life movement was there to encourage and support him. But this “little woman in a red dress with a Peter Pan collar,” as someone described her, stood her ground. It was a little more than a year earlier that the Supreme Court had ruled in R v. Morgentaler that the criminalization of abortion, which had been an offence since Canada’s first Criminal Code in 1892, violated a woman’s right to security of the person under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Chief Justice Brian Dickson described it as “a profound interference with a woman’s body.” The Morgentaler decision was, in the view of many, the most important Supreme Court decision when it came to a woman’s autonomy. There had been decades of lobbying, of dealing with often-violent opposition. Doctors had been jailed, thousands of women had died from illegal backstreet abortions, and thousands of unwanted babies were born. Women can remember where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news of the Morgentaler decision. (I was driving past Casa Loma in Toronto.) But just as quickly, it became clear that this was only one battle in a larger war. Brian Mulroney’s Progressive Conservative government threatened to bring in new legislation prohibiting abortion. Nor did decriminalization guarantee a woman’s right to abortion. There were big legal questions hanging in the air: Was a fetus a person? Could the father of a fetus veto an abortion? Could anyone?

• The Morgentaler Effect
• One Doctor’s Fight to Provide Abortion Care in New Brunswick
• Why the Law Fails Victims of Violent Partners

I t started not in Quebec but in Ontario with another couple, Gregory Murphy and Barbara Dodd, a week or so before the Chantale Daigle Affair—as it became known—began to unfold. Abortion was on people’s minds. It had been a key issue in the 1988 federal election: Morgentaler was decided in January, the election took place in November. The debate became increasingly heated as the year progressed. In the ’70s, in the early years of the push to decriminalize abortion, the pro-choice forces had the upper hand. They were better organized, more motivated, and had a great many noisy, angry young women on side, backed up by their equally angry, if not so noisy, mothers, aunts, and grandmothers. As Henry Morgentaler established his abortion clinics in Montreal, Toronto, and Winnipeg, the pro-choice faction became more defiant. Morgentaler said publicly in 1973 that he had conducted more than 5,000 abortions. The other side, vehemently opposed to abortion and with the force and funds of conservative religious organizations behind them, regrouped and fought back. Morgentaler was charged repeatedly; despite what appeared to be unassailable evidence, juries acquitted him more than once. In 1976, the Parti Québécois justice minister declared the sections of the Criminal Code dealing with abortion unenforceable in the province of Quebec. Morgentaler’s legal battles switched to Ontario. In 1988, after a series of charges, acquittals, and appeals, the Supreme Court issued its definitive ruling that the criminalization of abortion violated a woman’s Charter rights. Now in the spring of 1989, there were demonstrations, altercations between pro- and anti-choice groups outside abortion clinics almost every week. The words, the placards, the name calling—it was all swirling around as Daigle and Tremblay and the Ontario couple, Dodd and Murphy, grew up. In 1989, they were all in their early twenties. Tremblay and Daigle had been living together since January. By the end of February, she was pregnant. Dodd became pregnant a few months later. Neither woman was happy about it. Dodd was dealing with additional challenges: she was a woman with a 90 percent hearing loss and she struggled with literacy, factors that would prove decisive in the weeks to come. Toward the end of June, Dodd told Murphy that she was pregnant and that she was going to have an abortion. It was not what Murphy wanted to hear. He maintained later that it was a planned pregnancy, although it was never clear how long they had “been together.” Murphy called a leading anti-abortion organization, Campaign Life, and was put in touch with lawyer Angela Costigan. Costigan moved quickly and got a temporary injunction preventing Dodd from getting an abortion. In his affidavit, Murphy swore that he was the father of the unborn child and added that he was from an “intellectually superior” family. This was the case that Campaign Life had been waiting for. There were reports from Costigan that it was the twelfth attempt to assert the rights of the father over the fetus. Not surprisingly, the injunction and Murphy’s crusade hit the papers. When women campaigned to decriminalize abortion, they marched wearing signs around their waist that said “This Uterus Is Not Government