According to Harris/Decima Vice President Megan Tam: “compared to when this issue first surfaced in the Spring, there appears to be a marginal increase in Canadians’ willingness for the government to support initiatives that include abortion initiatives. As we found in our research in March of this year, abortion continues to be a complex policy area where Canadians are far from black and white in the views. At the same time, it appears that the general sentiment of most Canadians is to have a maternal health policy that includes funding for abortion”.

• A majority of Canadians oppose policy where Canada would refuse to fund agencies that provide abortion procedures in the developing world. In total, 58% were of this view, while 30% would support such a policy. Residents in Atlantic Canada and British Columbia had the highest degree of opposition to this policy.
• Opinion is also split along party lines. Conservatives (40%) are more likely than Liberals (31%), New Democrats (23%), Greens (26%) and BQ supporters (29%) to support a policy that would see the government not fund agencies that provide abortion procedures in the developing world. Meanwhile, those with higher incomes are slightly more likely than their counterparts to oppose this policy.
• Notable is the fact that there are few differences in opinion by gender.
• In March of 2010 we asked Canadians a relatively similar question about the inclusion of abortion in maternal health efforts in the developing world. In this study we found that Canadians were more split on whether abortion should receive funding as part of maternal health efforts in the developing worldthaninthecurrentstudy. Aplurality(48%)wasagainstthisnotion, while 46% were in favour of such funding. There are regional divides on the question, with a majority of those in Quebec, and pluralities in Ontario and BC in favour of providing funds for abortion in the developing world, while strong majorities on the Prairies and in Atlantic Canada were opposed to the idea.

Each week, Harris/Decima interviews just over 1,000 Canadians through teleVox, the company’s national telephone omnibus survey. These data were gathered between May 6 and May 9 2010. A sample of the same size has a margin of error of 3.1%, 19 times out of 20.