Ontario pays for 19 abortions in the US at $17,382/abortion

Further to my previous post on Ontario's out of country abortion numbers of 2023-2024, I now have the cost of these abortions.

Ontario sent 19 women to the United States and OHIP pre-approved these abortions to the tune of $229,995US or about $327,608.28 Canadian. That is $12,205US or about $17,381.58 Canadian per abortion.

My guess is that because of the high cost of these abortions, and the fact that they were all done in the US, is that they are most probably third trimester abortions. See this:

'third‐trimester abortions cost much more: they range in cost from a few thousand dollars to over $25,000, depending on gestation and clinical complexity.'

 

Don't let the pro-abortions tell you that Canada isn't committing very late term/third trimester abortions. Because they do. In this case at least, we just did it in the United States. Oh. And those 19 out of country abortions? That's only from one province. How many are being done in the rest of Canada?

Ontario sends women out of the country for abortions

Further to Ontario's 2023/2024 abortion numbers, Ontario also sent 19 women out of the country (OOC PA) in 2023/2024 to kill their unborn children.

Ontario hides tax dollars used to euthanize citizens

We now know that Quebec paid almost $6 million dollars in 2022 to euthanize citizens.

I asked Ontario for the same information:

"Can you please provide me with all information relating to the payments made to health professionals in providing Medical Aid in Dying (MAID) to patients. I am looking for the total fees paid to these providers, for their MAID services (ie for MAID consults, counseling, injecting the drugs, etc). I understand that MAID is not put on death certificates, so I would like to understand how health professionals are paid for these services, since usually there are doctor's billing codes associated with all services. How are the health professionals paid for MAID services? Time Period: June 1, 2016 to April 30, 2023"

 

So what does Ontario do? They hide the fees paid. Doesn't surprise me. They also hid abortion numbers until we were forced to take them to court. And won.

Here is the response I received from Ontario:

"This is to inform you that no responsive records were located.  A reasonable search of the Strategic Policy, Planning & French Language Services and The Ontario Health Insurance Plan was conducted, and no responsive records were found. Greg Hein, Assistant Deputy Minister, Strategic Policy, Planning & French Language Services is responsible for this decision. 

 

Physicians

 

The Ontario Health Insurance Plan (OHIP) Schedule of Benefits for Physician Services (‘the Schedule’) does not include fee codes exclusive for the provision of Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID); rather, the services related to MAID are eligible for payment through existing OHIP fee codes for insured services.

 

As such, there is no way to determine, using the OHIP claims data, specific MAID patients and/or the payments made to physicians in providing MAID services to these patients.

 

Nurse Practitioners (NPs)

 

NPs are provided a salary to provide comprehensive patient care, and MAID services are considered part of the comprehensive basket of services that NPs may provide to patients.

 

The ministry does not receive information on the portion of an NP’s salary that is allocated for the provision of MAID services from the health service providers that employ them.

 

Pharmacists

 

The ministry does not compensate pharmacists for the provision of MAID-related services (e.g., dispensing MAID drugs).  Drugs used for the provision of MAID are reimbursed by the ministry according to the amounts specified in this Notice from the Executive Officer. 

 

The total amounts reimbursed referenced in the notice refer to the maximum amount that may be reimbursed for each specific type of MAID kit. Where appropriate, a lower total amount is to be claimed in situations where a prescription does not require one or more of the drugs or components in the kit. The lower amount claimed by pharmacists is the acquisition cost of the drugs within the kit that are dispensed.

 

Other Providers

 

The ministry does not receive information from health service providers on the proportion of salary or fees otherwise paid to health care professionals in their employ (e.g., nurses) for MAID services."

At least Quebec will tell us how much they spend to kill people. Ontario hides it.

Ontario farms out 44 plus abortions to other provinces

In 2021, Ontario farmed out between 44 and 54 of its abortions to other provinces (Quebec, Alberta and British Columbia.

Sibling abortions, medical abortions, abortions > 14 weeks

I asked for, and received, abortion data for four Ontario regions: Hamilton, Ottawa, Peel and Toronto, for three years: 2019, 2020 and 2021. The data is for both hospitals and non-hospital settings. It is broken down by year within each city, and by abortion code.

