The pro-choice views I used to hold quietly were and are typical for Canadians like myself. Even though I grew up going to a church that opposed abortion, I recall thinking that adults (especially women) should have the right to choose death for their pre-born offspring. That was my instinct when I first learned of the concept of abortion as a youthful unbeliever. “Freedom” was a supreme value in my mind, so the pro-abortion position seemed logical to me. Most of my fellow Canadians apparently had similar reasoning. Such reasoning remains in vogue today. This isn’t overly surprising, since ambiguous “freedom” language is baked into the Canadian ethos. Two of the sixty-three words in our national anthem are “free.”1 More significantly, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms was added to our Constitution in 1982. But what are Canadians “free” from? What are we free for? If pressed, almost everyone will agree that freedom must be defined and have some point of reference.
1. The name of our national anthem is “O Canada.” It was first sung in 1880 but wasn’t officially adopted as our national anthem until 1980. See https://www.canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage/services/anthem-canada.html for the full lyrics and more information.
Eventually I was set free from sin for God by Christ. My default point of reference for the term “freedom” was suddenly different from most Canadians, and so was my view of abortion. By this time, I had already adopted the pro-life position out of convenience more than anything else, and passively acknowledged that life begins at conception, but I became convinced that I couldn’t claim ignorance while thousands of children were being taken away to death (Prov. 24:11–12). Saints in Christ Jesus are responsible to expose “the unfruitful works of darkness” (Eph. 5:11). This little article of mine shines a light on the dark realities of abortion in Canada and draws awareness to existing strategies for rescuing pre-born children.
Canadian Abortion History and Its Effects
Canada has no laws prohibiting abortion. Period. We haven’t had any for almost forty years (see below). Moreover, apart from a great work of God, no real sign of a change for the better is on the horizon. It’s helpful to contrast Canada’s (lack of) abortion law with that of our neighbour to the south. The 1973 U.S. Supreme Court case known as Roe v. Wade gave Americans the “right” to an abortion for almost fifty years.2 That decision was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in a 2022 case called Dobbs v. Jackson,3 such that each state is now responsible to make its own policy about abortion. At least some abortions are illegal in forty-one of America’s fifty states as of November 24, 2025. The momentous decision made by the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade was celebrated by theologically conservative Christians on both sides of North America’s 49th parallel.
2. Roe v. Wade, 410 US 113 (1973). “Roe” was the surname of Jane Roe, a legal pseudonym for Norma McCorvey. “Wade” was the surname of Henry Wade, who served as the district attorney of Dallas County, TX from 1951–1987.
3. Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, 597 US 215 (2022). For some background to this decision, see John Avery, “Dobbs v. Jackson: A Victory for Life and Liberty,” Christ Over All, January 25, 2023, https://christoverall.com/article/concise/dobbs-v-jackson-a-victory-for-life-and-liberty/.
However, Canadian believers have had no reason to rejoice about the legal status of abortion in their own nation for a long time. Abortion was banned in Canada from 1892 to 1969, but that changed when Pierre Trudeau’s government passed Bill C-150, which became the Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1968–69. It was an immensely consequential, wide-ranging piece of legislation that decriminalized private homosexual acts and allowed for “therapeutic abortions,” among other things. An abortion was considered therapeutic if a designated committee of three doctors determined that the “life or health” of a mother was endangered by her pregnancy.4 However, “health” was never defined, so these three-doctor committees ended up approving requests for abortions in many cases where a mother had no physical health concerns related to childbirth. The door had been opened a crack, and it would be pushed wide open in less than two decades.
4. André Schutten and Michael Wagner, A Christian Citizenship Guide: Christianity and Canadian Political Life, 2nd ed. (ARPA Canada, 2022), 113–114.
The most consequential court case for the full legalization of abortion in Canada was R. v. Morgentaler (1988),5 where Dr. Henekh “Henry” Morgentaler and two of his colleagues successfully argued that “a woman has an unfettered right to choose whether or not an abortion is appropriate in her individual circumstances.” It was an occasion for weeping. This was a mere six years after Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau spearheaded an effort to add the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to the Constitution.6 Concerned Christians could hardly be blamed for assuming that the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision to legalize all abortions egregiously violated a pre-born child’s “right to life, liberty, and security of the person”—a right guaranteed to all Canadians by section seven of the Charter. Alas, pre-born children had and have zero legal rights in Canada because they are only regarded as human beings after birth! According to section 223 of Canada’s Criminal Code: “A child becomes a human being within the meaning of this Act when it has completely proceeded, in a living state, from the body of its mother.”
5. R. v. Morgentaler, [1988] 1 SCR 30; “R.” stands for Regina in this case. Regina is Latin for Queen.
6. See George Egerton, “Trudeau, God, and the Canadian Constitution: Religion, Human Rights, and Government Authority in the Making of the 1982 Constitution,” in Rethinking Church, State, and Modernity: Canada Between Europe and the USA, ed. David A. Lyon, and Marguerite Van Die (Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, 2000), 90-112.
