The Criminal Code only permitted lawful abortion if continuation of a pregnancy would cause a woman medical harm, as certified by a TAC.
[citation needed] These restrictions on abortion were struck down as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of Canada in its decision in R v Morgentaler in 1988.
In many cases, judges were willing to convict but juries were unwilling to condemn any qualified medical doctor acting in good faith with the intention to protect the health of a patient.
Most notably Henry Morgentaler openly operated clinics as a form of civil disobedience in order to establish a judicial test case based on the legal defence of necessity.
[citation needed] These were the cases which the TAC's were originally intended to address, but many hospitals were unwilling to perform abortions at all.
The court ruled that the provisions relating to abortion were contrary to section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
The delays and limited access potentially had a profound impact on a woman's health and thus infringed her rights to liberty and security of the person, contrary to section 7 of the Charter.