Legalization Of Abortion In Canada

There have been many debates over abortion. One of the more famous acts in history about abortion is Roe vs. Wade on January 22, 1973. In this case the U.S. Supreme Court recognized that the constitutional right to privacy extends to a woman’s right to make her own personal medical decisions. This includes the decision to have an abortion without interference from politics and regulations, or religion. Therefore, a state may not ban abortion prior to viability.

Abortion policy has been shifting throughout American history as American views have simultaneously transitioned from more conservative to more liberal. Doctors, specifically regular physicians, have surprisingly guided the discussion surrounding abortion in the most influential way. Their power, in particular, their medical expertise, has allowed them to take hold of the issue and push against abortion from a medical stance. As a result of the change in traditionalistic views, the power the doctors held for a long time was taken by women, and abortion simultaneously became not an issue of health, but one questioning morality as well as a woman’s right to choose: pro-life and pro-choice. In America, abortion policy has transitioned from an issue of health and morality to one of women’s rights over time due to the power shifting from doctors to women as a result of modernization and the change in how Americans saw religion; this shift in turn impacting how the abortion issue’s sides are defined and how the issue is argued.

In the 19th century, after tremendous progress in surgical processes, abortions were then conducted by surgeons on a wide scale, while medical abortions are used concurrently. However, as abortion technology prospers, legal restrictions came with it. In 1803, a English statute abolished the previously-legal first trimester abortions. The act “condemned the willful, malicious, and unlawful use of any medical substance when used with the intent to induce abortion” (Stern, 1968). In 1821, Connecticut enabled the first statute in the United States regulating abortions. Within 10 years, states like Illinois, Ohio, New York, Alabama, and others enabled abortion restriction statutes, and by 1968, 50 of the 51 jurisdictions in the United States have prohibited abortion except in the case women’s life is endangered (Ibid., at 3). In 1965, Britain, however, legalized abortion for “medical conditions of the mother, for socio-economic reasons, for eugenic considerations, and for pregnancies which resulted from rape or incestuous intercourse”, which is still law today (Ibid, at 4). In Canada, abortion has been legalized since 1969 through Bill C-150 if “a committee of three physicians determined that the pregnancy was a threat to the woman's life or health” (Norman, 2012). In 1988, Canadian Supreme Court struck down bill C-150’s provision requiring committee approval to receive an abortion in its decision R v Morgentaler, legalizing abortion across Canada for any reasons (Ibid.).

Numerous states are also passing an Ultrasound bill, adding a paragraph to the already existing Woman’s Right to Know legislature requiring the physician to offer the woman the chance to see her ultrasound before the abortion. Oddly, though this bill frequently receives bipartisan support, some who claim to be ‘pro-choice’ object to the ultrasound bill, maintaining that it “interferes with the doctor-patient relationship, legislating the private conversations that occur about a legal medical procedure.”13 However, many women have rejected this excuse, returning that they asked to see their abortion and were denied. These women often say that they would have kept their unborn child had they seen the ultrasound as requested.14 The Women’s Right to Know bill and its additional Ultrasound bill protect the rights of the women, frequently initiating a change of heart without directly prohibiting the

Doctors’ view is also very much negative about abortion. A study was conducted by the Journal of Medical Ethics on 733 medical students about abortion. The outcome of the survey revealed that almost 1/3 of students would not perform an abortion for a congenitally malformed fetus after 24 weeks, 1∕4 of them would not perform an abortion for failed contraception before 24 weeks and 1/5 of them would not perform an abortion on a minor who was the victim of rape. (Campbell,

Despite this attempt, legal abortion access for Canadian women, especially for those who are in rural or remote communities, remains difficult due to the many different barriers, such as not enough of abortionists, unknowledgeable hospital staff, far distance, and high costs. In fact, only 15% of the country’s accredited hospitals had decided to provide the abortion services; in the province of Prince Edward Island, not even a single approved hospital offers the abortion service. Furthermore, anyone who lives in the north has to travel far distance in order to get surgery because most of the hospitals which offer abortion services are usually located within 150km from the US border. Hence, it is very costly and time consuming to travel for the ones who do not live in the city.

It has been over 25 years since the Supreme Court of Canada decriminalized abortion. In 1988 the court declared that section 251 of the Criminal Code of Canada, which did not allow women access to abortion services without the consent of a physician, infringed on the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. These rights guarantee the “security of person” which the court determined included access to medical care and procedures that include abortion services (Bourgeois, 23). In principle the amendment of this law has been instrumental for women’s rights and their autonomy in reproductive health decisions, but in practice this might not be the case.