Canada has had no law restricting abortion since 1988. Abortion is legal at any gestational age and for any reason. A mother who has carried a baby boy in her womb for nine months can abruptly decide that she wanted a girl instead and try to find a doctor who will end her son’s life just before he is born.7 In late-term abortions, doctors sometimes inject potassium chloride or digoxin right into a baby’s heart until it stops beating. Then they will induce the mother to labour, and she will give birth to a dead child that will not even have a burial; the baby’s lifeless body becomes “medical waste.” Other means are used to accomplish the same harrowing end. For example, pro-choice doctors may abort second and third trimester pregnancies by killing the baby with surgical instruments and subsequently suctioning the detached body parts out of his mother’s womb. “How long, O LORD, will you look on?” (Ps. 35:17)
7. I include this extreme example because it is legal, not because it is common. Few Canadian doctors, if any, would be willing to perform an abortion at such a late stage. Doctors in Canada have no legal obligation to grant a request for an abortion.
There were 79,315 abortions reported to the Canadian government in 1989, the first full year that all abortions were legal. Since then, the annual number of abortions reported has fluctuated between 80,000 and 112,000. It hardly needs to be said that abortion is the leading cause of death in Canada. Our population currently sits at about 41.5 million, but it would be closer to 45 million if we only accounted for the abortions reported following the R. v. Morgentaler decision! The homegrown Canadian population is declining with an ultra-low 1.25 replacement rate, yet Canada’s overall population has been steadily increasing due to immigration. Our relatively open immigration policies compensate for our abortion policy, as evidenced by the fact that foreign-born mothers gave birth to more than forty percent of the babies born in Canada in 2024.
Canada’s unabated population growth partially obscures what many Christians have referred to as “a culture of death.” The youngest and sickest members of our society are especially vulnerable. Whereas the youngest are threatened by abortion, the sickest can put their lives in a doctor’s hands by consenting to Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD; virtually synonymous with euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide). MAiD was legalized for people with a “grievous and irremediable medical condition” in 2016, and it already accounts for five percent of Canadian deaths annually. That percentage is scheduled to go up after Canadians with “mental illness alone” are eligible for MAiD . . . unless a bill to keep them ineligible is passed first.
A Fourfold Strategy for Canada
Though MAiD and abortion are both great evils, abortion is especially grievous because it involves the shedding of innocent blood. The innocent blood being shed across Canada ought to stir up anger, sadness, and action in God-fearing men and women regardless of their nationality, but we Canadian believers naturally have the best opportunity to abolish abortion in our own country. To accomplish this goal, we can pray, make disciples, change minds, and change laws. These activities may be regarded as four interdependent facets of a pro-life strategy that is already being executed by various groups and individual Christians from coast to coast. No part of this strategy is new or unique to Canada in principle, but each effort necessarily takes on a particular Canadian form in practice.
Pray
Prayer is foundational to the pro-life battle. God is “able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think” (Eph. 3:20). Our prayers and thoughts are frequently too small. Abortion was unthinkable in Canada prior to the sexual revolution less than a century ago, and the Lord can do it again. The question is: does the Judge of all the earth know Canadian Christians as persistent as the widow who sought justice for herself in Luke 18:1–8? Do we seek justice for pre-born children as tenaciously as this widow? We ought always to pray and not lose heart (Luke 18:1), knowing that “the prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working” (Jas. 5:16). I invite all righteous people who read this sentence to pray that God would bless the following three efforts as they are carried out in the Canadian context.
Make Disciples
The surest way to prevent abortions is through evangelism and disciple-making. Sinners with new hearts will have changed minds and opened eyes. They will see the value of human life and not want to kill God’s image-bearers. One sociologist has suggested that evangelicals have comprised about eight percent of Canada’s population for more than a hundred years, but that number now seems to be dropping. The mission field is certainly at hand, and other countries are sending missionaries to us. If the gospel of Christ crucified goes forth, and the percentage of soundly converted evangelicals increases, pro-life grassroots movements could make serious headway in Canada.
While quantitative growth has generally been hard to find as of late, qualitative growth in the Canadian evangelical church has been more apparent. An encouraging number of local churches, parachurch organizations, and Christian schools are growing deeper, if not yet wider. We are regularly being strengthened by the voluminous, doctrinally sound literature that is being published by our American brothers (and Canadian expats like D. A. Carson, Michael Haykin, and Stephen Wellum, among others).8 The last decade has seen many believers become bolder to speak out against the moral decay in our society, as conservative Christians have fewer and fewer values in common with the world around them. Most of our children cannot help but notice this stark contrast. Subscribing to a middling sort of nominal Christianity is hardly an option; let’s continue to make disciples of all nations—starting at home—then moving further into the public square.