While every abortion is a tragic reality, I am always struck by the particular evil of fetal reduction abortions (code P054). How does anyone even decide to do this? You have two children growing inside your womb, and you make the decision to kill one of them. How do you decide which child to kill? When the remaining alive child grows up, do you tell her that you killed her sister? Fetal reduction abortions:

• There were 36 of these sibling abortions in Ottawa during these three years.
• There were 401 of these sibling abortions in Toronto during these three years.

Then there are the > 14 weeks gestation abortions (code S785):

• Hamilton performed 462 of these abortions during these three years.
• Ottawa performed 598 of these abortions during these three years.
• Peel performed 217 of these abortions during these three years.
• Toronto performed 3,122 of these abortions during these three years.

Medical abortions seem to be increasing every year (Code A920). I guess this should not be a surprise:

• Hamilton performed 2,497, 2,985, and 3,200 for each year = 8,682
• Ottawa performed 1,667, 1,745, and 1,781 for each year = 5,193
• Peel performed 621, 2,265, 3,644 for each year = 6,530
• Toronto performed 8,035, 7,635 and 7,660 for each year - 23,330

All Ontario abortion codes:

S752 - induced - by any surgical technique up to and including 14 weeks gestation 

S785 - induced - by any surgical technique after 14 weeks of gestation

A920A - MEDICAL MANAGEMENT OF EARLY PREGNANCY - INITIAL VISIT (medical abortions)

P001A - MEDICAL MGMT FETAL DEMISE BETWEEN 14-20 WKS GESTATION

P054A - selective fetal reduction of one or more fetuses by intracardiac potassium chloride injection

S770A - CORPUS UTERI - HYSTEROTOMY.

S783A - CORPUS UTERI - HYSTEROTOMY WITH TUBAL INTERRUPTION.

Canadian abortion statistics 2015-2019

I continue to receive abortion statistics from my access to information requests from the provinces and territories of Canada.

I am only missing Northwest Territories. I will post NWT once I receive the information.

Below are all of my most recent posts on abortion statistics in Canada from this year.

PEI
Yukon
Nunavut
New Brunswick (Part 1)

Gaining insight into New Brunswick's abortion statistics (Part 2)

Newfoundland and Labrador
Nova Scotia
Saskatchewan
Manitoba
British Columbia
Canadian abortion statistics: who does, and who does not, report medical abortions
Canada abortion rates by province
The never ending story of abortion statistics in Canada
Alberta abortion codes
UPDATE: Alberta abortion statistics for 2015/2016 to 2018/2019
UPDATE The facts about abortions statistics in Canada
2018 abortion numbers - are they going up or down?
Late term live-birth abortions in Canada - the Series

The never ending story of abortion statistics in Canada

Further to my post on Canada's abortion statistics, I have done a four year comparison between CIHI's and Ontario's abortion numbers. As you can see the spread between CIHI's and MOHLTC's numbers increase every year between (2014 and 2014/2015), to (2017 and 2017/2018). So while overall the numbers are decreasing, the spread is getting larger. In 2014 and 2014/2015, the difference was 8.4%. In 2017 and 2017/2018 the difference was 20.42%. 

Adding 20.42% (to CIHI's reported 85,195 in 2018 for all of Canada) would mean a total of at least 102,592 abortions for all of Canada. 

See above link for my notes from CIHI and MOHLTC.

UPDATE The facts about abortions statistics in Canada

(UPDATE March 22, 2010. Quebec Health (RAMQ) has confirmed that their abortion numbers do not include medical abortions.)

The media has it wrong: New data suggests Canadian clinics and hospitals performing fewer abortions. So does Joyce Arthur.

Why? Because what people always report are CIHI's numbers. And CIHI is missing a lot of data based on freedom of information requests I've done.

It is a well known fact CIHI under reports abortion numbers because they do not collect data based on fee for service records (i.e. OHIP billings in Ontario).

