Run With Life

Monday, February 4, 2013

Rules for abortion on demand

Check out Jonathan Kay: Some questions for Carolyn Bennett (and my other pro-choice critics) on late term abortions.

He talks about what MP Carolyn Bennett says about his article this weekend:
"Over the weekend, Liberal MP Carolyn Bennett wrote a brief rebuttal, in which she declared: “I am totally fed up with ‘lawyered’ assertions that totally misrepresent the facts. While in Canada, we do not have a law, we do have very strict professional guidelines. No physician in Canada can terminate a pregnancy over 24 weeks without serious indications: the life of the mother at risk, or the fetus has very serious malformations.”

Ms. Bennett also said:
"I challenge him to find ONE late trimester abortion perfomed in Canada to a healthy mother with a healthy fetus. I am one of many politicians ‘willing to tackle’ this subject. He needs to be one of many journalists who are prepared to admit when their fine prose may have misled Canadians …in this case to admit that late-trimester abortions are NOT happening in Canada without ‘reason’."

Well I would like to challenge Ms. Bennett to tell us how she can know that late-trimester abortions are NOT happening without reason? Because nobody else in Canada knows the reasons for late-term abortions as I've written here and here. Why? Because that information is neither captured nor reported. If she does know, then she needs to share that information with the rest of us so we can all be smart.

Then Mr. Kay asks a question:
"my question is this: How is this status quo meaningfully different from a federal abortion law that sets 24 weeks as the gestational limit for elective abortion? The current Canadian policy, as Ms. Bennett describes and praises it, is basically a civil variant of the one encoded in the criminal laws of just about every European nation — except that most of those countries generally have gestational limits well below 24 weeks (12-18 weeks is typical).

And so I ask: If some Canadian decision-making body is going to determine when a women is allowed to have an abortion on demand, why is it better that such a body be composed of unelected doctors, rather than elected politicians?"

Good question. I know how I'd answer it.

Sunday, February 3, 2013

How many abortions are done in doctor's offices?

Suzanne Fortin tells us that an Ottawa abortion clinic has been closed.

Good.

This from the Ottawa Sun:
"The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario forced the Dr. Wee-Lim Sim Medical Practice at 371 Friel St. to stop doing therapeutic abortions after the inspection.

In a July 2011 report, college inspectors wrote that the clinic wasn’t using the “minimum expected standard” of anesthetic for the procedures.

Inspectors also noted a lack of procedure manuals, fire code compliance, safety standards, control over drugs and monitoring equipment."

But here's the thing. That is one doctor's office, in one city, in one province, in Canada. How many other doctor's offices in Canada are also doing abortions, and how many abortions are they doing? We don't know. We do know that CIHI doesn't give us any statistics on these abortions done in private physician's offices. We also know that there were 18,330 of these abortions done in private physician's offices in 2010 (based on a freedom of information request of OHIP billings), and that these numbers are not reported in CIHI's statistics.

So how could this be changed to get more accurate numbers? Well, if CIHI would start basing their statistics on hospital billing records instead of their current method (1). If they made this change, our abortion numbers in Canada would be a lot closer to the true numbers of abortions performed in Canada. And that would be a very good thing.

But CIHI says they can't do that because:
"using fee-for-service (FFS) payments to produce more comprehensive induced abortion statistics at the national level. Our study revealed that the use of FFS payments for induced abortions varies significantly across the provinces and territories; thus this data would not allow CIHI to produce a pan-Canadian comparable series of statistics."

To be honest with you, I'm not exactly sure why this is the case. Couldn't they simply do what I did in Ontario, and ask all the Provincial Ministries of Health to provide them with the numbers of abortions performed in hospitals, clinics and private physician's offices, all based on billing records? If I could do it in Ontario (at least before the Liberals secretly shut it all down), surely it could be done in every province, right? Then we would have a much better idea of the numbers of abortions done each year.

And as an added bonus, all those clinics that don't report their abortion, their data would also now be captured too.

Seems to me if there's a will, there's a way.

1) http://www.cihi.ca/CIHI-ext-portal/pdf/internet/TA_10_ALLDATATABLES20120417_EN
"CIHI captures administrative, clinical and demographic data on induced abortions performed in acute care, day surgery and emergency departments in Canadian hospitals. Data is supplied by provincial and territorial ministries of health, hospitals and independent abortion clinics in Canada. The figures in the following tables include induced abortions performed in a hospital or clinic setting in Canada.

CIHI has explored using fee-for-service (FFS) payments to produce more comprehensive induced abortion statistics at the national level. Our study revealed that the use of FFS payments for induced abortions varies significantly across the provinces and territories; thus this data would not allow CIHI to produce a pan-Canadian comparable series of statistics.

