It’s one thing to say “abortions should be legal” and quite another thing to say “abortions should be legal and paid for by taxpayers”

And private medical clinics are a whole other kettle of fish.

There’s an issue with access even in the provinces with the best services in accessibility for women in rural areas or smaller towns. When your doctor is your neighbor, how do you get a referral/services without it affecting your social/community life? Even worse, what if he/she categorically refuses? For women with the means and freedom to travel to the city, there are more choices, but for teens, women in abusive relationships, or women in poverty, access becomes a problem even in Ontario or Alberta.

twf, I laugh at our tendency to do that too (perhaps it’s an outgrowth of our legendary politeness). Fortunately, we’re a country that tends towards more freedoms, not less. We seem to have a culture that believes that as long as someone isn’t harming other people, s/he should be left alone. I’m not sure we avoid talking about contentious issues—the same-sex marriage debate got pretty vocal! But I think we like to let sleeping dogs lie. Once a decision is made to give people more freedoms, we’re unlikely to take it back. That’s one of the many reasons I’m generally pretty glad I’m Canadian.

“The value to be placed on the foetus as potential life is directly related to the stage of its development during gestation. The undeveloped foetus starts out as a newly fertilized ovum; the fully developed foetus emerges ultimately as an infant. A developmental progression takes place between these two extremes and it has a direct bearing on the value of the foetus as potential life. Accordingly, the foetus should be viewed in differential and developmental terms. This view of the foetus supports a permissive approach to abortion in the early stages where the woman’s autonomy would be absolute and a restrictive approach in the later stages where the states’s interest in protecting the foetus would justify its prescribing conditions. The precise point in the development of the foetus at which the state’s interest in its protection becomes “compelling” should be left to the informed judgment of the legislature which is in a position to receive submissions on the subject from all the relevant disciplines.”

There was an excellent TV movie made about Morgentaler, that unfortunately did not get the publicity or viewers it deserved. I think it’s this one: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0345390/
If you get a chance, watch it.

I am quite content with the legal status quo here. The access issues are a problem, but we have all kinds of access issues, unfortunately. It seems for every good thing we do here, we do at least one, and more like two, bad things.

Would people mind not insulting the formal court costume of our Supreme Court Justices, please? Especially in a memorial thread?

PEI currently is the worst—there are no providers in the province and women must have a referral to have access to services in a hospital. There’s a good reference chart for Canada at http://www.prochoice.org/canada/regional.html

That is a good chart, but it glosses over the New Brunswick situation, which makes me wonder what the real deal is in other provinces.

There are only two hospitals in NB with abortion facilities, the hospitals will only do abortions up to 12 weeks (last I checked), travel costs are not covered, and many doctors don’t even know how to refer patients for the procedure. Two doctors have to certify that the abortion is “medically necessary,” which means they usually have to make up conditions like “pregnancy-induced depression” to “justify” funding the abortion, which can potentially cause women problems later when getting private health insurance, for example. Funded abortions must be done by a gynecologist, even though this is unnecessary and drives up the cost. And getting the referral takes time, if you can do it at all (given the extreme shortage of family doctors in NB and the religious conservatism that prevails in much of the province), and the hospital facilities are so backed up that even women who can meet the requirements frequently end up having to go to the Morgentaler Clinic in Fredericton and pay $500-$700 out-of-pocket (the clinic, unlike the hospitals, will perform abortions up to 16 weeks), plus travel costs if they don’t live in Fredericton. There is no bubble legislation, and the building next to the clinic was bought by an anti-choice group so that they could stand on their own property and harass women going into and out of the clinic.

So if even that barely gets a mention on the chart…I don’t know.

Even my mother-in-law (racist, classist, in most ways conservative, evil) voted Liberal in 2000 because she felt the CA bringing up the topic of abortion was “threatening a woman’s right to choose.” My opinion of her broadened after that.

It does amuse me, though, that often Canadians just choose not to talk about contentious issues. Fortunately the way they leave it (abortion, gay marriage) tends to be the right way.

When polled, Canadians generally don’t want to reopen the abortion debate. As far as most of the population is concerned, we should just let the issue alone. I’m good with that. Bringing abortion up during election campaigns tends to be a bad move for politicians—they generally lose points in the polls for it, so most of them don’t touch it.

There seems to be a similar national feeling on same-sex marriage. Even people who were somewhat opposed to it before the legislation figure that the debate is over and done. There doesn’t seem to be much desire (except on the extremes) to revisit the issue. The Conservative-initiated vote in parliament this year was mostly a show for their social conservative constituents. Nobody ever thought the law would actually fall, not even Conservative party strategists.