The Curious Case of Thalidomide and the Absent Eugenic Clause in Canada's Amended Abortion Law of 1969.

This essay traces the role of the drug thalidomide in the reform of Canadian abortion law during the late 1960s. Like elsewhere in the British Commonwealth, discussion of the "thalidomide disaster" of the early 1960s intensified leading up to the debates that culminated in the 1969 amendment to Canadian abortion law. Although thalidomide was a rallying point for advocates of eugenic abortion, a majority of Canadian MPs, unlike their British and Commonwealth counterparts, rejected this argument. Widespread public and political considerations of the thalidomide tragedy were thus unable to inspire support for a eugenic clause in Canada's new abortion law, in spite of the nation's infamous eugenic past.