If the past few years have taught me anything, it’s that we’re still fighting many of the battles I thought had been won long ago.

Growing up in the local punk scene, older musicians would tell stories of their violent encounters with racist skinheads in the 1990s. To me, having to be on the watch for organized white supremacists seemed like ancient history. But immediately following the 2016 election of Donald Trump, who ran for the United States presidency on an implicitly fascist platform, hate crimes surged around the world. This toxic brand of divisive politics quickly spilled over into Canada, with people like Maxime Bernier and Ezra Levant banging the alt-right drum on this side of the border.

I also naively thought the days of rolling back public resources would never get as bad as they were in the ’90s, when the provincial government disastrously privatized MTS. Instead, I watched the province cut healthcare funding again and again.

In this week’s cover story, features reporter Charlie Morin looks at reproductive rights in Manitoba, another area in which we seem to be taking some troubling steps backwards in time. Charlie examines the many barriers, from lack of abortion-drug access to the needless empowering of hostile anti-choice activists, that Manitoba seems unwilling to tear down.

Published in Volume 76, Number 07 of The Uniter (October 28, 2021)