Clandestine Operations: The Vancouver Women’s Caucus, the Abortion Caravan, and the RCMP
Bibliographic record
Abstract
In 1969, the reform of the Criminal Code legalized contraception, abortion, and homosexual acts between consenting adults. Yet the conditions under which legal abortion was now permissible were so restrictive that the new abortion law provoked widespread discontent. One women’s liberation group, the fledging Vancouver Women’s Caucus (VWC), outlined a plan to travel to Ottawa between February and May 1970 in an Abortion Caravan to protest the new law. The caravan’s central feature was a van bearing a coffin filled with coat hangers to represent the deaths of women from botched abortions. Declassified RCMP files reveal that the Mounties were spying on the VWC and tracking the Abortion Caravan on its journey from Vancouver to Ottawa. An analysis of these files shows that the VWC, like other women’s liberation groups, was targeted for surveillance because the RCMP was extremely concerned about women’s liberation groups’ real and putative connections to left-wing organizations. Indeed, the RCMP’s approach to women’s liberation groups was a crucial component of the climate of fear of subversion so prevalent during the Cold War. However, the files also reveal that RCMP surveillance of the VWC proved to be a major challenge because of the complex gendered nature of the force’s surveillance of women’s liberation groups. Ultimately, the files point to the importance of studying the ways in which state security interests intersect with variables such as gender, class, race, and sexual orientation. La réforme du Code criminel de 1969 légalise la contraception, l’avortement et les rapports homosexuels entre adultes consentants. Toutefois, les nombreuses restrictions légales qui continuent d’encadrer l’avortement provoquent beaucoup de mécontentement. Un groupe pour la libération des femmes, l’embryonnaire Vancouver Women’s Caucus (VWC), décide d’organiser, de février à mai 1970, une « Caravane de l’avortement », voyage de protestation à destination de la capitale. Des dossiers déclassifiés de la GRC révèlent que la police fédérale a espionné le VWC et la Caravane de l’avortement le long de son trajet entre Vancouver et Ottawa. Ils montrent que la GRC a ciblé le VWC, tout comme d’autres groupes du Mouvement de libération des femmes (MLF), à cause de ses liens réels et supposés avec les organisations de gauche. De fait, l’attitude de la GRC envers les groupes pour la libération des femmes a contribué de façon significative à la phobie de la subversion qui a marqué les années de guerre froide. Les dossiers montrent aussi que la surveillance des groupes du MLF, à cause de sa dimension genrée, représentait un défi complexe pour la Gendarmerie royale. En fin de compte, ces dossiers de la GRC soulignent l’importance d’étudier les intérêts de sécurité de l’État à travers les variables du genre, de la classe, de la race et de l’orientation sexuelle.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.007 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.022 | 0.006 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.007 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.005 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.021 | 0.002 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".