R U able to buy RU486 in Canada? Why not?*

Medical or chemical abortion is back in the news. We've written about it here often, most recently here.

It's a mystery why prochoice Canada has not approved RU-486 or Mifepristone.

The Canadian Medical Association is on the case.

Health Canada is being urged to approve a drug that is considered the “gold standard” of medical abortion and is already available in most other developed countries.

The drug mifepristone, commonly known as RU-486, is not available in Canada despite being the best known option for abortion, says a commentary published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

“This is the choice that many women actually want to have,” said one of the authors, Dr. Sheila Dunn of Women’s College Hospital in Toronto. “Canadian women don’t have it, and it’s unacceptable that we don’t.”

Medical abortion uses drugs rather than surgery to induce an early abortion, similar to a miscarriage. Mifepristone is taken orally and ends a pregnancy within one or two days.

Women in 57 countries have access to the drug, according to Dunn. It has been available in France since 1988, in Britain since 1991 and in the United States since 2000.

As we've noted here before, the fetus fetishists really really really hate medical abortion. It's private, safe, and cheap(er). It allows women to act quickly on an unwanted pregnancy. Any doctor can prescribe the pills, so one doesn't have to go to a clinic targetted by screaming nutbars.

So, here they are again with a petition against approving it.

The petition cites old data, now largely irrelevant because of changed protocols, but we really like this Godwinism.

And whereas RU-486 has ties to the Nazi death camps of WWII, given it was designed by the same company (Hoechst AG, formerly IG Farben) which supplied Hitler with the Zyklon-B gas used to kill millions of Jews, Poles and others in the gas chambers of Auschwitz;

Yep. They went there.

(The petition has a whopping 862 signatures at the moment.)

As we've said before, the government of Canada has a duty to provide top-drawer medical choices to patients. But it also has a duty to try to keep costs down. Which is exactly what bulk buying of RU-486 would achieve.

Look at Australian PM Julia Gillard's last act as prime minister.

Julia Gillard's last act as prime minister included signing off on cabinet approval for slashing the cost of abortion pill RU486 to as little as $12.

Listing the abortion drug on the taxpayer-funded Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) will see the price of a medical abortion in Australia drop from up to $800 to just $12 for concession card holders from August 1.

Women not eligible for concessions will pay around $70 under the PBS.

Safe, effective, private, cheap.

What's not to like?

So, will Health Canada do the sensible and responsible thing? Or will Rona Ambrose stick a base-appeasing spaniard in the works?

*Title taken from a comment by Alison suggesting a bumper sticker here.

This is how a smackdown is done.

There's a slew of comments in response to Dr Dawg's posting of a video "Pro-life" savagery, produced with footage from the Forced Pregnancy Parade.

In our humble opinion however, this one from sleazebear - who should be blogging, not just leaving comments - is superb.

jimmy durante writes: "At what point do non-sentient embryos become sentient and thus, per your definition, human?"

Sentience is necessary, but not sufficient, to be considered human. Not that I'm a philosopher or anything. But that's what I'd say. As for when it happens, from what I understand (see below), medical experts say sentience isn't achieved until late in the second trimester.

But let's leave that aside. What I've always wondered, but have been too lazy to check out, is how many "late term" abortions actually happen in Canada. So, I decided to check out the statistics on this. According to my limited research (just about 10 minutes on the web), no pregnancies are viable before 20 weeks, and almost all are viable after 27 weeks.

According to Statistics Canada, in 2003, 0.7% of abortion procedures for which detailed records were available were performed after 20 weeks of gestation. (89.4% were in the first trimester when it's generally considered by medical experts that fetuses do not have a sufficiently developed to be considered sentient -- and once again, it's arguable as to whether sentience is sufficient to declare a fetus "human".) If we do a little calculation, we can make a rough estimate that probably 725 abortions that year were performed after the 20 week mark before which hardly any fetuses are viable.

So each year, only 725 abortions past 20 weeks in Canada out of more than 100,000. 0.7%. Also of interest: there are very few providers of late term abortions in Canada. They are not easy to get. According to statistics I found on a pro-life site -- a pro-life site -- there were only 49 abortions in Canada performed past the 24-week "sentience" point. That's roughly 0.04%.

