RU486: Game. Set. Match.

Further to the long overdue approval by Health Canada of RU486 or mifepristone, the 'gold standard' of medical abortion: an explanation and a clarification. (And some gloating.)

Medical -- non-surgical -- abortion is not new to Canada. But the protocol doctors have been forced to follow up to now is outmoded, unreliable, and subject to screw-ups.

Here, an expert explains:

"We're absolutely thrilled," Jill Arkles, from the Sexual Health Centre in Saskatoon, told CBC News Thursday.

According to Arkles, some doctors in the province were already providing an alternative to surgical abortion, using a combination of an injection and medication to induce a miscarriage.

She called RU-486 a welcome advancement. The injection-and-tablet method can take up to five weeks to complete, and involve up to five medical appointments, while RU-486 is two pills taken a day or two apart.

"It's more cost-effective than other current medications that we're using, as well it requires less time overall," she said.

So, quicker, easier, more cost-effective. Not to mention less time and stress for patients.

Thus: gold standard.

The news story I based my blogpost yesterday was less than clear on how widely available the new protocol will be.

[Vicki] Saporta [president and CEO of National Abortion Federation] said initially the drug will probably only be available through health-care professionals who already provide abortion services.

It seems that Saporta's judgement was not based on any Health Canada requirement, but on training issues and individual doctors' inclinations.

Here's part of the Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists of Canada's statement.

The SOGC is working with the College of Family Physicians of Canada (CFPC), using the expertise of our members to develop clinical practice guidelines on the use of mifegymiso [Canadian brand name] and to provide educational opportunities to physicians to ensure that they are well-prepared to counsel and care for women requesting medical abortion.

More on the inclinations of doctors:

Canadian doctors who were wary of the makeshift cocktail [injection and tablets] will likely be more willing to prescribe an abortion drug that’s approved by Health Canada for that purpose, said Jennifer Blake, the CEO of the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada. She expects the society to provide formal training around the drug and its side effects to doctors who want to offer it, and said family doctors and obstetricians will both be able to qualify. Doctors’ approaches to abortion “depends on the community,” Dr. Blake said.

“I think if you look at physicians in general as coming from the fabric of Canadians society, Canadian society on the whole feels this is a decision that is best made by a woman herself, and I would expect that to be the same among health-care providers.”

We'll have to wait and see how many doctors -- and as critically, where they are located -- will decide to offer this solution.

Now for the gloating. CBC notes that as we head into a protracted election campaign, this might not be the best timing for CONservatives wanting to placate the fetus freaks among their base.

Indeed, the initial reaction among cabinet ministers was to run like hell.

[Health Minister Rona] Ambrose told reporters in St. Albert, Alta., that the decision did not rest with her.

“It’s out of my hands and the decision is final,” she said.

“Any of those details you would have to speak to the officials at Health Canada and the scientists that actually manage the regulatory approval process. I’m not involved in it.”

Ambrose cancelled two events scheduled for Thursday afternoon and Friday in Edmonton and area. No reason was given.

Except for one CON MP (so far), David Anderson, who issued a foot-stomper of a press release demanding Ambrose roll back the clock to the 1950s.

To sum up, yes, medical abortion has been available in Canada but not very widely offered or actually undertaken, precisely because it was arduous for all involved.

The fetus freaks are particularly pissed over RU486, precisely because it is easier and more effective.

And they have good reason to be pissed. As SUZY ALLCAPS herself admits.

http://www.bigbluewave.ca/2014/10/will-collapse-of-planned-parenthood.html

The problem with this [medical abortion] model, from the pro-life perspective, is that it's a little harder to protest the GP who does abortions, when he treats the community's ear infections, sore throats, STD's and so on.

If you make life hard on this person, it won't just be abortion clients who'll be unhappy. It will be all the patients this doctor sees.

When GPs, nurse practitioners, midwives, and hopefully, eventually pharmacists are able and willing to help end an early pregnancy, it's not just a game-changer. It's a game-ender.

Game. Set. And soon, the whole fucking shooting match.


ADDED: Health Canada Regulatory Decision Summary.

In Beleaguered Calgary, a Tireless Multi-Tasker Toils

Poor Calgary. While home to many good and decent people, it is also headquarters for PetroState Canada as well as the country's most disgusting and self-righteous gang of fetus freaks, the Canadian Centre for Bioethical *ptui* Reform (CCBR), whose gory website you can look up yourself if you've a mind to.