In 2013, North Dakota state legislature passed a slew of regulatory laws with regards to abortion. (Davidson) Once a fetal heartbeat could be detected, abortion was prohibited. An abortion could not be sought solely because of fetal “genetic anomalies.” And, abortions could now only be performed by physicians who possessed admitting privileges at a hospital in the area. This last law threatened Red River Women’s Clinic, the state’s only abortion provider, as the three doctors they employed at the time commuted from Minnesota and Colorado. (Nelson)

On January 22, 1973, the Supreme Court, on the case of Roe v Wade, ruled to legalize abortion in all fifty US states. Forty two years after this decision, approximately 56 million abortions have been performed in the US alone and this number continues to climb drastically day to day. For some individuals, this number is simply not enough. For example, in her article, It Is Time to Integrate Abortion into Primary Care, Susan Yanow argues the case that abortion is here to stay. With this observation, she further believes that the procedure should be made more available to all women, and likewise, any physician should be easily allowed to perform abortions.

Fact: Before 1988, the Criminal Code prohibited abortion unless the life or health of a woman was endangered, the section 251(4) of the Code required them to obtain a certificate from a therapeutic abortion committee of an accredited or approved hospital. In 1998, a very significant decision took place regarding women's rights, which changed this. Dr. Henry Morgentaler, Dr. Leslie Frank Smoling and Dr. Robert Scott were all trained professionals in the medical field, that had organized a clinic to perform abortions for women who did not have a certificate/approval of the hospital. These ladies had publicly doubted the judgment of the abortion laws in Canada and insisted that a woman must have the unfettered right to choose whether or not an abortion is appropriate for her own matters. The legal case was between Dr. Morgentaler and Her Majesty the Queen. In the end of the case, only Justice Wilson, one of the judges defended an abortion right and announced that a constitutional right to abortion or “freedom of choice.” The decision 5-2, was split into four separate judgments. Although only Justice Wilson declared the

This brings about many ethical questions and moral concerns. The practice that likely incites the most controversy in selective abortion is sex selective reduction. As technology has advanced, the availability of ultrasound technology has provided practitioners with the ability to identify many fetal characteristics, one of which is gender (Higgins, 2016). Sex-selective reduction mirrors the practice of so called “gendercide” that occurs in countries such as China and India. In these countries sex selective abortion is used to create a population that is predominantly male. To American’s these methods may seem inhumane, and there are many organizations in the US and around the world attempting to stop gender specific abortion. What many Americans probably do not realize is these practices occur in the United States as well, and they have for a long time. While these methods are considered legal in the United States, the ethical implications of aborting fetuses based on sex creates an entirely new concern. The practice of selective abortion in general has created a number of ethical questions for society, and those practicing in the medical

If a pregnancy is unwanted or unplanned, does that mean the life of an unborn child should go to waste? Abortion cannot be the solution, it promotes that human life is disposable. If Canadians are uninformed about the abortion guidelines it can affect their decision to abort the child. In Canada, there is a 24-week deadline for women to have abortions. Many factors impact a woman’s judgement to have an abortion, one of which includes religion. However, physical and emotional factors can also impact the mother when terminating a pregnancy. Canadian guidelines should be changed to further restrict “late-term” abortions; abortions should only be permitted under special circumstances due to the numerous valid ethical implications that go hand in

The issue of abortion is notoriously controversial. Since the Supreme Court’s 1992 ruling in Casey v. Planned Parenthood, states have enacted different restrictions on the procedure. These restrictions vary from state to state. Nineteen states currently have laws prohibiting partial-birth abortion, and forty-one states strictly prohibit abortions except in cases of life-endangerment. One particularly incendiary area of abortion law is that of public funding. However, as of this year there are only seventeen states that cover abortion procedures through public funding. In this paper we will discuss federal abortion legislation, while describing the laws and political ideologies of the following states: Texas, California, New

To start with, a brief understanding on how the process of legalization in Canada started is an important tool so we know where we can looked back and stand in our society today.

Of all the legal, ethical, and moral issues we Americans continuously fight for or against, abortion may very well be the issue that Americans are most passionate about. The abortion issue is in the forefront of political races. Most recently the “no taxpayer funding for abortion act”, has abortion advocates reeling. Even though abortion has been legal in every state in the United States since the monumental Supreme Court decision, “Roe v Wade”, on January 22, 1973; there are fewer physicians willing to perform abortions today than in 2008. (Kraft) At the heart of the ethical dilemma for many in the medical profession is the viability of the fetus. And just to make this whole dilemma more confusing, according to the United States