8. Very few biblical and theological books are published in Canada. Hesed and Emet Publishing House (H&E Publishing) is trying to change that. See https://hesedandemet.com/.
Change Minds
People outside and inside the walls of church buildings need to be persuaded that abortion is wrong. I am not the only one who has ever had pro-choice views while growing up in a pro-life church. Life begins at conception.9 Scripture clearly speaks of those in the womb as human persons (e.g., Gen. 25:22; Ps. 139:13–16). Pastors must be willing to preach on this topic and not shy away from it. Convincing the secular public that abortion is wrong can happen through personal conversations and spreading pro-life resources that educate people on the heinous nature of abortion. The Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform (CCBR) excels at this task by capitalizing on the reality of the human conscience. They are not an exclusively or explicitly Christian organization, but they are an effective pro-life group that uses graphic pictures to confront people with the heinousness of abortion. Confrontation requires courage on the part of good-natured Canadians and a willingness to be mocked and ridiculed for holding beliefs in the minority. The risk pays off. Studies have shown that “67% of people feel more negatively towards abortion after seeing a photo of what it does to pre-born children.” Seeing is believing for those who reject the gospel, but someone must show them.
9. See David VanDrunen, Bioethics and the Christian Life: A Guide to Making Difficult Ethical Decisions (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2009), 152–165 for a persuasive defense of this point.
Change Laws
Canada’s form of government is simultaneously a constitutional monarchy and a parliamentary democracy. Parliament is the Canadian equivalent to Congress in the United States, and there are three parts: the Monarch, the Senate, and the House of Commons. The vast majority of significant legal changes begin with the elected representatives who sit in the House of Commons. Most of the elected representatives who sit in the House of Commons are called Members of Parliament (MPs), of which there are 343. The leader of the political party in power is the Prime Minister. There are four main political parties at the federal level in Canada: Bloc Québécois (22 MPs as of January 2026), the New Democratic Party (7 MPs), the Liberal Party of Canada (171 MPs), and the Conservative Party of Canada (141 MPs). (A fifth Green Party also has 1 MP.) The Liberals are comparable to the Democrats in America, and the Conservatives are somewhat comparable to moderate Republicans. A number of Conservative MPs are pro-life, but they do not necessarily advertise this for the sake of electability. Sadly, the Conservative Party has been officially committed to the pro-choice position since 2004, but this was almost overturned in 2018 by a forty-seven to fifty-three percent intra-party vote, and it is a live issue in the Conservative party as of 2026.10 The Liberals form a minority government at present. They are decidedly pro-choice, and (as of January 2026) are only one seat away from forming a majority government, which would allow them to advance their agenda with less resistance. Abortion is not a live issue in Canadian Parliament. The matter is considered settled. One way to reintroduce an abortion law in Canada would be for Canadian Christians to vote for Conservative MPs who are motivated to change their party’s policy on abortion. History can change through Christians showing up to vote. Canadians would then need to elect a majority Conservative government, who would then need to pass a new bill and make it into law.
10. The Conservatives are debating their abortion policy at their convention in Calgary on January 29–31, 2026.
But first the Conservative Party would need to commit to a pro-life platform. This would happen through committed pro-life Christians becoming MPs along with pressure on current MPs to support pro-life policies. Rather than having public primaries for determining a party candidate in an election, the Canadian system has internal nominations for its electoral districts (i.e., ridings) that happen within the political party. Principled pro-life Christians can gain influence in these internal party ridings so that they can help choose pro-life candidates for election.
Once the Conservative Party has changed its platform, the Conservatives would probably need to form a majority government in order to pass a bill on abortion. This bill would then need to pass through five stages of scrutiny before finally receiving royal assent and becoming law. In Canada, the Association for Reformed Political Action (ARPA) is leading the Canadian evangelical charge to reintroduce a federal abortion law. They have lesson plans, statistics, videos, and recommended action steps at the federal, provincial, and local levels. In our context, ARPA rightly advocates for an incremental federal law that restricts abortion after the first trimester as the most realistic path forward. They call it an International Standards Abortion Law. Concerned Canadians can learn much from the excellent resources that this organization provides.
Conclusion
I conclude by urging Canadian believers to care about the dismal abortion situation in Canada: pray, disciple, persuade, vote! We serve the God of hope who grants success to those who trust him even against losing odds. He gave Jonathan and his armor-bearer victory over the garrison of the Philistines (1 Sam. 14:1-23), Gideon and his 300 men victory over the Midianites (Judg. 7), and old Caleb victory in the hill country of the Anakim (Josh. 14–15). Our God has a track record of exalting the underdog that has a righteous cause, and one day his kingdom of light will be consummated and the darkness will be no more—maranatha, come Lord Jesus!