Property.” “Post-Morgentaler men,” as Murphy and Tremblay have been called, seemed to be saying, “No, it’s mine.” Six hours down the highway in Montreal, Daigle had decided she would leave Tremblay. In the ’80s, not much was said publicly about domestic abuse. It was seen as a mark of shame that somehow reflected more on the woman than the man. Daigle just didn’t talk about Tremblay’s behaviour. Later on, she said that Tremblay had become increasingly “possessive” as the pregnancy had progressed, and their relationship was full of “violence and fear.” When she made her decision to leave and to have an abortion, she was eighteen weeks into her pregnancy and fully aware that she had to move quickly. In Quebec, a woman could obtain a legal abortion only up to twenty weeks. She made the appointment. Tremblay, the story has it, received a call at the garage where he worked, telling him that, in Ontario, Greg Murphy had successfully blocked his girlfriend’s efforts to abort “his child.” If Murphy could do it, so could he. Tremblay applied to the court, and on July 7, like Murphy, he obtained a temporary injunction against his former girlfriend. Daigle was on her way to the abortion appointment when she was told there was a court injunction against her keeping the appointment. On that same day, July 7—every day counts in this story—there was a new twist in the Toronto case. The headline in the Toronto Star read “A Second Father Appears.” A man named Christen Mucciacito had come forward claiming that Dodd was carrying his child, not Murphy’s. Dodd did not deny Mucciacito’s claim. They had been seeing each other regularly. Dodd was profoundly isolated, first due to her hearing loss and also because she did not have a lawyer to explain things and represent her at the injunction hearing. When the case hit the papers, Clayton Ruby stepped forward and became Dodd’s lawyer. He said of the injunction and the way it was handled: “This is the way you treat a slave, not an independent human being.” He appealed the temporary injunction at the Ontario Court of Appeal and introduced evidence that when Dodd was served with the initial court documents (by Costigan herself, Murphy’s lawyer, rather than a professional process server), nothing was explained in sign language. Dodd did not understand what was going on. The Court of Appeal held that on that basis alone, the injunction was invalid. Abortion rights organizations rallied, and the Canadian Hearing Society held a triumphant press conference. But the case of Dodd and Murphy did not tackle the big questions. The Ontario court did not have to decide on Murphy’s claim of a father’s right to protect the fetus or whether a fetus had rights. Dodd had her abortion on Tuesday, July 11. Costigan asked for the remains of the aborted fetus so that Murphy could give it a “proper burial.” The request was refused. Nonetheless, Murphy held a well-publicized “memorial” next door to the Morgentaler clinic. I n Quebec, Tremblay moved to get his temporary injunction made permanent. This time, the hearing took place in Val-d’Or, not far from Chibougamau, Daigle’s hometown. Like Dodd, Daigle did not have a lawyer. But she knew enough to apply for legal aid, the government-funded plan to ensure that anyone facing serious legal charges who could not afford a lawyer did not go into court unrepresented. Daigle made the eight-hour drive north from Montreal, got her legal aid certificate, and found her lawyer: Daniel Bédard, the newest hire at “le clan Cliché,” a well-known firm in Val-d’Or. Thirty years later, the firm still advertises its involvement in the famous “Chantale Daigle Affair.” Bédard, barely out of law school, found himself swimming in deep and uncharted waters. The night before the trial, Daigle appeared on Radio Canada’s Téléjournal, where she said very clearly, “It’s my decision. It’s up to me to do what I want best with my body.” She also said that “a pro-life” lawyer had offered her $25,000 to “keep the child,” to not have an abortion. The next day, Monday, July 17, Daigle, composed and dignified in a white blazer and dark skirt, walked into the Val-d’Or Palais de Justice. There, her lawyer stood up, faced the court, and argued that since the Supreme Court had decriminalized abortion, it was a woman’s Charter right to govern her own body. Tremblay’s lawyer answered, “Women’s rights have limits.” The Quebec Superior Court agreed—women’s rights have limits—and made the temporary injunction permanent. Daigle was now the only woman in Quebec forbidden to have an abortion. If she disobeyed, she would be in contempt of court and could face a $50,000 fine and a two-year jail sentence. Seldom has a modern case moved so fast. Three days later, her appeal was heard by five judges of the Quebec Court of Appeal. Tremblay’s lawyer expanded his argument and maintained that