What can be said about the state of abortion statistics in Canada that has not been said before? The statistics are incomplete and therefore inaccurate. In the past, abortion statistics were the responsibility of Statistics Canada. This task has now been assigned to the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI). Following the 1988 court decision in Morgentaler, abortion clinics began to appear and most submitted only abortion numbers to Statistics Canada. Other medical case data such as gestational age of the child, age of the mother, method of abortion, complications and any previous abortions were not reported except by clinics in Alberta. Since then the quality of abortion statistics has declined substantially.