Please note that the Canadian Medical Association does not endorse "elective" abortions past the 20 week mark. That means that those 725 abortions are undoubtedly almost all due to serious fetal illness or serious threats to the health of the mother. (Many severe fetal defects that result in miscarriage or death soon after birth are undetectable before 24 weeks.)

From the information that I could find, abortions past 20 weeks aren't even particularly easy to find in Canada. No doctor in Quebec performs them, for example, even in the case of fetal illness or threats to the mother.) So I'm left to wonder how many of these mythical 8-month abortions happen in Canada? From what I can tell in my admittedly quick bit of Google research, the number is probably zero. And based on the policy of the CMA, I'd be surprised to find a doctor Canada that would perform an abortion on a viable, healthy, late-term fetus when there's no threat to the health of the mother. In other words, it really is about controlling women's bodies.

Indeed. It is ALL about controlling women, and their bodies too.

Scientific information VS religious zealotry propaganda.

Last week we wrote about Apple's ill-advised facilitation of an iPod download.

Since then, pediatricians have announced that the term for injuries caused by parents' or infant care-givers' actions has been changed from 'Shaken Baby Syndrome' to the more scientifically appropriate 'Abusive Head Trauma'. In Canada, the Canadian Medical Association Journal recently reported that a study provided evidence that appropriately targeted campaigns to increase awareness about the harm that can be caused to infants and babies are effective. In fact, it recommended that the information presented by a limited number of instructors could be reinforced by

"... multiple exposures through prenatal, maternity and postnatal health care providers, media and community support organizations," write Dr. Ronald Barr and coauthors. Dr. Barr is head of community child health at the Child & Family Research Institute and professor of pediatrics in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of British Columbia.

"These findings complement the small number of reports that have reported that practical and contextually relevant materials presented to parents before or shortly after birth can change knowledge and behaviours and perhaps reduce the incidence of shaken baby syndrome ..."

One has to wonder about individuals who respond to the CBC news item with comments like these:

Here We are talking about Shaken baby syndrome and change to Abusive head injury. But we don't have to forget that Shaken baby syndromes are based on Unproven, Junk science. There is no proff that shaking cause the head injury and here Canada 143 cases put on inquiry. my conclusion of this all event is to save thier job as child advocate pediatician because they thought that we cann't servive under Shaken baby syndrome termilogy. Moreover they get open field to do whatever they want to do with any kid addmite in Hospital as head injury and Pediatrician can hide all mistake they made at hospital by sutting down mouth of parents and caregiver by alligating kid have Abusive head trama. ...

Here we are talking about life science not build a CN tower. Do you have any medical literature that you prove a SBS in Lab? Any buddy see the Baby was Shaken? Is it Bacterial Or a Viral dieases that you can grow on aggar media? Is it a Litmuspaper test that you can see colour change looking at light? Is it a Giemsa stain test that you can see under microcsope? If Yes, late me know which medical literature have all these tests ruslts. If NO then who write all literatue? Those want prove theire finding at legal battle. Is not POV, IS TRUTH

Don't those pronouncements have the familiar ring of zygote zealots who cherry-pick scientific information that purportedly supports their abortion-criminalizing, contraceptive-demonizing screeds and yet who deride any challenge, even medical, to their Gawd-given control over women and children's well-being and safety?

Edited to update a link that was no longer available.

Stick a Fork in It

We're flying here at Birth Pangs, but we had to do this:

The Canadian Medical Association tells Ken Epp and his band of lying liar fetus fetishists to f*ck right off.

Canada's largest doctors' group has strongly condemned a private member's bill it fears could limit women's access to abortion and criminalize doctors who assist them.

By a wide margin, the Canadian Medical Association voted yesterday to oppose Bill C-484, "and any legislation that would result in compromising access for women to the medical services required to terminate a pregnancy."

Seems the FFs can't get a single professional health care association to back their ploy.

We know. It's not over yet. But it's getting harder and harder to argue that the people opposed to the Kicking Abortion's Ass Bill 'misunderstand' it.

UPPITY-DATE: Radio Canada has the numbers on the 'wide margin':

"Réunis en séance plénière, mercredi, 88 % des quelque 300 médecins participant aux assises annuelles de l'AMC ont voté pour la résolution."


(First published at Birth Pangs.)