Abortion In Canada

Abortion is a highly controversial topic that has been debated, politicized, and moralized in Canadian culture for decades. In 1988, the Supreme Court of Canada decriminalized abortion, as restricting women’s reproductive choice was seen as a direct violation of the fundamental rights of life, liberty, and security of person. In spite of this, women continue to encounter countless barriers to accessing abortion, as a result of the restrictive institutional policies which have creates spatial disparities in service providers across the country. Specifically, women living in the eastern provinces of Canada, such as New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island face the most significant challenges in regards to access abortion services, due to the inadequate

This purpose of this paper is to synthesize the paradigm of intersectionality, as outlined in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s article “Topics in Feminism,” with Chris Kaposy’s analysis of the current circumstances of abortion services in Canada, as highlighted in the article “Improving Access to Abortion.” In doing so, this paper will highlight how the current provision of abortion services across Canada, especially in the Eastern provinces, violate women’s right to reproductive freedom by denying their right to accessible abortion services. Moreover, while women are commonly perceived as a heterogeneous group with a singular life experience, gender intersects with other aspects of identity, contributing to how individuals experience the structures of domination in

Autonomy is a fundamental human right of self-determination, the ability to act independently without the interference of others. Agency can be defined as the power individuals have to influence their ability to act, influence others, and maintain control (Ortner, 2011). Individual’s desires and intentions emerge from structurally defined differences of social categories and power differential, which thus impacts women’s ability to fluidly navigate through their abortion process. The previous terms are intrinsically associated with reproductive freedom, which is the ability of a woman to assert her autonomy when choosing whether or not to continue the pregnancy. When a woman encounters barriers which impede her access to abortion services, her ability to make autonomic choices are subsequently inhibited, and thus she is denied her right to reproductive choice. Intersectionality, first discussed by Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1988, serves as a lens to view the current abortion discourse, as it holds that disadvantaged identities do not exist on a single axis, but rather intersect and allow for multiple forms of privilege and oppression to be experienced simultaneously. Abortion is an issue of intersectionality, impacted by race, class, gender identity, along with other marginalizing forces which privileges upper-middle class white women