According to the latest Statistics Canada figures, over 95,059 abortions were performed on Canadian women in 1991. This is an increase of almost 3,000 from 1990.
The Canadian abortion rate increased to 23.6 per 100 live births in 1991 compared with 22.9 in 1990. The figures also revealed that hospital abortions were down 1.1% from 1990 meaning that the private “clinics” picked up their slack. This would obviously translate into a large windfall for the private industry.
Some other points of interest from the Stats Can release showed that of the women who received hospital abortions in 1991:
- 19.8% were below the age of 20
- 53.4% were between 20 and 29 years
- 24.3% were between 30 and 39 years
- 64.8% were single
- 22.8% were married
- 26.1% had already had one or more abortions
The news was very distressing to the pro-life movement who tried to make sense of the statistics.
“It seems clear that abortion is increasingly being used as birth control – after the fact,” said an Alliance for Life press release. Alliance for Life is a national education umbrella group for over 250 Canadian pro-life groups.
The organization pointed out that of the women who had abortions in 1991; 17,101 had already had one or more. Also, over half of the abortions were performed on women between the ages of 20 and 29 – “people who in all probability know about contraception and ‘personal responsibility.’”
Other than the Yukon, British Columbia ad the highest abortion rate at 23.5 per 100 live births and Ontario was second at 20.7. Coincidentally, these are tow provinces which have recently begun big pushes to increase abortion availability.
Bernadette Mysko, president of Alliance for Life, noted that “Canadian taxpayers who see their tax dollars going for baby killing when essential medical treatments for breast cancer and other illnesses have waiting lists, will be incensed by these figures.”
Though provincial governments have begun to slash their health care budgets, not one has deemed abortion as an unnecessary expense. As recently as 1991, Saskatchewan held a plebiscite in which almost 70 per cent felt that abortion should not be included in Medicare costs.