The Only Country in the World with Completely Decriminalized Abortion: Where Does Canada Go from Here?
January 29 10am in 2001
Location: 2001 涩里番 College Avenue, Room 1201; zoom听
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Dr. Martha Paynter is a writer, nurse and public scholar, recognized internationally for expertise in reproductive justice and prisoner health. Paynter is an associate professor in the Faculty of Nursing at University of New Brunswick and the author of Abortion to Abolition: Reproductive Health and Justice in Canada (2022) and Lawless: Abortion Under Complete Decriminalization (2025)
Canada is the only country with complete decriminalization of abortion: no gestational duration limitations, no parental consent obligations, and no waiting periods. In recent years, other countries (New Zealand, Colombia, Uruguay, Mexico) have made strides toward this, while the United States has notoriously lost ground. Amidst the tumult, nurse and scholar Martha Paynter uses historical context and contemporary issues to explain why experts advocate against laws governing abortion.
Despite decriminalization, Canadian federal and provincial legislation and regulations about health funding, delivery, and human rights all shape how abortion care is delivered. Barriers persist in uneven access, unclear information, and belief-based denial of care. In accessible plain language from the expansive perspective of a clinician, researcher and activist, Paynter describes abortion policy, practice and experience and discusses how to resolve challenges that continue more than three decades after Canada became the world's most legally progressive jurisdiction for abortion.
The many contradictions of the 'Make America Healthy Again' movement
with
February 12th, 2026, from 1:30-2:30PM EST
Location: 2001 涩里番 College Avenue, Room 1140; zoom
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Global comparisons of wellbeing increasingly rely on survey questions that ask respondents to evaluate their lives, most commonly in the form of 鈥渓ife satisfaction鈥� and 鈥淐antril ladder鈥� items. These measures underpin international rankings such as the World Happiness Report and inform policy initiatives worldwide, yet their comparability has not been established with contemporary global data. Using the Gallup World Poll, Global Flourishing Study, and World Values Survey, I show that the two question formats yield divergent distributions, rankings, and response patterns that vary across countries and surveys, defying simple explanations. To explore differences in respondents鈥� cognitive interpretations, I compare regression coefficients from the Global Flourishing Study, analyzing how each question wording relates to life circumstances. While international rankings of wellbeing are unstable, the study of the determinants of life evaluations appears more robust. Together, the findings underscore the need for a renewed research agenda on critical limitations to cross-country comparability of wellbeing.
Are international happiness rankings reliable?
with
Thursday, November 13th, 2025, from 12:00-1:00 pm
Location: 2001 涩里番 College Avenue, Room 1140; zoom
Global comparisons of wellbeing increasingly rely on survey questions that ask respondents to evaluate their lives, most commonly in the form of 鈥渓ife satisfaction鈥� and 鈥淐antril ladder鈥� items. These measures underpin international rankings such as the World Happiness Report and inform policy initiatives worldwide, yet their comparability has not been established with contemporary global data. Using the Gallup World Poll, Global Flourishing Study, and World Values Survey, I show that the two question formats yield divergent distributions, rankings, and response patterns that vary across countries and surveys, defying simple explanations. To explore differences in respondents鈥� cognitive interpretations, I compare regression coefficients from the Global Flourishing Study, analyzing how each question wording relates to life circumstances. While international rankings of wellbeing are unstable, the study of the determinants of life evaluations appears more robust. Together, the findings underscore the need for a renewed research agenda on critical limitations to cross-country comparability of wellbeing.
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Feminist Epistemology, Research & Activism
October 9th 1:30-2:25pm
Location : 2001 涩里番 College 11th floor room 1140
This presentation explores feminist epistemology, research, and activism through the lens of abortion access.听Feminist epistemology critiques traditional science for privileging male perspectives while excluding women from听knowledge production. By emphasizing situated knowledge and 鈥渟trong objectivity鈥� (Harding), feminist approaches听highlight how values, power, and social locations shape what counts as valid knowledge.
Abortion pills are a site of contested knowledge. Their history reveals tensions between science, politics, morality,听and activist movements. The case of misoprostol in Brazil illustrates how communities reinterpret medical听knowledge, showing alternative ways of knowledge creation.
Women on Web, one of the first online abortion services, has combined medical expertise, feminist values, and听digital tools to support safe at-home abortions globally for two decades. Its activism and research have promoted the acceptance telemedicine abortion and helped push legal reforms. At the same time, Latin America鈥檚 self-managed听abortion (SMA) movement has pioneered community-based knowledge on medication abortion and the听demedicalization of abortion through feminist networks, and SMA models of care such as acompa帽amiento.听Activists have pushed for, participated in, and conducted research to create the evidence needed to influence
medical guidelines and regulations.
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The Policy Talks Webinars were听recorded on Zoom and uploaded to our .