When Protest Becomes News: The 1970 Abortion Caravan and the Politics of Media Coverage

By Hailey Baldock

With a black coffin strapped to the top of their van and a fiery determination to scrap Canada’s abortion laws, the women of the 1970 Abortion Caravan knew they had to make a scene. And they did.

Over the course of two weeks, the Caravan moved across the country from Vancouver to Ottawa, rallying supporters and drawing crowds, all while carrying the memory of women who died from unsafe abortions along with them.

Although the Caravan has since been recognized as a landmark in Canadian feminist and reproductive history, the media coverage at the time tells a very different story–one that reveals as much about Canadian newspapers as it does about the women involved in the protest.

When I began this research for my Master’s degree, eager to build on the work of media historians such as Barbara Freeman, I expected to encounter some unsavoury headlines and articles condemning the protest. And I did. What I didn’t anticipate, however, were the numerous, often explicitly gendered, criticisms directed against the women involved. The value of blending feminist history with media studies became quite clear to me, as the Abortion Caravan’s legacy is as much about how it was reported as about what it achieved.

A Story Buried in the Back Pages

The Abortion Caravan was organized by women in the Vancouver Women’s Caucus. From the start, they mobilized the power of visibility and publicity. By using props like coffins and coat hangers, and staging guerrilla theatre in cities where they stopped, the Caravan turned protest into performance, designed to capture attention and be amplified through the press.

The early coverage was anything but groundbreaking. Articles were short, tucked away in lifestyle or regional sections, and often painted the women as “spirited” or “determined”– colourful, maybe, but not threatening. In other words: not exactly front-page material.

This was a wave-making, national protest, yet in the early stages, this historic moment in Canadian feminism was not being treated as such.

Visibility Through Confrontation 

Everything changed in Ottawa. After leaving a coffin and tools associated with abortion on Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s lawn, Caravan members did something no other group in Canadian history had successfully done before: they shut down the House of Commons.

On May 11th, 1970, thirty-six women entered the House of Commons gallery with chains hidden in their purses and forged passes in their hands. They fastened themselves to their seats, read out a declaration of war, and chanted “abortion on demand!” until guards arrived with bolt cutters. For more than an hour, Parliament came to a halt.

Of course, the media could not ignore the significance of this event. But what did they have to say? 

Angry, Shrill, and “Pathetic”

The day(s) after the disruption, newspapers exploded with protest coverage, and the tone was far from celebratory. The Globe and Mail ran the headline: “Angry, shouting women disrupt house sitting.” The Ottawa Citizen described “screaming, ranting women.” The Windsor Star dismissed their finale as the Caravan’s  “pathetic climax.”

The Vancouver Sun also piled on, criticizing the women for potentially hurting their cause:

“Effective reformers were not screaming women, chaining themselves to gallery seats and forcing adjournment of the serious business of the land… It would be unfortunate indeed if the seizure of this excellent cause by a noisy, rowdy minority using the blackmail techniques of confrontation should frighten off those who have fought so devotedly for abortion reform for so many years.”

In other words, abortion reform was acceptable, but being angry about it was not.

A Few Voices of Support

Not every article condemned them. One described the demonstration as a “masterpiece of timing and organization,” acknowledging the women’s skill in planning and execution. Another pointed out that quiet, polite lobbying had failed for decades, and that frustration was bound to boil over.

But these were exceptions. The dominant story was not about the injustice of abortion laws or the desperation that drove women to pursue illegal and/or unsafe procedures. It was about “hysteria,” “shrill voices,” and the apparent irrationality of women who dared to disrupt. The behaviour of the women became the media’s focus, obscuring the purpose of their actions to the public.

What Made the News–and What Didn’t

The numbers tell the story. Out of more than 100 articles on the Caravan in 1970, just three ever reached the front page–and all ran the day after the House of Commons disruption. On average, coverage of the Caravan was buried around page 18. 

Fighting for abortion wasn’t front-page material until the women forced Parliament to a standstill. Quiet protest didn’t qualify, and visibility came only when the state itself felt threatened, when “serious business” was interrupted.

And even then, that visibility came through distortion.

Forgotten Almost as Quickly

After 1970, coverage of the Caravan all but disappeared. A handful of anniversary pieces were published, and by the 1980s, the protest seemed to have slipped almost entirely out of public memory. Even after the 1988 Morgentaler decision, which struck down Canada’s abortion law, the Caravan was rarely mentioned by the media as a contributing force. 

The protest was historic, daring, and effective in forcing abortion into public debate. However, newspapers treated it more as a blip than a turning point.

Why This Still Matters

Why does it matter how the press covered a protest fifty-five years ago? Because it shows us how the media decides what–and who–is important.

While the Abortion Caravan was never outright ignored, it did not receive extensive coverage until it became impossible not to acknowledge. When the media did pay attention, its coverage was laced with ridicule and doubt.

This is not just a story from 1970. It’s a pattern that feminist and other activist movements still confront: invisibility until disruption, and delegitimization once visible.

Here’s the paradox: the very things that made the Caravan newsworthy–its spectacle, its militancy, its refusal to stay polite–are the same things the press used to undermine it. 

The Lasting Lesson of the Caravan

The story of the Abortion Caravan serves as a poignant reminder of how media coverage influences historical memory. By focusing on conflict rather than content, newspapers helped frame the Caravan as a disruption rather than a demand for rights.

Visibility, in this case, came at a cost. The women of the Caravan were remembered in headlines not for their arguments, but for their anger. 

Yet, their tactics worked. Even though the media attempted to undermine their efforts by amplifying the emotional state of the protestors, the Caravan helped to reignite the abortion debate in Canada and set the tone for a decade of feminist activism to come.

Today, revisiting how the media covered the Caravan challenges us to think critically about who gets front-page space, how language shapes legitimacy, and how quickly even landmark protests can be forgotten.

Hailey Baldock is a PhD Candidate in History at York University

---

This post is part of an activehistory.ca series on media and history in Canada. Media have been both remarkably important and intensely theorized but also historically understudied. We hope this series highlights the diversity of ways the study of media history informs and contributes to our knowledge of the past and our understanding of the role of media in the present. The editors encourage other submissions on topics related to media history, broadly conceived. If you are interested in contributing or even just finding out more about this series, please feel free to write to Andrew Nurse at anurse@mta.ca or Hannah Cooley at hannah.cooley@mail.utoronto.ca.