As a result, CIHI will continue to report on induced abortions performed in hospitals and abortion clinics only. While this is probably an underestimate of induced abortions done in the country, it is currently the best way to produce pan-Canadian comparable data."

Saturday, February 2, 2013

Are we cowed by the totalitarian abortion lobby?

Check out Barbara Kay's take on the born alive issue.

Ms. Kay says:
"I got into a Twitter dispute with one of my colleagues yesterday. I asked him if it wasn’t worth one regulatory constraint on late-term abortions if it prevented 54 deaths of living babies a year. He adamantly rejected it: “apples and oranges” he called the comparison.

There is more than one kind of slippery slope. And right now we are on a slippery slope to complicity with criminality.

I reject his comparison. Life outside the womb is life. Unless of course you are one of those creepy new progressive types that call for the right to kill babies with defects up to 30 days outside the womb. I asked my friend: Suppose there were a regulation we could impose that would effectively end spousal homicide of women: Wouldn’t you be eager to see it implemented? He didn’t answer.

But I know what he means by apples and oranges. Apples are women – and their protection from harm is the driver of much anguished public debate. Oranges are live babies that are not really “alive” in the moral sense in his mind if the mother delivering it doesn’t want it.

All that tells me is that this otherwise bright friend is so programmed to believe in the slippery slope of abortion regulation that he can’t bring himself to countenance a single exception to our no-fetters situation. Which is odd, because every other nation in the world insists on certain regulations, and no democratic nation has outlawed abortion in general.

This refusal to stare down the hands-off fetishists is getting downright silly. Worse, it is permitting criminal activity in the name of social harmony. Well, I don’t feel particularly harmonious about those 491 live births and I am betting there are plenty of other Canadians who believe in abortion as a general right, but are also sickened by late-term abortions and would be perfectly happy to see that aspect of the practice regulated.

There is more than one kind of slippery slope. And right now we are on a slippery slope to complicity with criminality. Is this really what most Canadians want, or are they just too cowed by the totalitarian abortion lobby to speak up?"

I think that just about sums it up pretty nicely.

Canadian and Ontario abortion statistics: the series

Fact checking works wonders

It's been an interesting week for abortion politics.

The week got off to a shaky start when a Canadian Press article on the 25th anniversary of the Morgentaler decision came out with some factual errors, and was subsequently picked up by pretty much every media outlet:
"It's been 25 years to the day since the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that criminalizing abortion violated a woman's charter rights."
and
"The Canadian Institute for Health Information says at least 64,000 abortions were performed in Canada in 2010, the most recent year for which information is available."

I sent CP an email and told them that no, the Supreme Court never ruled that criminalizing abortion violated a woman's charter rights, and that those 64,000 abortions are grossly under reported because:
"A) Quebec did not report their statistics for 2010 at all. B) It is not mandatory for clinics to report abortions, and many do not. C) all the abortions done in private physicians offices are not captured at all. There were at least 44,000 abortions done in Ontario alone in 2010 (only 28,765 were reported by CIHI for Ont. in 2010. My numbers are based on freedom of information requests I did of the Ont Min. of Health based on Dr's OHIP billings. BTW Ont recently excluded abortion services from FOI's). See here:
http://run-with-life.blogspot.ca/2012/05/revised-2010-ontario-abortions-tell-sad.html

Then later in the week Maurice Vellacott issued a press release, which anyone who actually bothered to read, would see it contained a very significant bit, about abortions resulting in live births--that the Canadian Press once again, didn't immediately report the live births variable.

The media reports came out saying that three MPS wanted the RCMP to investigate any/all abortions after 19 weeks as possible homicides. Even Mr. Harper and other MPS in the House of Commons were all on about, their favourite topic: "not reopening the abortion debate."

That wasn't even what we are talking about people. Once again, most of the major media outlets picked up the wrong information.

Again I contacted the CP. Finally on Friday I heard back from them and was assured that they had updated their reports. Thank goodness.

Watch MP Maurice Vellacott discuss the born alive abortions with CBC.

Take particular note of NDP Niki Ashton who talks about something--abortion--that Mr. Vellacott is not talking about. Ms. Aston says that it is an "egregious statement equating abortion to murder." It's too bad she didn't actually listen to Mr. Vellacott, because that isn't what he's saying at all. He's talking about babies left to die after an abortion.

Now I have no problem with educating the mainstream media and NDP MPs about abortion, and in fact it's kind of fun. But maybe they should check out some of the facts for themselves before speaking to the world about it. I have to do that, so why shouldn't they?

(In today's paper, at least the National Post gets it right here and here: And yesterday CFRA got it right too after some not so right newscasts the night before.)

Pages