"CIHI captures administrative, clinical and demographic data on induced abortions performed in Canadian hospitals. Data is supplied by provincial and territorial ministries of health, hospitals and independent abortion clinics in Canada. Clinic data is submitted voluntarily to CIHI. Counts in the following tables include induced abortions performed in a hospital or clinic setting in Canada. Due to variations in use of fee-for-service (FFS) payments for induced abortions across the country, these figures are not based on pan-Canadian FFS data."

What we do know about CIHI's data:

• abortions performed in physician's office are not reported (only hospitals and clinics are reported). (UPDATE March 2, 2020 Correction: CIHI apparently does a calculation to increase their accuracy  *** However they are still under reporting see below)
• clinic abortion data is under reported because of its voluntary nature
• medical abortions (the abortion pill RU-486) are not reported (for the most part they are prescribed through physician offices)
• CIHI hospital abortion data is accurate
• the only accurate data available for all abortions comes from FFS or doctor's billing records (OHIP in Ontario RAMQ in Quebec)

I have received data from Ontario billing records over the years. Recently I received Quebec billing records. Both of these sources are fairly accurate because they are based on FFS records.

Ontario: In 2017/2018 MOHLTC reported 42,853 abortions compared to 2018 CIHI reported 29,513 abortions in Ontario. A difference of 13,340 unreported abortions.

(UPDATE March 2, 2020): in 2017/2018 MOHLTC reported 42,853 and in 2017 CIHI reported 35,587. In the calculation above I used CIHI's 2018 numbers instead of 2017 numbers. The confusion comes from the fact that CIHI reports a calendar year, and MOHLTC reports a fiscal year of April 1, 2017- March 31, 2018. So it makes more sense to compare MOHLTC numbers to CIHI's calendar year. Therefore Ontario: In 2017/2018 MOHLTC reported 42,853 abortions compared to 2017 CIHI who reported 35,587 abortions in Ontario. A difference of 7,266 unreported abortions. This means CIHI under reported Ontario's abortions by 20.42%. I will be doing more comparisons in a later post.)

Quebec: Recently I reported numbers for the first time from Quebec: 

In 2018 RAMQ reported 26,979 compared to 22,093 from CIHI = 4,886 unreported abortions

This means CIHI under reported Quebec's abortions by 22%.

Quebec and Ontario are the largest provinces in Canada. Therefore they perform the most abortions. So total numbers of abortions reported by CIHI are probably somewhere between 22% and 45% lower than the actual totals.

CIHI reported 85,195 in 2018 for all of Canada. Quebec and Ontario abortions make up 65% of that number. If we assume all provinces have similar under reported abortion numbers, it's fair to say that the percentages would be somewhere between 22% or 45% higher than CIHI reports.

This means the total number of abortions done in Canada in 2018 can reasonably be expected to be somewhere between 103,937 to 123,532. Not 85,195.

UPDATE March 2, 2020 from CIHI: "The report you shared (42,853) includes seven fee codes, however CIHI reports only using two fee codes. If you limit your comparison to the 2 surgical fee codes (S752 and S785), the total numbers presented in the MOH report are very close to CIHI’s reported numbers (32,795 vs 29,513 respectively). In addition, CIHI reported for calendar year 2018 while the other report appears to be based on fiscal year 2017/18 data."

To which I responded: "So why doesn't CIHI use all the fee codes used by Ontario, since those are abortions as well? There is a big 45% difference between CIHI's numbers and Ontario's numbers. Ontario reported 42,853 and CIHI only reported 29,513. I realize there is a difference in the two reporting periods, because MOHLTC reports using a fiscal year, CIHI uses a calendar year, but there is no way to get a completely equivalent time frame, so I must compare the two years in this manner."

