Abortion Anarchy? The Case for Abortion Decriminalization

Author:

Gordon Kelly1ORCID,Johnstone Rachael2

Affiliation:

1. McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

2. Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

Abstract

For most of the last 35 years, Canada has stood alone as a global exception to the criminalization of abortion. Following the 1988 Supreme Court decision in R. v. Morgentaler, which deemed the existing federal abortion law unconstitutional, Canada has operated without criminal restrictions on abortion. Despite the distinctive nature of Canada's approach, there is a dearth of scholarly work that has explicitly traced the process through which abortion decriminalization materialized and offered an in-depth examination of its effectiveness. This paper aims to address this gap in two ways. First, it traces the process through which abortion decriminalization emerged in Canada, which resulted from a combination of context-specific circumstances and sociopolitical factors. Second, it argues that while Canada's pathway to abortion decriminalization is distinct and may not be directly transferable to other contexts, there are nonetheless insights to be drawn from the Canadian experience. The promise of abortion decriminalization, as both a governance and advocacy framework, lies in its efficacy, its ability to navigate constraints of the law, and its strategic and symbolic advantages.

Publisher

SAGE Publications

Reference60 articles.

1. Action Canada (2022) “Why we don’t need a new abortion law in Canada.” Action Canada: What’s New, June 24. https://www.actioncanadashr.org/news/2022-06-24-why-we-dont-need-new-abortion-law-canada.

2. Abortion rights beyond the medico-legal paradigm

3. Decriminalizing Domestic Violence and Fighting Prostitution Abolition: Lessons Learned From Canada’s Anti-Carceral Feminist Struggles

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