Although abortion is meant to be treated as another medical procedure in Canada, both the history and contemporary politics of abortion access in Manitoba is fraught with contention. Despite the unique social and political conditions surrounding abortion in Manitoba, there is relatively little research on contemporary experiences of people accessing this care in this context. The project, Abortion in Manitoba: An intersectional analysis of access to care, explores the experiences of people who have sought abortion care in Manitoba in order to illuminate the social and political conditions that shape reproductive care in Manitoba, the strategies and avenues of support being mobilized on the ground, and potential avenues for program/policy intervention.

To do so, the project engaged in policy and resource mapping to document the full range of abortion services in Manitoba, a broad survey of people who have tried to access abortion care in Manitoba from 2019-2024, as well as semi-structured narrative interviews with people about their experiences. This project was done in collaboration with the Women’s Health Clinic and the Northern Reproductive Justice Network.

A variety of avenues were used to mobilize the findings of the project. A community report was published and presented to collaborators in 2026, calling for more equitable, accessible, and just abortion care in Manitoba. In the same year, Dr. Lindsay Larios and Emma Cowman presented the project’s findings as a part of CHRR’s annual Critical Conversations series on feminist research methods.

As a part of the project, CHRR student researcher Emma Cowman studied 2SLGBTQIA+ experiences in accessing abortion care in Manitoba. A summary of the thesis project can be accessed here.

For more information on the project, please contact Lindsay.Larios@umanitoba.ca.

The project was made possible from the following grant: 

• Abortion in Manitoba: An intersectional analysis of access to care (2023-2025) funded by Research Manitoba’s New Investigator Operating Grant – Social Sciences & Humanities.