A new study from UBC’s Contraception and Abortion Research Team (CART-GRAC) is revealing how access to abortion care in Canada has improved over the past decade.
The researchers from UBC’s department of obstetrics and gynaecology surveyed 465 healthcare professionals who provided abortion care in Canada in 2019 — the first such survey in seven years.
The study, published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal Open, sheds light on how abortion care in Canada has evolved. A key development in the time between the two surveys was Canada’s approval of mifepristone — the gold standard abortion pill — in 2015.
Findings from the latest survey show that:
- Access to abortion in Canada improved between 2012 and 2019.
- Approval of mifepristone and removal of restrictive regulations around the medication have contributed to this improved access.
- Canada’s pool of abortion providers has become larger and younger, especially since nurse practitioners were approved in 2017 to administer abortion medications.
- Abortions are increasingly being provided in primary care and office-based settings, rather than just by specialists or in dedicated facilities.
- Mifepristone is improving abortion access particularly in rural areas, where medication is used for a higher proportion of abortions (44.4%) than it is in urban areas (25.6%).

Dr. Madeleine Ennis
“Abortion care is a common and essential healthcare service,” says study co-author Dr. Madeleine Ennis, a postdoctoral fellow with CART-GRAC in UBC’s department of obstetrics and gynaecology. “Our survey has shown an increase in medical abortion availability in Canada in the last decade, which helps facilitate abortion access. This is especially true for people living in rural areas, where surgical abortion services are often not available. Giving patients the option of close-to-home care is a key contributor to equitable and high-quality abortion services.”
In 2021, CART-GRAC researchers published a study in the New England Journal of Medicine showing that abortion in Canada remained safe after restrictions on prescribing mifepristone were removed in 2017. The analysis revealed that uptake of medical abortion was rapid after the removal of restrictions and that there was no increase in abortion-related complications.