*** This is included on CIHI's annual reports on abortion ***
The methodology to estimate induced abortion volumes for Ontario is consistent with the enhanced methodology that was introduced in the 2015 report. Total volumes were derived by using the total abortion volumes reported to the National Physician Database (NPDB) at CIHI and adding both hospital-based abortions for non-Ontario residents and hospital-based medical-method-only abortions for Ontario residents (as reported to the Discharge Abstract Database and the National Ambulatory Care Reporting System). For Ontario, volumes reported in the column Number of induced abortions reported by clinics include services from non-hospital settings. Volumes for non-hospital settings (clinics/surgical facilities/physician offices) were estimated using the total abortion volumes as described above and subtracting hospital-based abortions. This methodology results in induced abortions occurring in physician offices and in clinics being included in non-hospital settings volumes. This estimation approach for non-hospital volumes was required because information on the location where the service is rendered (e.g., clinic, hospital, physician’s office) may not be included in the NPDB data.

Update March 3, 2020 from OMHLTC: 
"Health Services Branch has confirmed that medical abortions would be captured under A920A." This means that medical abortions are being captured under A920. But so are missed abortions. As well, there are other methods to deal with missed abortions which do not include RU486. What a dog's breakfast abortion statistics are.

UPDATE March 4, 2020, comparison of Ontario and CIHI's data for the past four years.

Truth and lies about pro-life people

Dear Canadian media,

I wanted to give you some important truths about the leading pro-choice group in Canada, Abortion Rights Coalition, and it's founder Joyce Arthur. The media quote Arthur all the time, whether it's about bubble zones, the movie Unplanned, crisis pregnancy centres, or any other topic concerning abortion.

But Arthur doesn't exactly speak the truth about pro-life people.

You know the abortion bubble zone Ontario now has? Well it is there because of Joyce Arthur. It is not there because of any pro-life violence at Ontario abortion clinics.

Arthur began this crusade (one of many against us) by writing to mayor Jim Watson providing him with some of her "research" on the supposed need for a bubble zone. Mr. Watson then wrote to the (Liberal) attorney general who gladly enacted a bubble zone law. But Arthur's "research" didn't include any real research. Such as the police report I obtained from the Ottawa police that revealed that there were no charges and no arrests at the Morgentaler facility in Ottawa in a three and a half year period. This information does not support the need for a abortion bubble zone. In fact, when I asked the Ontario Information and Privacy Commissioner about possible police reports on pro-life violence in the entire province of Ontario, I was told:

"with respect to the police reports, I had followed up earlier with the ministry [attorney general] and they advised there were no police reports."

Also missing from Arthur's letter to Watson was abortion doctor Wendy Norman's own 2012 study on Canadian facilities that shows how little harassment is actually happening at abortion sites:

"Facilities reported very little harassment (Table 4). No Canadian facility reported a resignation of an abortion provider–physician or any staff member owing to harassment. Only a single facility reported any resignation of an allied health professional staff member, and in this case the facility specified that the one resignation was not owing to violence, fear, or threats. Similarly, two-thirds of reporting facilities (49 of 74, 66.2%) indicated no episodes of harassment or violence in 2012, with a further 28.4% (21 of 74) reporting solely picketing without interference. Among 7 facilities reporting “other” episodes of harassment, half specified only receipt of harassing e-mail."

Unfortunately, a lot of politicians, and even some average Canadians, believe the misinformation and untruths Joyce Arthur disseminates regarding pro-life people. She spreads a lot of untruths about us.

For some reason that I cannot fathom, politicians listen to her. I think it's because they are afraid of her.

My friend Jonathon Van Maren spoke about this lie that pro-life people are violent, recently in his podcast which is about 20 minutes long. You really should listen to it.

In particular, Jonathon discusses Ms. Arthur's fabrications that violence in Canada is perpetrated by pro-life people. In fact, it has been at least 20 years since any such violence has occurred. And all pro-life organizations and activists strongly condemn any such violence.

The flip side to this is, that there has actually been, and still is, a lot of pro-choice violence against pro-life persons. It is tragically a very common occurrence. You might say, "well I never hear about that". And you would be right. This kind of violence is almost never covered in the mainstream media. Do you ever cover that fact?

Jonathon provides us with some very concrete vicious examples of the violence we endure. In fact, it would make far more sense to have bubble zones around pro-life people, than around abortion clinics.

Joyce Arthur and the Abortion Rights Coalition do not speak the truth about pro-life people. Quote her if you must. But please, what comes out of her mouth isn't necessarily factual or the truth about us, and almost always is a lie.

