Access to abortion is the subject of an international conference being held on Prince Edward Island – the only province in which women have no access to the procedure - this week.

Abortion: The Unfinished Revolution is the first international conference on abortion to be held in Canada.

Joanne Sundby, a gynecologist from Norway, came to Charlottetown to share her ideas about abortion access. Sundby says abortions are paid for by the Norwegian government and are available in every county in her country.

“I think that services should be available to everybody,” she says.

Conference organizer Colleen MacQuarrie says Maritime women are facing a dire situation when it comes to abortion access.

“I think it’s time to stop playing politics with women’s health and to just recognize P.E.I. is situated within Canada,” says MacQuarrie. “We have a certain standard of health care within Canada, and while P.E.I. may fall short on a certain number of those issues, we certainly are lagging far, far behind on a number of those women’s rights.”

With the recent closure of the Morgentaler Clinic in Fredericton, and a lack of legal abortion services in P.E.I., MacQuarrie says more women will have to travel to Halifax for the procedure.

“Where barriers exist, harms to women’s health increases,” says MacQuarrie. “The wait times in Halifax will start to grow. How long before the Nova Scotia providers feel that they’re being compromised because P.E.I. doesn’t want to provide the service locally?”

But not everyone is pushing for abortion access on the island. A busload of anti-abortion activists from Ontario arrived in Charlottetown on Thursday, protesting on the street with posters displaying graphic images.

In addition, members of 70 different church congregations across the province are gathering to pray over the next two days.

“It’s not a fetus, it’s actually an unborn child and I believe I have a responsibility to fight for that unborn child,” says protester Jack Ferguson.

Josh Sambles says he doesn’t usually protest, but the graphic images being shown to him by anti-abortion protesters enticed him to the sidewalk.

“Abortion, while it’s not anyone’s choice, it still needs to be an option for people” says Sambles. “For them to say P.E.I. shouldn’t be able to get an abortion clinic, to me, that’s wrong.”

The two-day conference will wrap at the University of Prince Edward Island on Friday.

With files from CTV Atlantic's Sarah Plowman