They've plagued various parts of our fair land with their crap, but Calgary is their home base and special target.

When they're not dropping traffic-accident-causing gore banners over highway overpasses, they're stuffing residential mailboxes with their faked-up abortion porn.

The citizens of Calgary have fought back in various ways over the years. But after the last assault, when yet another appeal to the city to do SOMETHING resulted in arms flung up in helplessness, a group of parents (kinda ironic, eh?) decided to start a petition.

Oct 8, 2014 — We are now past 200 signatures which is a great feat in only 84 hours. Calgary City Council has put it forward for discussion but a city lawyer has stated there is little they can do. We disagree. Denver, Colorado has banned these images already. Hamilton, Ontario is in the midst of restricting them too. We have the bylaw already written for them. All they have to do is pass it. Please keep sharing, post on your social media and telling your friends and family. We need to keep the pressure on to make sure this can be passed as a bylaw here too. Please start using #protectyyckids and #yyccc when posting on twitter and facebook.

Please sign it and help stop the shameless misinformation and egregious shock.

Out of this kerfuffle though came an interesting tidbit, from the investigations of one pissed-off recipient of the anti-choice propaganda.

The Calgary teacher said he was just as shocked, however, when he started looking into the CCBR and found a staffer for Health Minister Rona Ambrose supporting the group’s more controversial actions online.

Daniel Gilman, who is listed in the federal government’s employee directory as an assistant to Ambrose, said in a tweet last year he’s “thankful” for the CCBR “project” that involves hanging graphic banners from overpasses above major roadways, including Deerfoot Trail in Calgary, where earlier this year a minor car crash occurred below one of the banners.

[The image has been digitally blurred by Metro.]

And here's young Daniel waxing all poetical-like about the recent moronic display of underground gasline markers on Parliament Hill. Link.

The gasline markers were the work of We Need a Law, an astroturf front for the Dominionist Association for Reformed Political Action, so it appears that Mr Gilman, like all good political assistants, is a multi-tasker, able to serve many masters and mistresses.

His boss, THE FUCKING FEDERAL HEALTH MINISTER, should be proud.




h/t for the YouTube to Alison in the comments here.

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.

CONtemptuous, Weasel Words

This morning, I couldn't help but draw this to Babs' attention.

It was the ever-online-vigilence of @FrogsAreLovely and @PierreLucDaoust who brought it to my attention.

You may recall that last week Kay Mère wrote tedious fawning glurge about Rona Ambrose, stopping short of nominating her for a humanitarian award for all her alleged achievements in the name of girls.

Jymn blogged about Ambrose's claim about a UN award, as she once again appropriated Malala Yousafzai's name for her own glory.

This is why Harper's CONtempt party needs to employ hundreds of communication flunkies throughout their government to lie about their "accomplishments".  And Babs Kay, nicely paid by the NatPo

Faux-semblant, lying lies and Attack Parrot speaking points, uttered high and low.

Truthiness

Last night I responded to Chris Selley's tweet promoting his opinion piece in the NatPo.

No acknowledgement. So I'll post what I cited in my tweets to him.

This jumped out and seemed scientifically incorrect to me; I found stats to challenge it.

“It’s a fraught issue, which stirs emotions on each side,” Ms. Newman wrote, in the Telegraph piece that touched off this controversy. “Is it right that we terminate pregnancies, which might, with the medical care now available, result in healthy babies?

That "healthy babies" claim sounded suspiciously like the glurging over that pro-liars do when they have no cogent argument to present, when they're presented with scientific facts, data and stats.

So I went looking and I found evidence about extreme neonates that refutes Newman's pretense.

In the UK, nine out of a hundred neonates born at 23 weeks of gestation will survive; only one of them will live a fully able-bodied life. 

What this means is that 91 of every hundred fetuses born at 23 weeks of gestation in the UK will die in the neonatal intensive care unit, eight others will be afflicted for the rest of their lives with grave handicaps or severe medical conditions while only one will be able to live a normal life. 

Only one percent.

Like Stephen Woodworth and his many fake claims that it's all about the science, it's not. It's about morality and punishing women by forcing them to remain pregnant, even when a fetus has stopped developing and is putrefying inside her uterus.