Thank you.

Sincerely,
Patricia Maloney
p.s please also listen to Jonathon's latest analysis on Joyce Arthur's current obsession regarding the movie Unplanned.

MAID - 1030 deaths in Ontario as of Dec 31, 2017

There have been  1030 euthanasia cases in Ontario as of 2017. This is from the office of the Chief Coroner in Ontario.

How tragic.

UPDATE:
Here are Health Canada's totals on MAID for all of Canada.

When I asked my contact at the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long term care what the doctor's billing code was for MAID, this is what I was told there currently isn't one:

"At the moment there isn’t anything in the claims data that would identify these types of cases. I have spoken with the program area who develops the billing codes for physicians and there is currently work underway to develop the billing codes for MAID.  

The only billing code available now is to certify death which would be used on all cases where a physician would certify an individual deceased. 

There is no billing code currently within the Schedule of Benefits from which the physician’s could submit for MAID.  The only billing code which they could submit is to certify death which would apply to all deceased patients in Ontario, there is no mechanism to isolate cases of MAID at this time. I have been told the Chief Coroner’s office in Ontario is tracking these cases but I have no insight as to the type of information being collected."

When I asked the chief Coroner's office I was sent the report linked to above.

A final thought. If the doctors don't have a billing code for MAID, then how are they getting paid, because you can be assured they are being paid. My contact couldn't answer that question.

Clinic/physician office and hospital abortions performed in Ontario for 2014/2015

Well I finally received the abortion statistics I had asked for from Health Minister Eric Hoskins. Here they are:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_QDsYLWnwO6QWs1NzAwY1NGWTg/view?usp=sharing

The chart includes (direct) costs. These amounts are what the doctor bills OHIP for, but there are other costs associated with abortions.

The numbers are broken down by Hospital (18,491 abortions) and Clinic/Physician Office (27,082 abortions).

Notes from the table:

1) The figures provided are limited to the fee codes for abortions in Ontario for fiscal year 2014-2015 based on the following codes:

a. A920A - MEDICAL MANAGEMENT OF EARLY PREGNANCY - INITIAL VISIT

b. P001A - MEDICAL MGMT FETAL DEMISE BETWEEN 14-20 WKS GESTATION

c. S752A - FEM.GENITAL SYST.-INDUCED-CURRETINTRA-AMNIOTIC INJ.(COMP.)

d. S785A - FEM.GENITAL SYST.-INDUCED-INTRA-AMNIOTIC INJ. (INCOMP.)

e. P054A - FETAL MANAGEMENT-SGL/MULT-INTRACARDIAC KCL INJECTION

f. S770A - CORPUS UTERI-HYSTEROTOMY.

g. S783A - CORPUS UTERI-HYSTEROTOMY WITH TUBAL INTERRUPTION.

Note: S770A and S783A may be claimed for purposes other than Therapeutic Abortion

2) 2014 Abortion Number of Services based on the list of codes above = 45,573

(Note that I originally reported 45,471 abortion which is the number the Ministry gave me in court. I assumed the difference (102) must be because of codes S770A and S783A as noted above, but when you look at the chart, there were only a total of 24 procedures done under these two codes, so that's not it. I will try and get an answer from the Ministry of Health--no easy task.)

3) 2014 Abortion Fee Billed based on the list of codes above = $5,690,931.99

4) Service Location - Hospital Services: report the services that based on the claims submission were rendered in a hospital setting.

5) Service Location - Physician Office (PHY): report the that based on the claim submissions were rendered in non-hospital settings (Clinics/Physician offices) 

Sources:

a) Claims History Database: billing data Data for Fiscal Years 2014/15 is M7 data (complete data.) 

b) Schedule of Benefits Physician Services under the Health Insurance Act, Ministry of Health and Long Term Care

Can we give CPCs $661,779,000, like we do for abortion?