his client, the father, had a legal right and duty to protect his unborn child and that the fetus was a person with legal rights under the Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms. It took the Quebec Court of Appeal six days to come to a decision. To Daigle, it must have felt like an eternity, knowing that time was as big an enemy as Tremblay. Two more weeks and she could not have a legal abortion in Quebec. The decision came down. Two of the judges would have allowed the appeal but three agreed with Tremblay’s argument, that a father has rights over the fetus and that, more fundamentally, a fetus is a person. “It is not an inanimate object nor the property of anyone, but a living human entity distinct from the mother . . . and has the right to life and protection from those who conceived it.” “I won my case,” crowed Tremblay. “I am expecting the child at this time.” In Ontario, the saga of Dodd and Murphy was not over. Within days of having her abortion, Dodd knocked on Murphy’s door and said that she regretted her decision and had been duped into having the abortion. Years later, Dodd became more involved in the rights of people who are deaf or partially deaf, and probably less subject to the influence of others, but on July 31, 1989, the cover headline of Maclean’s read “Barbara Dodd’s Change of Heart.” Campaign Life held a press conference announcing that Dodd and Murphy were together again and were heading for Quebec to plead with Daigle not to have an abortion. Daigle was not about to change her mind. La Presse ran interviews with Tremblay’s relatives. They were not flattering, with the coup de grâce coming from his mother, who described her son as “irresponsible, violent, and a liar.” A week after his Court of Appeal victory, Tremblay told the Globe and Mail that he was “sick and tired of people calling [him] a wife-beater and a criminal,” and he added that he never hit Daigle “hard enough to leave marks.” A ugust 8, 1989, the day the Supreme Court heard Tremblay v. Daigle, became known as one of the most dramatic days in the history of the court. It can—and usually does—take years for a case to wend its way through the various tribunals, lower courts, and courts of appeal before landing on the doorstep of the Supreme Court. In Tremblay v. Daigle, it was barely a month after Tremblay’s first application for an injunction to the Supreme Court’s ruling. Daigle was fast approaching that twenty-week point of no return. If her appeal to the Supreme Court was going to mean anything, it had to happen fast. The court was on its summer recess. Chief Justice Dickson scrambled as a chief justice had seldom scrambled before. Beverley McLachlin, only appointed to the Supreme Court four months earlier, was in Switzerland vacationing with her son when the message reached her: be back in Ottawa and ready to go in two days’ time. Antonio Lamer, the senior Quebec judge on the court, was manoeuvring his boat under the Brooklyn Bridge when he got the call. Wherever they had been, the nine “supremes” were all back in Ottawa on August 8. Out on the lawn in front of the Supreme Court building, demonstrators with strollers, stuffed animals, and a sign that read “gifts for Chantale and Jean-Guy’s baby” had positioned themselves to best advantage. A strong press contingent strained to hear and identify the players as they made their way into court. This was another case where the gallery would be full; all the interest groups were there. Daigle, like most of the women whose legal battles wound up at the Supreme Court, was not about to put herself through the media circus. She, everyone assumed, had given up. By now, she was past the twentieth week of her pregnancy. Bédard, her lawyer, suddenly found himself in front of the highest court in the land. Among the interveners sitting behind him were lawyers for the attorney general of Canada and the attorney general of Quebec. The arguments would, everyone knew, dig deep into constitutional and jurisdictional issues. Quebec and the federal government would be pitted against each other. The spotlight, however, clearly shone on the fetal rights issue and who, if anyone, could veto a woman’s decision to have an abortion. Marie Tison, writing for La Presse, reported that Bédard led off with “a solid plea.” Then just after 2 p.m., as they were scheduled to resume, Bédard, “looking distraught,” wrote Tison, stood up to address the court. He announced, “his voice unsure,” that his client had had an abortion the week before, in Boston. “The bombshell hit after lunch,” Madame Justice McLachlin, viewing events from the bench, wrote after she retired. “I saw the tide of red anger creep up Chief Justice Dickson’s face. . . . To say the chief justice was displeased and all the other justices upset is only to say what became clear later in