The Ontario government released its 2010 abortion billing records in response to a Freedom of Information Request submitted to the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care by Patricia Maloney of the “Run with Life” blog. According to the statistics, there were at least 43,997 abortions in Ontario costing a minimum of $5,470,562.36 to Ontario Health Insurance Plan (OHIP).
The number of abortions is higher than what was reported by the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI), which said only 30,268 abortions in 2009, 32,150 in 2008, and 32,331 in 2007. The CIHI, though, acknowledged that abortion facilities were not required to report their figures.
Most abortions that were billed to the government were carried out in private physicians’ offices – a total of 18,330 – while 16,055 were done in abortion facilities and 9,612 in hospitals.
Matthew Wojciechowski, a coordinator and researcher with Campaign Life Coalition, said “it is shocking, but I am not surprised,” that so many abortions are done in doctors’ offices. He added, “Ontario has abortion on demand where anyone who chooses to have an abortion can do so and there will be doctors willing to do them.”
Yet Wojciechowski also said there was significance in moving abortions to private physicians’ offices rather than street-front abortion mills and hospitals. “Even with abortion on demand, it is still a hidden, secretive procedure,” he said, “so it is not surprising that doctors are doing them in the privacy of their own practices.” He noted that “this leads to questions about abortion information and statistics.”
There were 77 abortions carried out for “selective fetal reductions” to reduce the number of babies in a pregnancy with twins or multiple babies.
While most abortions are committed in the first trimester, 2,108 surgical abortions were carried out after 14 weeks.
The cost of abortions – $5,470,562.36 – reported by the statistics does not reflect the actual amount paid out by OHIP either. As it is, the average amount per abortion would be $124.34 in contrast to previous unofficial estimates of $800 per abortion. The Ministry, though, reports that the “total billed is based on the billed amount submitted on the claim and does not necessarily represent what was approved and paid for the claim,” as it excludes, for instance, facility fees for some abortion mills. The claims, however, do include costs of “professional component volumes as well as the anaesthesia and/or surgical assist components.”
CLC’s Wojciechowski, a member of the Defund Abortion rally committee, told The Interim that the Ministry’s estimate of $5.4 million is “by their own admission, a very small part of the cost of committing an abortion.” He said, “once you add up the various components of doing the abortion, the costs are many times higher.”
In other words, a large portion of the cost of abortion was not included in the estimates.
Also, out-of-province and out-of-country claims were not included.
“These are not statistics, these are human beings,” said Mary Ellen Douglas, national organizer of Campaign Life Coalition, to LifeSiteNews. “The people who are killing these children don’t even want to count them. Nobody wants to keep a record of these babies.”
Douglas also said, “I’m sure the billing records are more accurate than what they give us in the number of dead babies … they want to make sure they get their money in this dirty business.”