Abortion is the social issue that displays the greatest chasm between the views of Canadians and those of our American cousins.
Americans focus on abortion at every turn in their political process and it remains without a doubt the single most divisive issue in their society. Candidates must be vetted for their view on abortion whether they are running for President, Congress, any statewide office, judgeship or dog-catcher.
Roe v. Wade is the most famous court case in American history.
In fact, it is so well-known that even woefully uninformed Americans have reasonably considered opinions on its impact.
In Canada, the situation could not be more different. We never talk about abortion and it is a subject very few Canadians apparently know much about, according to the National Post:
Two-thirds of Canadians do not know that Canada has no abortion law, according to a new poll that indicates Canadians are woefully misinformed about a landmark ruling in the country’s history.
The poll, which asked 1,022 Canadian adults about their understanding of the country’s abortion regulations, found that just 22% of Canadians correctly identified a woman’s right to an abortion with no governmental restrictions.
Canada has not had legislated abortion rules since 1988, making the country an “absolute outlier” on the issue, according to a medical ethicist.
“There’s really only a very small number of Canadians that correctly identify the current situation in Canada,” says pollster Jaideep Mukerji, who worked on the Angus-Reid poll, which was released on Tuesday. “That could be problematic.”
“Once you explain to them what the actual law is, there’s only 27% of Canadians that say that the status quo [of no law] should be maintained. There’s a majority of Canadians that would like to make some change to that status quo,” Mr. Mukerji said.
Forty-one per cent of those surveyed believe the government regulates the roughly 90,000 abortions that occur each year, only allowing women to have them up until the third month of pregnancy.
Fifteen per cent said women could have abortions only within the first three months of pregnancy or if the woman’s life is in danger, she was raped, or the fetus has serious defects.
Another 10% said they believe a woman can only have an abortion in Canada if her life is in danger, she was raped or her fetus has serious defects and 13% of respondents weren’t sure about the country’s legal stance.
“We obviously need to have more education and more dialogue around pregnancies, and what the possible outcomes can be,” said Jill Doctoroff, director of Vancouver’s Elizabeth Bagshaw Women’s Clinic, adding that such widespread misinformation can limit women’s options.
“It shows the medical community and sexual health workers still have a lot of work to do.”
More than 50% of people surveyed said they would like to see some legal regulations implemented, with the largest percentage (22%) preferring unrestricted abortions during the first three months and abortions during the last six months only if the woman’s life is in danger, if she was raped or if the fetus has serious defects.
The poll, conducted online on July 7 and 8, has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1%, 19 times out of 20.
The last slate of regulations in place in Canada, implemented by the Trudeau government, restricted abortions to being performed in hospitals and only if approved by a hospital committee.
The Supreme Court struck down the law in 1988, on a challenge from Dr. Henry Morgentaler. The court ruled it to be contrary to the Charter and too intrusive.
Since then there has been virtually no meaningful debate over abortion law in Canada.
Margaret Somerville, founding director of the McGill University Centre for Medicine, Ethics and Law, says the lack of such a law is not reflective of the country’s national attitude toward abortion.
“The vast majority of Canadians cannot believe that you could have an abortion when you’re eight-and-a-half months pregnant. I don’t think a doctor would do it. But that’s not the point. Legally, that’s allowed, and what we allow legally has a big impact on what our shared societal values are,” she said. “If you don’t understand the facts, you’re in trouble working out what the ethics are.”
She points out that other countries have imposed limits on abortion procedures; Germany and the United States require counselling before an abortion and parental involvement for minors. Thirty-eight U.S. states and nearly every Western European country have put restrictions on late-term abortions, except in special cases.
According to Mr. Mukerji, Canadians’ views on abortion regulation have stayed constant over the past few years.
“We’ve run similar questions in the U.S. and U.K., however, and Canadians are significantly more likely to support allowing abortion in all cases and are also more reluctant to reopen the debate than Americans and Brits,” he said.
The survey indicated that although a majority would like to see regulations implemented, that majority is a fractured one and 55% of Canadians see no point in revisiting the abortion debate. “At some level, Canadians realize the issue is a divisive one,” Mr. Mukerji said. Although not set out in law, abortions are regulated by medical governing bodies across Canada, including by hospitals and provincial Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons. But that raises concerns about private bodies governing what some believe should be overseen by the government.
Read the rest here.
The fascinating aspect of this story appears to have been overlooked by the Post's reporter. I was curious to see the statistic that 90,000 abortions are performed in Canada every year and wondered how that compared to the US, where it is such a massively contentious issue and the rules of every state vary with regard to access.
It is hard to find a definitive statistic but I have found that the range appears to be between about 820,000 and 1.3 million abortions a year are conducted in the United States every year. (Here are a couple of possible sources)
Whether the number is 800K or a million, what I find interesting is that while our political environment could regarding abortion could not be more different and while, technically, Canadians have free access to abortion at any time with no restrictions, the statistical difference between our countries appears to be insignificant. There are about 10 times as many abortions in the US as in Canada, well in line with the population ratio.
Here are a couple of ways of looking at this: the apparent free access in Canada has not spurred women here to go running for abortions willy-nilly or, the supposedly far more restricted access in the US has been completely ineffective at curbing abortions because Americans have these as often as citizens of a country with complete freedom of access.
So, now that we've seen how the different governmental approaches have gotten our two countries to virtually the same place, what does all this say about drug laws?
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