Abortion in Canada

"Everyone should have access to safe and consistent reproductive health services, including abortion. Although abortion has been legal in Canada for five decades, many people continue to experience barriers to access. Sexual and reproductive health is health care and the Government of Canada will always defend a woman’s right to choose while improving access for everyone."

This is an excerpt from a statement the Canadian government made on May 9, 2023. Canadian society and political institutions have come a long way in the past hundred years to ensure that talk of a woman's right to control her own body today does not provoke rude public discussions on this case.

Canada is among those democratic and humane countries that do not limit woman's right to a pregnancy termination in any way. It is worth recalling Northern Ireland, where abortion is now permitted only in the case of a potential woman's death or Poland with its draconian laws which pays no respect to the interests of women and do not allow abortions even in cases of severe or incurable fetal disease.

But what was Canada's path to this? Were there protests to achieve abortion rights? What do Canadians think about abortion? Are there any limitations today? You may discover all the answers in our article.

Abortions Today

Today, in 2023, there are no restrictions on having an abortion procedure in Canada. A gestational age does not matter, and this is an important detail: in many countries around the Globe abortions are also allowed, but up to a certain period of time. In the Netherlands you can have an abortion up to the 24th week, while in the state of Texas abortion is forbidden from the moment the fetus has a heartbeat.

There is also no reason to limit the possibility of conducting an induced termination of pregnancy. Many countries base their abortion legislation on "special cases". For example, if according to a doctor's report a child is born with any kind of anomaly, then the woman has the right to have an abortion, if generally abortions are forbidden. it can be a different case: a woman was raped and became pregnant. For years some countries would not allow an operation even in such obvious cases that violate a woman's rights.

In short, abortion in Canada is a legal medical procedure not limited by gestational age or any circumstances. Abortion falls under the jurisdiction of the province or territory. Information about access to such procedure depends on the educational system of a particular region of the country.

What was it like before?

The real abortion rights history began in 1969. For the most part of the nineteenth century and most of the twentieth, abortion was outlawed in the Province of Canada, the Canadian Confederation, and finally in the country we know today as Canada. Young pregnant girls took great risks in an attempt to find a person who would secretly perform the dangerous operation. Some died, some went to prison. Canada has made a tremendous social and humanistic way up to 2023 to ensure that in is no reason to take away a woman's right to control her own body.

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In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, abortion up to the twelfth or fifteenth week was permitted only in the British colonies in North America. In this matter Canada followed the laws of the British Empire. With the adoption of the Malicious Shooting and Stabbing Act in 1803 abortion or even attempted abortion after 12-15 weeks implied penalty by death.

It all ended in 1869, only two years after the birth of the Canadian state. According to its principles, anyone who induced a pregnant woman to miscarriage was liable to imprisonment. If a pregnant woman tried to terminate the pregnancy herself, she would be sent to prison for two years.

How things have been changing

The letter of law remained unchanged for a 100 years. And in 1969 , after a Liberal government proposal, Parliament passed amendments to Article 251 of the Criminal Code of Canada, decriminalizing contraception and allowing some abortions under very limited conditions.

Abortions were to be performed only in a hospital if a panel of doctors decided that continuing the pregnancy could endanger woman's life or health. The ban on advertising of abortifacients, contained in Article 163, remained untouched by the 1969 amendments.

1970: A feminist organization, the Vancouver Women's Caucus, organizes political opposition to Section 251 of the Canadian Criminal Code and holds a nationwide protest. A caravan of women travels 3 000 miles from Vancouver to Ottawa as more activists join in. Upon reaching Parliament, 30 women chained themselves to the gallery of the House of Commons, for the first time ever forcing Parliament to stop its session.

In 1982, Canada adopted the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Therefore, any law that contradicts the rights enshrined in the Charter can be repealed as unconstitutional.

In 1988 this happened: the Supreme Court of Canada struck down the abortion law as contradictory to the Charter. Since then, no laws against abortion have been passed. Abortion is now completely legal.

1989: The Supreme Court stated that a father has no legal right to veto a woman's decision to have an abortion. The decision came after the boyfriend of a girl named Chantale Daigle obtained a restraining order against her abortion. By the time the case was settled, Daigle had secretly had an abortion in the United States.

