CLC’s Mary Ellen Douglas said a new report is making the same old noises about abortion.
A Society for Family Planning (SFP) survey was promoted in the Canadian Medical Association Journal calling for increased abortion access in Canada through the approval of the chemical abortion drug mifepristone, better known as RU-486. Mary Ellen Douglas of Campaign Life Coalition called the survey and the corresponding CMAJ article “strictly pro-abortion pieces of propaganda.”
In an article appearing on the Journal’s website Nov. 20, CMAJ reporter Lauren Vogel promoted the SFP survey presented at the Family Medicine Forum in Quebec City on Nov. 12. Vogel begins, “Canadian women seeking to end unwanted pregnancies face wide gaps in access to abortion and have little choice in the technique used, a landmark study reveals.” The SFP, a pro-abortion, pro-contraception group of academics and doctors, said that 46, nearly half of “Canada’s 94 abortion facilities” are located in Quebec.
The SFP also said there were wide disparities between urban and rural access to “abortion services,” even if “drug-induced abortion” was included among the options. About 19 in 20 – 96 per cent – of abortions in Canada are surgical.
According to Vogel, Quebec is the “leader in equitable access” because “half of its abortion facilities are in rural areas and there’s at least one facility in every health region.”
According to the CMAJ article: “British Columbia has 16 facilities located in hospitals, community health centers and doctor’s offices; half of these are in rural areas. There are 16 facilities in Ontario, eight among Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, four in Atlantic Canada and four in the territories. Of these facilities, only those in the territories and one in Atlantic Canada are located in rural areas. There is no facility in Prince Edward Island.”
Edith Guilbert, a senior medical advisor at the National Institute of Public Health of Quebec, co-author of the SFP survey, said, “now we have real data showing that it’s not just an Atlantic matter – the number of providers in the other English-speaking provinces is quite low.”
Jim Hughes, national president of CLC, told The Interim that “one abortion facility is too many.” He said that “with an estimated 100,000 surgical abortions committed in Canada every year, there is no shortage of abortion.” He said that abortion advocates used to talk about making abortion safe, legal, and rare, “but now the focus is in increasing abortion by increasing access.”
CLC’s Mary Ellen Douglas told LifeSiteNews, “the pro-abortion battle cry for the last 25 years has been ‘we need more access.’ This (report) could have been written by Planned Parenthood.”
The CMAJ said that the survey gives “clear evidence that a laissez-faire approach to abortion provision doesn’t ensure equitable access,” saying that Quebec provides direct funding of abortion in “under-served areas” and British Columbia requires particular hospitals to do abortions to ensure abortion’s availability across the province. Wendy Norman, another survey co-author, who holds the Canadian Institutes of Health Research/Public Health Agency of Canada chair in applied public health research, said, “there are no other provincial or territorial policies supporting this kind of access to abortion in other regions of Canada.”
Vogel highlights the survey, finding that women face waiting times and travel for “basic reproductive care.” The authors complain that the workplace productivity of women might be harmed, or at the very least are not counted as a cost, “when abortion services aren’t accessible.”
Guilbert called for increased access to medical – or chemical – abortion, which could be administered by family physicians. “It saves women having to travel,” said Guilbert. “It saves them having to undergo a surgical procedure.” The survey says “top-notch” abortion access requires RU-486.
Abortion drugs account for four per cent of abortions in Canada, whereas they make up about half of abortions in France. In Canada, most chemical abortions employ a regiment of methotrexate and misoprostol over several days, and which can lead to serious complications, including botched abortions with babies born with defects, and cancer in the mother. RU-486 is legally available in 57 countries, including France since 1988 and the United States since 2000. Clinical trials were suspended in Canada in 2001 after a woman died using the drug.
Guilbert said there would be more chemical abortions if RU-486 was approved by Health Canada. Health Canada has been considering whether to approve mifepristone, or RU-486, since December 2012. The CMAJ noted at the time that RU-486 is considered “the gold standard” in chemical abortions.
In a separate commentary for the CMAJ, Sheila Dunn of Women’s College Hospital in Toronto, said, “Canadian women don’t have (RU-486), and it’s unacceptable that we don’t.” She also wondered if “the Canadian government is shirking its responsibility to facilitate availability of mifepristone, as some have suggested?”
Natalie Hudson Sonnen, executive director of LifeCanada, disagrees. She wrote on LifeCanada’s website that RU-486 is dangerous, and its advocates do not mention, “the deaths, complications and horrendous health hazards that have befallen women and their unborn children in BC, the US and around the world,” where the abortion pill is permitted.
Health Canada is expected to rule on whether to permit the importation of mifepristone later this year. CLC has urged Health Minister Rona Ambrose to do what she can to prevent the abortion pill from becoming available in Canada.