It's actually about the government interfering with the provision of a legal medical procedure that is available to pregnant women.

It's about criminalizing women, physicians and abortion.

It is christian Sharia.

Sex Selective Abortion: Latest SHRIEEEEK!

People are all up in arms because Rona Ambrose, Cabinet Moron Responsible for the Status of Women, voted in favour of Woodworth's Wank, aka The Motion to Determine When the State Gets Up Into Our Hoo-haws.

This should be no surprise. She has voted for fetal rights before.

But here her 'worry' is simply ridiculous.

The federal cabinet minister responsible for the status of women has offered at least a partial explanation for why she voted in support of a pro-life motion in the House of Commons.

Rona Ambrose says on Twitter that she's long been worried about discrimination against girls through "sex selection abortion."

One would need way more than 140 characters to get from Woodworth's Wank to sex selection abortion as it requires some spectacularly twisty gymnastics.

Then, right on cue, today CON MP Mark Warawa tabled a motion to condemn sex selection abortion.

We've been down this path at DJ! several times.

Is gender selection happening in Canada? Seems so, but the numbers are dodgy and the methodology controversial. (See above link for specific studies and reports.)

There is NO evidence that the at-birth gender ratio is skewed in Canada generally as a result, unlike in India and China where it is widely practiced.

There is some (questioned) evidence that there may be a slight gender ratio difference in 'some communities'.

But, as we've argued here before, so what? We've got lots of people in Canada. The few 'extra' boys in 'some communities' may be forced to look outside those communities for partners.

And that's a good thing. *evilsmiley*

Running with the sensational story though, back in June, CBC did an undercover gotcha on private ultrasound clinics to see whether any were willing to test for gender before the usual 20 weeks' gestation mark.

The notion is that if information is withheld until after 20 weeks, women and families inclined to select for males will not be able to. Abortion after 20 weeks is not done in Canada unless for pressing reasons.

The CBC did find clinics willing to perform ultrasounds earlier. Most of the cases seemed to me a result of sloppy training or an over-eagerness to please. One of the cases is indeed disgustingly venal and exploitive.

So, is that the whole story?

Seems not. In the US, where the same 'communities' are under scrutiny, the practice is getting coverage too. Like this recent story in Slate: How to Buy a Daughter.

Much of the evidence that Americans preferentially choose girls is anecdotal, as no larger body tracks gender selection procedures. But data from Google show that “how to have a girl” is searched three times as often in the United States as “how to have a boy.” Many fertility doctors say that girls are the goal for 80 percent of gender selection patients. A study published in 2009 by the online journal Reproductive Biomedicine Online found Caucasian-Americans preferentially select females through PGD [preimplantation genetic diagnosis] 70 percent of the time. Those of Indian or Chinese descent largely chose boys.

Some want boys, some want girls. Things even out.

But, of course there's more.

In this article, the author argues that sex selection is a parental right.

And why not? If we stand for reproduction by choice, why would we eliminate one category of choice? Me, I don't see a problem.

But there is.

Perhaps ironically, sex selection has caused some consternation among some feminists, a group usually known for their vocal support of reproductive freedom. Their objections to gender selection center around the possibility that the practice will encourage gender stereotypes. Girls made to be girls, they say, will face an undue burden to behave a certain way, to take up an interest in fashion instead of basketball, for example. That's certainly a possibility, but the complaint overlooks the fact that males and females are actually different in some important ways, as a lot of research has shown. Given those differences between the sexes, is it really such a bad thing that parents may prefer to raise a girl instead of a boy? 

Back in the Slate article, there is indeed some glurgey anecdotal crap about women wanting girls to shop, dress, and cook with.

Yuck.

But choice is choice.

You're for it or against it.

This issue is obviously the focus of the fetus fetishists' next gambit. It polls well for them.

From a January Angus-Reid poll:

Three-in-five respondents—including two thirds of women—believe there should be laws to outline whether a woman can have an abortion based solely on the gender of the fetus.

There oughta be a law!

I think Ambrose's idiotic justification and Warawa's Wank are just ploys to keep the fetus fetishists revved up and going for their chequebooks.

It may develop into something more serious and I'll woman the barricades again.

But I need a rest first.

