Of Course There is Do-It-Yourself Abortion in New Brunswick

Well, who didn't see this coming?

Because abortions are nearly impossible to access in New Brunswick, people in need of the procedure have begun terminating their pregnancies themselves.

Whenever and wherever women have found it impossible to continue a pregnancy and to find competent help to end it, they have resorted to whatever is handy and has the slightest chance of working. And, it is to be hoped, not kill or maim them.

Right now, for example:

A woman in Morocco looking for help is considering drinking bleach to end her pregnancy. In Poland, a rape victim says she’s thinking about hitting her stomach with a stick to induce a miscarriage. Another woman desperately emails, “I am not a monster, I just cannot have the baby.”

These are the distressed messages that Women on Waves receive every day from women who live in countries where abortion is illegal. The organisation, an activist group famous for providing abortions on a ship in international waters, has recently been chronicled in the award-winning film, Vessel. The movie follows the work of Dutch doctor Rebecca Gomperts and her crew as they work around various countries’ abortion laws – and sometimes just flout them – to help women end their pregnancies.

While watching the film, which has its New York premiere next month, it’s hard not think about the current hostile climate for reproductive rights here in the US and wonder: How long until illegal abortion is the norm here, too?

If the Women on Waves ship visits North America, a period anchored in Northumberland Strait would be useful to the women of PEI and New Brunswick who are denied -- for purely political reasons -- access to a common medical procedure available to the rest of Canadian women.

In the meantime, here's some advice from the organization's website, Women on Web.

The best and safest way a woman can do an abortion herself until the 12th week of pregnancy is with the use of two medicines called Mifepristone (also known as the abortion pill, RU 486, Mifegyn, Mifeprex), and Misoprostol (also known as Cytotec, Arthrotec, Oxaprost, Cyprostol, Mibetec, Prostokos or Misotrol). If you live in a country where there is no access to safe abortion services and you would like to obtain a medical abortion with Mifepristone and Misoprostol, please go to Women on Web (www.womenonweb.org).

While women may be just as desperate as ever, the (semi-) good news is that DIY abortion is safer.

Although abortion is still illegal in many countries around the world, "do-it-yourself" (DIY) medical abortion means that it has become much safer compared to traditional methods such as inserting foreign objects in the uterus or ingesting poisons. However, there are still dangers when women buy dubious medication on the black market and take it without any instructions or medical supervision -- hence, the urgent need for groups like [new international foundation called Women Help Women] WHW, as well as Women on Web. The latter group courageously piloted the online provision of medical abortion in 2006, proving the viability and safety of this model.

And speaking of politics, the newly elected Liberal Premier of New Brunswick is already walking back one of his major promises. He seems to be changing his tune on fracking.

Gee, I wonder how the fetus fetishists of the province will respond to that news, given recent research showing that fracking increases the risk of fetuses developing congenital heart problems?

Reproductive Justice New Brunswick is keeping track of Gallant's shilly-shallying on his abortion review promise with its Days of Inaction Timer.

New Brunswick women who can afford it and have a passport will continue to contribute to the spike in abortions provided in Maine. But women who can't afford it will resort to other means, necessarily less safe than medical abortion.

Any less-than-ideal consequences of that will be on you, Premier Gallant.

Incrementalism: Admission of Futility?

Some time ago, I discovered the Wingnut Wedgie that divides fetus fetishists into abolitionists and incrementalists.

It has never gone away as an issue among them, with some demanding nothing less than absolute forced pregnancy for all and others, perhaps recognizing the futility of their cause, willing to settle for any kind of law at all.

As a first step, note, to a complete ban.

Here we go again with our pal, astroturfer and dominionist Mike Schouten, raising the question and seeming to invite discussion.

Here's a stunning admission. He acknowledges that defunding abortion -- the only remotely possible abortion restriction in Canada -- would affect only poor women. Or, in their preferred parlance, poor baybees.

All pro-lifers support efforts to defund abortion. By doing so, they support a process that would protect some children, but not others. Under defunding, abortion remains legal as long as the mother or the father pays for the abortion. Someone could argue, "I won't support that defunding law because it only saves poor babies while all the babies of rich mothers who can afford the abortion will still be terminated." That may be so, but defunding abortion is a step in the right direction.

Discriminatory as this is -- not to mention a rank violation of human rights -- he's okey-dokey with fucking over poor women and families, as a "step in the right direction."

Incrementalists and abolitionists seem often to line up in the Protestant fundy gang and the Vatican Taliban gang respectively, but that's not quite true.

Over at ProWomanProLie, a few people are discussing Schouten's gambit.

I found a comment by Melissa fascinating (bold mine).

Thank you, thank you, thank you for talking about this issue!! I was starting to think that incrementalism was the elephant in the room that we just were never going to talk about.

