Sarah Elvins and Katherine Parkin

CBHA is pleased to announce Sarah Elvins and Katherine Parkin as winners of our 2025 article prize, for their article “The Business of Abortion: Referral Services, Cross-Border Consumption, and Canadian Women’s Access to Abortion in New York State, 1970–1972” Enterprise & Society (2024), 1–21 (doi:10.1017/eso.2023.61).

While the topic of abortion has typically been a health/women’s history topic, the authors turn it into a business history account, one that extends beyond the usual “demand-side” factors (in this case, the state of abortion access in Canada between 1969 decriminalization and the 1988 R. v. Morgentaler decision; and the very low approval rates by hospital committees in Quebec) to consider “supply-side” factors (the rise of referral agencies; abortion providers in NY state; advertising for this in Canada etc.) This is all framed, as the authors note, in contexts of entrepreneurship and the “language of the marketplace”, which recasts women seeking abortions as ‘consumers’ rather than ‘patients’.

The jury found this article to be very well written, organized, and argued. Its themes also resonate with contemporary trends: US abortion access in post-Dobbs period (in which women in abortion-ban US states currently travelling to states with abortion access, possibly not unlike what Canadian women were doing in early 1970s), as well as the longstanding context of Canada/US cross-border shopping/commerce. Elvins and Parkin bring consumers fully into business history and in this way helps us better understand relationships between businesses and customers. Their transnational approach is also timely and important and make for an outstanding article in Canadian business history.