Infertility, Adoption, and the Threat of Abortion Access in Atlantic Canada

The legalization of birth control and the liberalization of the abortion law in Canada in 1969 was seemingly a victory for the women’s movement. However, in the decade following the amendment to the Criminal Code of Canada, grassroots Right to Life organizations formed throughout Canada to curb access to abortion services. While people became involved in the pro-life movement for a variety of reasons, some activists feared that the high number of abortions performed would subsequently mean less women were giving their babies up for adoption. When the women’s movement took up the gauntlet for women’s right to use reproductive technologies in cases of infertility, tensions escalated. Throughout this period, letters to government officials and newspapers demonstrated that there was increasing resentment over some women’s inability to reproduce while others had abortions instead of giving their babies up for adoption. This paper draws on government records, interviews, and letters to newspapers in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island to investigate the difficult tension between infertility and abortion rights that women confronted in the late twentieth century. For some women and their families, participation in the anti-abortion movement was personally motivated by infertility and their opposition to feminism grew as reproductive rights expanded to include both abortion and reproductive technologies.