Study: More needs to be done for women looking to have an abortion

If you wanted to have an abortion, would you know where to go?

A study out of the University of Waterloo shows provincial governments in our country don’t do enough to make the procedure readily available for everyone, which is our right as Canadians.

The study’s author, Emmett Macfarlane, says there are a variety of constraints and barriers in place at the provincial level.

“One of the most significant ones from kind of a starting point is lack of good information about services. Sometimes it’s not actually transparent: Where to go? Who to find?” says Macfarlane.

He adds there are a lot of factors to go into where you’re getting your information about services, and who’s giving it to you.

“It depends on which province they live in, rural versus urban divide, gestational limits and the availabilty of services,” says Macfarlane. “[In some cases it’s] provinces simply not making provision for services at all, like in the case of Prince Edward Island.”

He does say while there is still a lot of room to improve, our province isn’t the worst in the country.

“Quebec is kind of the leader in terms of per capita rates of access both private and public delivery,” says Macfarlane. “Ontario is basically second best if we were going to put the provinces on a spectrum. On the flip end, on the worst end: Prince Edward Island. There simply isn’t any service available on the island.”

The study looked at both provincial regulation and legal rights challenges in courts across the country to assess the reality of abortion access since the Supreme Court’s 1988 decriminalization ruling.