Hidden Agenda Watch

To keep up with DJ!'s mission of eternal vigiliance, aka 'Fuck the Debate', here's the latest addition to the Contempt Party abortion recriminalization crew: Jeff Watson*. That's four: Trost, Woodworth, Ambrose, and now Watson chimes in on the effort to 'reopen the debate'.

“My layman’s read of the public mood, if you will, around life issues [is] I think most people mistakenly believe that there’s already restrictions on abortion, and so this issue is already settled,” he explained.

Watson said that when he informs people that there are, in fact, no restrictions, “they’re quite alarmed and feel something should be done about it.”

Waaaah. Something should be done about it!!!

But, despite the 'strong, stable majority' -- hey! the abbreviation would be SSM, let's use that! -- LifeShite gripes:

Since winning a majority in the May election, Stephen Harper’s Conservative government has remained adamant that they will support the status quo on abortion, and has re-emphasized the point in the media whenever one of its caucus members raises the issue.

Under Harper in recent years, pro-life MPs have struggled to bring forward any discussion on abortion, even around broadly supported initiatives such as a ban on abortion coercion and or protections for unborn victims of crime, in part because abortion supporters frame them as backdoor efforts to re-criminalize abortion.

Um. Yeah. Because that's what they fucking are.

Oh, but look. We sane people are 'old-fashioned'.

“My gut feeling is that groups who support free access to the procedure of abortion won’t have the broader discussion. They’re content to frame every discussion as being about the re-criminalization of abortion,” Watson observed. “They want to frame it in old terms. … I expect a very strong resistance by groups that favour full access to the procedure of abortion. I expect them to be full-out name-calling and everything else that characterizes groups like that.”

“I think we’re mature enough as a society, I think we need to be mature enough as a Parliament, to deal with these questions head on,” he added.

Again with the characterization of prochoice being insensitive and immature name-callers.

See what they're doing here? The Fetus Lobby® is trying to paint itself as the serious ones, the mature ones, the *gag* 'modern' ones.

And they are absolutely wrong. Read the comments on two recent stories about the lack of abortion services in PEI, here and here.

The overwhelming majority of Canadians DO think this is a settled matter and do NOT want the so-called debate reopened.

The overwhelming majority of Canadians are sane, modern, mature, and sensitive. They, unlike the Fetus Lobby®, understand and respect a woman's right to autonomy. And do NOT want to go backwards as a society.


* We checked out Watson's rating at Campaign Lie . Yup. Anti-choice all the way, babeeee.

Rating Comments: Has not responded to CLC's 2011 questionnaire, but in 2006 he said he would support measures to introduce and pass a law to protect every unborn child from the time of conception (fertilization) onward.

No hidden agenda there. It's right out in the open.

ADDED: Dave at the Galloping Beaver is paying attention. He says the LifeShite story is older, from the December 26 Windsor Star, playing now to keep the faux 'debate' current. He also points out that the religious, anti-science Contempt Party members have been sitting on their hands in quest of the Strong Stable Majority (aka SSM). Now they have it and they're going to call in their markers. The Hidden Agenda decloaks.

Ambrose went off message, it seems.

How can that be? Aren't ministers' scripts tightly controlled by the PMO?

The event was a statement from the minister for status of women, containing no program or funding announcement, and the news to emerge was that Ambrose said Ottawa is "looking at" amending the Criminal Code to include so-called honour crimes. She was asked if the government was considering such changes, and she replied that it was under consideration. "I'll say that it's something that we're looking at," she said. "Nothing more than that at this time." However, when contacted for more details about possible changes, a spokeswoman for the Department of Justice said in fact, that is not the case. "There are currently no plans to do that," said Pamela Stephens.

From here. Ambrose also encouraged the community groups she addressed to develop their own initiatives to prevent "honour crimes" and assist women and girls who are suffering abuse at home. She told groups to submit project proposals to the federal government, but she offered no specific details about funding parameters or criteria. It also appears from the text of her speech published here that Ambrose (or someone in the PMO) used the event as an opportunity to jab at progressives - who don't rationalize any form of violence against women.

These heinous acts cannot be justified by cultural relativism or excused under the guise of political correctness.

Who the hell does that? Certainly not feminists. There are however, rightwing christian cons who believe that violence against women is far worse when it's muslims who commit those criminal actions.

In reality, women who are murdered, stabbed, mutilated, sexually assaulted or permanently harmed by those enraged by their femaleness don't care what motivated their abusers. They simply want justice to be done.