In 1990-1991 federal government led by progressive conservative Brian Mulroney, attempted to restrict abortion and introduced Bill C-43, which would punish doctors with two years in prison for performing abortions when a woman's health was not in danger. The bill passed the House of Commons, but was rejected in the Senate after a tie vote.

In 1995, provincial and federal government regulations forced private clinics in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick to perform abortions. Despite this ruling, access to abortions outside hospitals across the country remained inconsistent.

Since 2015, mifepristone, one of the drugs used for medical abortion, has been authorized and approved by Health Canada.

By the early 2020s, no attempt had been performed to restrict women's right to have abortions. Abortion are completely legal.

The doctor who changed everything

Canadians should be forever grateful to a man who acted in defiance of the laws of the day, which did not seem any worthy following.

Dr. Henry Morgentaler, an employee at a clinic in Canada, violates Section 251 of the Criminal Code in 1970 and performs abortions at his medical clinic in Quebec. In June of that year, police search Morgentaler's office and charge him with conspiracy to commit abortion.

Over the next two years, from 1971 to 1973, 10 criminal charges are brought against Morgentaler and a trial begins. In November 1973, a Montreal jury of 11 men and one woman acquits the Quebec clinic doctor.

But events take a dubious turn: in an unprecedented decision, the Court of Appeal of Quebec reverses the jury verdict in 1974 and finds Morgenthaler guilty. The doctor appeals his case to the Supreme Court of Canada, and in 1975, the court votes 6 to 3 to uphold the Quebec court's verdict, and Morgenthaler is sentenced to 18 months imprisonment.

While serving his sentence, he holds a second charge. The jury acquitted him again, and the Quebec Court of Appeal upheld the acquittal.

A prisoner of the Dachau Nazi camp and the Lodz ghetto, Morgentaler was born in Poland in 1929 and found himself in the maelstrom of the dark pages of twentieth-century Europe that undermined man's faith in his virtue.

When the war ended and the concentration camp was liberated, Morgentaler went to Canada and started medical practice. He was one of the first doctors to perform vasectomies, to place an intrauterine device, to give contraceptive drugs to unmarried women.

In 1969 he opened a clinic and began helping girls and women have abortions, which immediately displeased morality guardians and the authorities prohibiting pregnancy, which led to his prosecution, but he did not abandon his principles.

Abortion becomes legal

In 1988 the Supreme Court of Canada struck down Canada's abortion law as unconstitutional following Dr. Morgentaler's appeal. The law was found to violate section 7 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms because it infringed on a woman's right to "life, liberty and security".

The following year, in 1989, Dr. Morgenthaler opens a clinic in Nova Scotia after the provincial government passes a law banning abortions there. Morgentaler was indicted. In 1990, a provincial court struck down the law as unconstitutional and Morgenthaler was acquitted.

Abortion accessibility

With the repeal of the last restrictive law, abortion is no longer regulated by the federal government, the provinces are now in charge. Therefore, only procedural difficulties may arise today.

For example, in some jurisdictions, historically, abortions performed in clinics sometimes are not covered by Medicare. Now only New Brunswick limits funding for hospital abortions to 13 weeks gestation.

Some other barriers are geographical. Large urban centers tend to have access to local clinics. In Alberta, for example, there is only one abortion hospital, and it is in Calgary, in the very south of the province.

In addition, some provincial insurance plans cover medication cost, while in other provinces patients have to pay out of their own pocket.

Today

Today The National Abortion Federation Canada is responsible for abortion access. It collaborates with specialists across the country to ensure that the procedure is completely safe.

In terms of public opinion, according to research by the Angus Reid Institute, more than half of Canadians (52%) favor a woman's right to an abortion and only 8% favor a child's right to be born. About 40% are "somewhere in the middle" in these reflections, which is quite a lot.

In 2008, Dr. Morgentaler was awarded the Order of Canada "for his commitment to increased health care options for women, his determined efforts to influence Canadian public policy and his leadership in humanist and civil liberties organizations."

Dr. Morgentaler died at the age of 90 of a heart attack.

Today in Canada abortions are completely legal.