Abortion access is a reproductive justice issue and a health care right.
LEAF is currently mapping the state of abortion access across the country. Our goal is to publish a comprehensive resource that will provide region-specific information about health coverage and coding systems, timelines for accessing services, names of service providers and other resources for accessing abortion care, national and region-specific laws governing abortion, and historical issues concerning abortion access within each region.
This National Abortion Access Framework is an expansion of our resource on Nova Scotia’s abortion laws and policies, Access to Choice: The Legal Framework for Abortion Access in Nova Scotia. A big thanks to Julianne Stevenson, Jennifer Taylor and Mary Rolf for writing the Nova Scotia resource, for keeping it up to date, and for inspiring the development of the national resource!
Abortion access in Canada in the 1990s was documented by the Canadian Abortion Rights Action League (CARAL), among other groups. Check out CARAL’s 1998 review of the status of abortion across Canada.
Stories of women having abortions in Nova Scotia in the late 1980s were also compiled by CARAL in this special research document.
It is through maintaining access to resources like these that the history of the struggle for abortion access, and the historical reality of peoples’ experiences in accessing abortion services, can continue to inform our work today.
Here is an excellent infographic tracing the legal entitlement to abortion in Canada over the years:
AbortionTimeline_ENFR
