Canadian women are aborting an increasing
proportion of pregnancies, a trend that runs counter to a declining rate in the
United States, the latest government figures showed on Friday.
The number of abortions rose 2.9% to 114,848 in 1997 from 111,659 the year
before, according to data from the federal agency Statistics Canada.
The number has risen steadily since the Supreme Court struck down Canada's
abortion law in 1988. The official total stood at 70,023 in 1987, or 19.4 per
100 live births. The rate per 100 live births has since risen to 30.5 in 1996
and 33.0 in 1997.
In the United States, the rate had declined to 30.5 in 1997 from 31.4 in
1996, and the total number of abortions declined fallen to their lowest in about
two decades: 1,184,758 legal induced abortions.
The rate of abortions per 1,000 women aged 15 to 44 is actually lower in
Canada, at 16.8, than in the United States, at 20. The reason the rate per 100
live births is higher is largely because of Canada's lower birth rate.
The Canadian data sparked hot debate between the opposing sides on the
abortion issue.
"We're appalled by the news. That's an incredible increase," Campaign Life
Coalition spokeswoman Karen Murawsky said, adding that a decrease had been
expected. "Our response is to call on the prime minister to bring in a law to
protect children in their mothers' wombs."
Canadian Abortion Rights Action League spokeswoman Cyndy Recker retorted:
"Anybody that says that abortion needs to be illegal is totally anti-woman,
anti-family, anti-child."
Campaign Life's Murawsky pointed to data showing that abortions were most
common among women in their twenties as countering arguments that abortion was
needed to prevent teen pregnancies or to protect older pregnant women.
"Are these women too young? Are these women too old? Are these women too
sick? I rather doubt it," she said.
Recker said more women and men are waiting longer before they marry and have
children, often so they can get a university education, and it was natural that
they would want an abortion in those circumstances.
"You don't have to be dying to not want to be a parent," she said.
Prime Minister Jean Chretien has opposed reimposing any limits to abortion
but has generally kept silent on the issue, which has not figured as prominently
in the national political debate in Canada as in the United States.
But he raised the issue at the Liberal party's biennial convention last
month when he reiterated his opposition to any abortion law, and attacked a
potential rival on the right, Alberta Treasurer Stockwell Day, who favours
restricting access to abortion.