According to Joyce Arthur, crisis pregnancy centres received 3.5 million in taxes from governments in the past five years (2011-2015)

Wow, what a pitifully small amount that government gives to crisis pregnancy centres. Surely we can do better than that? Surely we can find an ounce of compassion in our hardened hearts to give more money to crisis pregnancy centres in Canada?

These centres do amazing work in helping women with unplanned pregnancies like CAPSS does.

An interesting comparison would be to compare the dollars spent by government on abortion in Canada, to the dollars spent by government on crisis pregnancy centres.

So below I calculate an estimate of what taxpayers spent in the last five years on abortions. The numbers below are the total numbers of abortion performed in Canada from 2010-2014, based on CIHIs numbers. I then corrected the totals to account for un-reported abortions. (I used these years since CIHI hasn't published 2015 statistics yet, whereas Arthur used 2011-2015 in her calculations.)

In 2010 I learned that CIHI's Ontario abortion statistics were under-reported by 53.28%. (I originally estimated this to be 45.4% but that was based on CIHI's 2009 stats, since I didn't have the 2010 stats at the time.)

This huge discrepancy (431,745 vs 661,779) seems to be mostly from the abortions done in doctor's offices. Since these abortions are NOT captured by CIHI, we can safely assume that there are similar percentages of doctor offices abortions all across the country.

So I then applied this same percentage to all of Canada's abortions estimating a total of 661,779 abortions performed in Canada for five years. Using $1,000 cost per abortion, that's at least $661,779,000, that taxpayers have spent on abortion in Canada in the past five years.

(I have found costs estimated as high as $1,600/abortion so $1000 is underestimating the cost. Of course, if the Ontario government didn't hide abortion information from citizens we might get a better picture of the actual cost of abortion. Without those numbers we have to guess, imagine, estimate, or blue sky the numbers).

So our governments spent at least $661,779,000 on abortions for a five year period, compared to $3.5 million for CPCs.

This means the government (via the Canadian taxpayer) has paid a only tiny tiny fraction to help fund crisis pregnancy centres, as compared to what they spent on abortions. That's a lot of money going to kill unborn babies and almost nothing to support CPCs.

This makes it really clear to me that as a country we have been terribly remiss in not calling on our politicians to provide a lot more funding to CPCs. I suggest we should all email and write letters to our MPs and MPPs and ask them to increase that pitiful amount to something a lot more. In fact we should call on our governments to fund an equal amount to CPCs, as they do to fund abortions. It's our money after all. Shouldn't we have a say in where it goes?

Come to think of it, I'd like to see my tax dollars going only to CPCs and not to abortion at all.

I will be emailing my MP, MPP, the Prime Minister (justin.trudeau@parl.gc.ca) and the Minister of Health (Jane Philpott, Jane.Philpott@parl.gc.ca) and ask them to provide more funding to CPCs. I hope you do as well.

How can we discuss abortion when we don't have data?

If you Google "how many abortions are done in Ontario each year?" the first link that comes up is a four page chart by pro-abortion Joyce Arthur.

So what does this chart reveal? It reveals there is a lot we don't know about Canadian abortion statistics in general, and Ontario abortion statistics in particular. Of course we already knew this right?

What is interesting about Arthur's charts is that she makes a lot of assumptions about the rate of abortion in Ontario. Which is fair; I always have to do the same. Because when you try and discuss anything without accurate data, you have to make assumptions--you have no choice.

I won't get into why I disagree with Arthur's assumptions, as I've already done that many times before, but right now, that isn't the point. Right now the point is that if you're trying to have a meaningful conversation about anything, never mind about something with as many political, social, and financial repercussions as abortion--well it's all kind of ridiculous, isn't it?

How can she and I even talk about the data and what it means, when we don't even have the data?

In fact, in Arthur's four page analysis, she devotes quite a bit of space to the assumptions she makes about Canada's statistics, including Ontario's abortion numbers based on my freedom of information requests for 2010, the last year we have decent Ontario abortion data. And she has to make assumptions. We all do, because our data is hidden at the whim of a government who did it for political reasons. A non-accountable, non-transparent, non-open government.

