Reasons for abortion in Canada

Here are the reasons why some women had abortions in Canada. The sample was of women referred from a birth control center in Toronto to abortion facilities. The year was 1981.

Reasons Given

Personal choice: 12.2%

Still a student, too young: 34.7%

Emotionally unable to have a child: 14.3%

Financially unable to have a child: 34.7%

Fear of birth defects: 2%

Maternal health: 0%

Rape: 2%

Incest: 0%

A third of the women had a previous abortion and over half were not using contraception when they got pregnant.

Bruce Alton The Abortion Question (Toronto: Anglican Book Centre, 1983) 15

The research was done by MG Powell and RB Deber.

Share on Facebook

Pro-choice researcher: contraception increased the need for abortion

Pro-choice author and researcher Rosalind Pollack Petchesky writes:

“As I argued initially, the “contraceptive revolution,” especially the pill, has increased rather than decreased women’s need for access to abortion.

This is true because of two interacting developments: the widespread availability of the pill and legal abortion, reinforcing women’s awareness of fertility control as their right; and a newer political consciousness that refuses to accept risk to reproductive health as fate’s decree.

The current status of contraceptive techniques underlines more than ever that as long as it remains possible for a woman to become pregnant without wanting to be, abortion will be a necessity and its denial a punishment of women – for having sex.”

Rosalind Pollack Petchesky Abortion and Women’s Choice: The State, Sexuality, and Reproductive Freedom (New York: Longman, 1984) 190

Share on Facebook