RU-4Choice? : Ethical Abortion

In November last year, MP Libby Davies asked Deputy Health Minister George Da Pont why Canada has not joined 57 other countries in making RU-486, the medical abortion pill for use within the first two months of pregnancy, available in Canada despite a strong recent endorsement editorial from the Canadian Medical Association Journal. 

Indeed. It's been legal elsewhere for decades.



As the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada recommended in March 2003 - ten freakin' years ago :

"The use of such medication for terminating early pregnancy constitutes a significant medical and public health gain and has achieved medical acceptability in Europe and the USA.
The SOGC urges Health Canada to work with professional organizations and industry to make this product available to Canadian women."

An article at the US National Institute of Health (NIH) looks into why mifepristone (RU-486) remains unapproved in Canada and concludes the reasons are both financial and political.
First, the drug approval process can only be initiated by an application from a pharmaceutical company.

"In Canada, it is predicted that revenues will be moderate because of cost controls and will not offset high regulatory approval costs ... due to abortifacient medicines' relatively infrequent use."

"Health Canada also has procedures for priority review and approval of critical new drugs and breakthrough therapies. To obtain priority status, however, the drug must be intended for life-threatening or other serious conditions."

"Life-threatening", as it happens, is the criteria the more *moderate* among the anti-choicers insist upon as a necessary condition for a woman to be permitted an abortion at all.

The NIH article also cites a history of reluctance on the part of Health Canada to approve any reproductive health medicines :

"11 of 12 contraceptive products approved for use in the United States, United Kingdom, Europe, and Australia in the preceding decade were unavailable in Canada 'either because of Health Canada's stricter requirements or because they are held up in the Canadian regulatory process.' "

So in the parlance of the Cons, we can either stand with those countries which recognize a woman's right to the "gold standard" in reproductive healthcare, or we can stand with Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Korea, Myanmar, and most of Africa and South America.

Ethical Abortion, baby.

h/t  Fern Hill and deBeauxOs at Dammit Janet
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40 - 40 - 20

Choice Joyce at Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada has researched which MPs are anti-choice, pro-choice, or unknown using their public statements during campaigns, their position on the awarding of the Order of Canada to Dr. Henry Morgentaler, and how they voted on Bill C-484, the Unborn Victims of Crime Act, at Second Reading in 2008.

Con MPs who voted in favour of Bill C-484 but have no other known public position on abortion are possibly still pro-choice, says Joyce, and therefore are not included in the anti-choice stats. Members of the Bloc and NDP are presumed to be pro-choice. Details on individual MPs are listed below the chart.

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40% pro - 39% anti - 21% unknown - the support among federal MPs for the right of women to control what happens to their own bodies.

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According to Joyce's calculations, one quarter of the Libs are anti-choice.

SoCon Liberal MP Paul Szabo, Chair of the Ethics Committee, spoke at Fetus Festivus on the Hill last week :

"We will be back to reconsidering the question in the House . . . We’re taking incremental steps, small steps. It’s just a question of knowing when it’s the right time."

In March, a Liberal motion to include abortion in Harper's G8 maternal health initiative failed 144-138 because 3 Blue Dog Libs voted against it, 2 abstained, and 12 Libs skipped the vote.

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Last fall, Con MP Brad Trost initiated a petition, signed by 30 MPs, demanding an end to the Canadian International Development Agency's $18 million in annual funding for Planned Parenthood. Six months into 2010, Planned Parenthood is still without funding.

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Emma the Embryo and the Massive New Poll

Or as Fern Hill put it : 90% Don't Give a Shit

The Massive New Poll, as Campaign Life Coalition call it, was carried out via an automated demon-dialer which, according to the brand new website of the market research company CLC employed to bother people eating their dinner, "plays a pre-recorded message on a customer's answering machine, voicemail service, or even to a "live" person" :

"Do you believe abortionist Henry Morgentaler deserves the Order of Canada Press 1 for Yes Press 2 for ...."

*click*

Less than 5%, guys. You should have stuck with freeping the G&M poll.

JJ and Big City Lib investigate the various anti-choice ReformaTory relatives associated with the polling company.

And deBeauxOs at Birth Pangs explains why we should care in a piece about what Operation Rescue has been up to lately.

Here's a little BC history on Campaign Life Coalition's links to Operation Rescue :

Anti-Abortion Cop Uses Police Computer to Track Clinic Workers

Update : Buckets posts screen shots of a page from the one-day-old KLR Vu polling website -
and the US polling website it copied word for word. Rather fitting really, given that our anti-choice websites up here are often also mirror images of U.S. ones. I suppose the inability to spell "Canadians" properly should have tipped us off.

Upperdate : Oooh ... a contest!

Morgentaler vs Ceiling Cat

Evidently Morgentaler receiving the Order of Canada is, among other offences, "an affront" to Ceiling Cat.

As usual Ceiling Cat was unavailable for comment.

Priest returns his Order of Canada in a huff

Father Lucien Larre of Coquitlam says he will return his Order of Canada award rather than be associated with abortion rights activist Henry Morgentaler.

CBC :

"Father Lucien Larre said elevating Morgentaler to the Order of Canada "degrades" the award for those who believe in the sanctity of human life.
Morgentaler is best known for taking his fight to the Supreme Court, which struck down the country's abortion laws 20 years ago. He was named to the Order of Canada earlier this week."

Father Larre, on the other hand, is probably best known for being convicted in 1992 on two counts of physically abusing children in his care at Bosco Homes in Saskatchewan: slapping and choking a female, and forcing another to take pills to teach her a lesson about drug abuse.
Nine other charges including one of sexual abuse were overturned.

In 1998, Larre registered as a psychologist in B.C., but the B.C. College of Psychologists suspended his registration because it felt he posed "an immediate risk to the public."

I'm wondering why Father Lucien didn't return his OC then.

Happy Canada Day, Dr. Henry Morgentaler, OC

"Every Mother a willing Mother, every Child a wanted Child."

Looks like Canadian hero Dr. Henry Morgentaler is going to receive the Order of Canada on Canada Day in the year of the 20th anniversary of reproductive choice in Canada.

The Order of Canada recognizes a lifetime of outstanding achievement, dedication to the community and service to the country. The motto inscribed on the medal is : He desired a better country. Certainly Morgentaler risked his life and his reputation on a cause no one else gave a damn about, and he is a hero to millions of Canadian women.

G&M : Outrage brews as Ottawa set to honour Morgentaler.

"The divisive debate about abortion rights in Canada is poised to erupt once again as Henry Morgentaler, the country's best-known abortion-rights crusader, is expected to be named to the Order of Canada.
Even before the official announcement, Dr. Morgentaler's name attached to the highest honour in the land ignited a firestorm of controversy yesterday, with online blogs, people opposed to abortion and pro-choice supporters wading into the Order of Canada committee's decision."

"Highest honour in the land." Let the meddling anti-choice howling and frothing and bedwetting begin.

In R.v.Morgentaler, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled the jurisdiction of the state over women's bodies was unconstitutional.
Justice Bertha Wilson wrote :

"The decision whether to terminate a pregnancy is essentially a moral decision, a matter of conscience. I do not think there is or can be any dispute about that. The question is: whose conscience? Is the conscience of the woman to be paramount or the conscience of the state? I believe, for the reasons I gave in discussing the right to liberty, that in a free and democratic society it must be the conscience of the individual."

With thanks on Canada Day to the Governor General, Her Excellency Michaëlle Jean , Chief Justice of Canada Beverley McLachlin, and the Order of Canada Advisory Panel.