In 1969, the Canadian government passed the Criminal Law Amendment Act which
decriminalized abortion under specific circumstances. The law allowed legal abortions only if a
committee of three doctors found that the mother’s health was at risk and if the doctor performed
the abortion in an accredited hospital. However, over the next two decades Canadian women
faced many obstacles in obtaining legal abortions until, in 1988, the Supreme Court of Canada’s
decision in R v. Morgentaler found the law to be unconstitutional. This major research paper