court.” Bédard explained that he had been unable to reach his client for the past few days and was previously unaware of what had happened. McLachlin described Daigle’s conduct as “more panicked than contemptuous, less a slap in the face of justice than the action of a woman running out of time.” The chief justice called a recess, and the nine judges met “backstage.” Given that the abortion had already happened, should the hearing continue? Tremblay’s lawyer said it was a private matter; it’s over and done with. Bédard argued no; the same could, and almost inevitably would, happen to another woman and should be decided. Besides, there was the matter of the contempt-of-court charge hanging over Daigle’s head. The court ruled that the case would continue. The central legal question had to be determined: “Does the law, viewed objectively, recognize fetal rights?” Arguments were brief, and it took the nine judges just an hour to agree that only a woman can decide whether to carry her pregnancy to term; that a fetus has no legal personality, and the father has no veto. The injunction against Daigle was lifted and, with it, the contempt-of-court charge. Abortion was the woman’s decision and her decision alone. Journalists circled Tremblay at the end of the day. “Do you still love her?” someone asked. Tremblay, reported Tison for La Presse, was enraged. “How can you ask me that? She just killed my child.” Tremblay left Quebec and resurfaced in Alberta a few years later—where he racked up fourteen convictions for beating, stalking, and choking women. In 2000, he was designated a long-term offender. Psychiatrists told the court that he “was at high risk to reoffend, describing him variously as a psychopath, narcissistic, paranoid, aggressive and predatory.” Upon his release, he was under court order to live in a halfway house until 2016, and yet in 2011, he met a woman and got married. A year later, Quebec City police picked him up after another domestic violence complaint. T he Supreme Court gave its oral judgment from the bench at the end of that summer of 1989. It was the middle of November when the court issued its written judgment. This time, Daigle was front and centre. What she said at the press conference was simple and straightforward: “I was not pro-abortion. I was 100 percent pro-choice. Journalists wanted to make the case too spectacular. . . . It stopped being a debate about a woman wanting an abortion. Suddenly everyone was pro-Chantale or pro–Jean Guy.” And with that, Daigle went back to Chibougamau. The next year, she released a book titled Le seul choix, le mien, and after that, she changed her name, got married, had four children, and lived, as far as anyone knows, a “normal” life. She has raised her head only once since. In 2022, a production company made a six-hour miniseries that retold her story. Too many young women, the producers said, did not know about Chantale Daigle. She quietly endorsed the project. Disobey: The Chantale Daigle Affair streamed in March of 2023. It came hard on the heels of the United States Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and, with it, fifty years of American women’s right to abortion. As for the law, Tremblay v. Daigle held that a fetus is not a person and that only a woman has the right to decide whether or not to continue with a pregnancy. But there are always more questions. Two years after the judgment, two self-taught midwives assisted in a home birth in Vancouver. It was a difficult delivery. The baby’s head had emerged when contractions stopped. After twenty minutes, an ambulance was called, and once at the hospital, the baby was delivered but showed no signs of life. The two midwives were charged with negligence causing death and bodily harm to the mother. But was this a fetus or a baby, and if a fetus was not a person, then how could these midwives have caused its death? Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund—LEAF—intervened. They argued that in the midst of the attention previously given to father’s rights and in all the discussion of the legal status of a foetus, it was the woman who got short shrift and who lost her equality under the Charter. LEAF asked the court to enhance women’s equality “by ensuring that the status of the foetus is not considered apart from the woman who carried it.” LEAF went on to point out that had there been more women shaping the law over the course of history, the right words might have been found to describe the relationship between a woman and the fetus she carried. Excerpted from Women Who Woke Up the Law: Inside the Cases That Changed Women’s Rights in Canada by Karin Wells. Copyright © Karin Wells 2025. Reproduced with the permission of Second Story Press.The post She Wanted to End Her Pregnancy. Her Abusive Partner Took Her to Court first appeared on The Walrus.