As a pro-life person, how can I meaningfully refute Joyce Arthur's assertions that abortions in Ontario are going down when I can't see the data? If someone out there in google land searches for Ontario abortion numbers in Ontario, they may think rates are going up, or that abortion rates are going down, depending on whose information they read. 

If abortions are really going down, or if they're really going up, and we know which, there would be no need to speculate or assume. All of us could then meaningfully comment on the facts we see, and then we could meaningfully discuss the implications of that reality.

This is why our Charter case is so very important.

If I was still able to get abortion information through freedom of information requests (based on OHIP billings), I would be able to tell you AND the pro-abortions the following facts about abortions in Ontario:

• How many abortions are done in doctor's offices
• How many medical abortions there are
• How many fetal reductions there are
• The total number of all clinic abortions
• Gestational age (weeks) of abortions done in clinics
• Gestational age (weeks) for the large "unknown" figure for hospital abortions
• Information on the method of abortion for clinic data
• The costs of abortion to the citizens of Ontario

And then I could meaningfully comment on the implications of these facts. Now I am only left guessing. And so is Joyce Arthur. 

Charter challenge for hiding abortion information

We (ARPA and myself) have now served our application record to the Attorney General of Ontario for our Charter Challenge. Hiding information from taxpayers isn't transparent, open and accountable.

Our application records:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_QDsYLWnwO6bnY3Y2pqd21EYlk/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_QDsYLWnwO6WnBKcEJ1QThTeFU/view?usp=sharing

In fact, the Ontario Government's decision to exclude abortion information from the public directly contravenes their own "Open Data Directive".

"Ontario’s Open Data Directive maximizes access to government data by requiring all data to be made public, unless it is exempt for legal, privacy, security, confidentiality or commercially-sensitive reasons. It sets out key principles and requirements for publishing open data, and applies to data created and managed by Ontario ministries and provincial agencies."

None of these exemptions apply to the abortion information I was trying to get. So why are they hiding it? Good question.

Make your voice heard on assisted suicide

There will be public consultations on assisted suicide in Ontario.

Citizens are invited to attend the consultations, take a survey, or email your thoughts to the Ontario government.

Paying for abortions - why?

Why must Ontarians pay for their own eye exam, when all of us have to pay for someone else's abortion? Can someone please explain this to me?

Education Minister needs to return to school

Dear Ms. Broten,

Can it possibly be true that you told the Canadian Press that:
"Taking away a woman's right to choose could arguably be considered one of the most misogynistic actions that one could take," and that "I don't think there is a conflict between choosing Catholic education for your children and supporting a woman's right to choose."?

Certainly the media reported this in error, and if it did, I apologize for this letter.

However, in the extremely unlikely case that you actually did utter these words, I must inform you with all due respect, that there is nothing misogynist whatsoever with what you euphemistically call "taking away woman's right to choose" when what you really mean, is that it is misogynist "to rip apart a pre-born human being from the safety of its mothers womb in order to kill it". Clearly this is not misogyny. Some call it murder.

You also appear to be very sadly misguided if you can equate ripping apart said pre-born human being, as not being in conflict with the Catholic faith. If you actually believe this, you are sorely uneducated for an education minister regarding the Catholic faith. I strongly suggest you brush up on your Catholic teachings forthwith before you put your other foot into your mouth.

Assuming these allegations are true, I would call on Mr. McGuinty to ask for your resignation immediately, and if they are untrue, I respectfully give you my sincerest apology.

Sincerely,
Patricia Maloney

Gestational age abortions from Ontario; Quebec 2010 data coming

I'm not sure if I ever published this Gestational age data from CIHI for Ontario abortions in 2010. Here it is:

As you can see there were 358 late term abortions done in Ontario in 2010, and that's only those done in Ontario hospitals. 

Also, and as we already know, CIHI's last publication of abortion statistics for 2010 did not include information from Quebec.

I have been corresponding with CIHI to learn when we can expect to receive the 2010 Quebec data. This is the latest update from CIHI on when the Quebec data will be available. CIHI is:
"slated to receive the data in the fall. After we run it all through our data quality process (all the data we receive is checked thoroughly), we’ll be in a good position to make them public."