Having just celebrated the 20th anniversary of abortion rights in Canada, it might be easy to pat ourselves on the back, compare our status to that of the U.S. and blithely go about our days. However, the current situation of abortion rights and access in Canada falls short of the rosy picture of free, easily accessible abortions the Morgantaler ruling was supposed to provide.
Abortions have been legal in Canada since 1969 limited to cases in which the pregnancy endangered the mother’s health and had to be proven to a board of three doctors. The Morgantaler ruling was hailed as something that would finally allow all women access to abortions when they needed them. Twenty years on, only 15.9 per cent of Canada’s hospitals provide what Canadians for Choice, a national, pro-choice organization, defines as “accessible abortion services.” Most abortion clinics are in large cities, and almost all are located within 241 kilometres of the U.S./Canada border. Prince Edward Island has no hospital or clinic that will provide abortions, meaning any woman who needs one will have to leave the province at her own expense and possibly pay for the procedure herself, as many provinces do not accept out of province health cards for abortion services. This clearly makes abortion less of a choice for women in rural areas, poor women and women who live on reserves. In the 2006 Canadians for Choice report “Reality Check: A close look at accessing abortion services in Canadian hospitals,” Jessica Shaw states the main barriers for access to abortion are anti-choice doctors, the influence of anti-choice organizations, the lack of providers in certain areas, costs and having to travel in order to access services. Any hospital with an obstetrics department is capable of being equipped to perform abortions, yet there are two per cent fewer hospitals providing them than in the 2003 report on abortion accessibility by the Canadian Abortion Rights Action League. The decreasing number of doctors who perform abortions can be directly linked to the decreasing amount of time dedicated to teaching procedure surrounding abortion in medical school. A 2005 study by McGill University found more time is spent on the study of Viagra in medical schools than on the study of abortion law, policy, procedures and pregnancy options counselling put together. This is simply unacceptable. We need to lobby and encourage medical schools to devote more time to an essential procedure. Abortions need to be easily accessible for numerous reasons, one being the desire to provide for existing children. A recent study by Rachel Jones from the Guttacher Institute, in the Journal of Family Issues, reveals that 61 per cent of women who have abortions in the U.S. are already mothers. Among these women, the most frequently cited reason for having an abortion was that having another child would negatively impact the existing children. Two thirds of the women who answered this way were living on or below the poverty line. What these findings show us is that the fight for abortion rights didn’t end with the Morgantaler ruling in 1988. Abortion rights are far from secured and though it’s tempting, and rather enjoyably self-congratulatory, to pretend Canada has successfully fought and won the battle for women’s self-determination, we haven’t.
As a final note, I would like to clear up some terminology used above. I use the term “anti-choice” rather than “pro-life” because history has shown that more women die under restrictive anti-abortion legislation than under an easily accessible system in which abortion is legal. Women don’t simply stop having abortions because it’s illegal. They seek out whoever they can, either going to unlicensed abortionists or simply attempting to terminate their unintended pregnancy themselves.
As Jessica Shaw wrote in “Reality Check,” “a choice that cannot be exercised in a safe, accessible, ive and affordable manner is no choice at all.”
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