I’m an incrementalist myself, (and Catholic too, as if that matters). Truth of the matter is, though, I would bow out of this fight if we got to a certain incremental point (right now, I think that would be if abortion were limited to the embryonic stage of pregnancy, or the 1st trimester at the latest, although I could quite conceivably become so tired of the fight that I would bow out if we were to achieve a considerably less significant victory). I sometimes wonder if that is why the people who are opposed to incrementalism are so adamant–they know that they will consistently lose support as smaller gains are made.

DING-DING-DING! Give that woman a cupie doll!

This is precisely what the totalitarians fear. That if the tiniest restriction is placed on abortion, many if not most of the less fanatic opponents will say "There. Mission accomplished."

Given that legitimate fear, Campaign Lie's intent to focus on RU-486, or medical abortion, for this year's bunfest is a bit perplexing.

Say, for argument's sake, RU-486 is banned in Canada. (Unaccountably, it has still not been approved by Health Canada and sources suggest that the issue won't be decided until 2015.)

Would many fetus fetishists then declare victory and take up sane people's pursuits?

Seems possible at least.

But then the anti-abortion industry would lose a ton of money and political influence (such as it is).

My take: Schouten's raising of incrementalism now and CampaignLie's focus on RU-486 demonstrate that they've (nearly) given up.

The times they are a' changing. (See next blog post.)

Of course, we'll keep an eye on them, but it may be that the end is nearer than we think.

Lawless Abortion Round-Up

Our planned blog-burst/tweet-fest to celebrate 26 years of lawless abortion in Canada got somewhat drowned out yesterday by Bell's cause marketing gimmick to benefit mental health. It's a very clever campaign, but I loathe the practice. (Hm, it seems I blogged about it last year.)

There were some blogs: here, one by deBeauxOs and one by me.

Luna weighed in with a thoughtful post on CONtrol, pointing out what programs actually pro-life people would support.

Kev linked to an older and very succinct post of his. It's so succinct, here it is in its entirety.

#M408 Here we go again

This may be the shortest post I'll ever write. When it comes to a woman's right to choose I am entirely closed minded, there is nothing to debate, no concessions to be made. A women has the inviolable right to choose if and when to have an abortion. I may not agree with her choice but so effin what, it isn't my body it's hers.

Medical Students for Choice posted some links to useful information on the chronology of abortion in Canada and on the current situation on access to it. (Spoiler: not as good as it should be.)

The mainstream media contributed some timely stories. One on the state of play on Health Canada's long overdue decision on RU-486 and another on the political reaction.

Mulcair said the mifepristone application is taking longer than normal.

"I certainly hope that politics is not in play," Mulcair said.

"I know that Madame Ambrose has a history on this particular file, so I hope that her personal opinions are not stopping a health solution for some women who want to have [a medical abortion]."

Justin Trudeau again demonstrated his party's unswerving commitment to namby-pambiness on women's rights.

"I expect that Health Canada will go through the proper procedures, and I'm not a medical expert, so I trust that the scientists will do their work to make sure that it goes through the proper procedures," he said.

Another story reported on a study of the risks posed to women in PEI by the total absence of abortion services there.

On Twitter, people were using the hashtags #Morgentaler26, #RU4Choice, and #LawlessAbortion.

Some trolls came out to play, but not many.

We got a shout-out from Ireland.

Canada has had #LawlessAbortion since 1988. Happy #Morgentaler26

— Abortion Rights IE (@freesafelegal) January 28, 2014

And finally, this surprising development: a crowd-sourcing effort to fund a "dark comedy" about abortion, called "Plan B", being made in Canada.

Here's the trailer.



They want to raise $20,000. Help out if you can. (Imagine the exploding fetus fetishist heads you'd be enabling.)

Thanks to all who blogged, tweeted, and retweeted. If I've missed anything, let me know in the comments.

UPDATE: Alison at Creekside's contribution with cameo appearance from Emma the Embryo.

Dead women don't, and can't give life.

What a morbid thought, correct?

In Canada, 26 years ago today the Supreme Court decision R. v. Morgentaler  removed legal obstacles preventing women from accessing abortion - a medical procedure under the purview of professionals who administer the public health care system.

But in Texas where the rights of corporations, guns and fetus are promoted by Bible-thumpers who claim they represent the will of God the Father, the laws of the state can desecrate and violate the rights of ordinary living breathing people.

If there are profits to be made, weapons to be cherished and a zygote, embryo or fetus to be deployed as a weapon in the War On Women, you can bet that rightwing religious fundamentalist Republican legislators will be there to shrieeekingly defend those rights.

This happened.

Marlise, a 33-year old paramedic, got up the night of Nov. 26 to fix a bottle for her toddler son.

Her husband Erick, also a paramedic and a firefighter, woke up and realized she had not returned to bed.

He found Marlise collapsed on the floor, not breathing and with no pulse. It’s believed she suffered a blood clot to the lung that deprived her of oxygen for more than an hour.

Erick frantically performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation and called an ambulance. Marlise was taken to John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth and connected to a ventilator to artificially simulate breathing.

It was too late. Marlise was gone. According to court filings, doctors knew this within two days, after tests registered a complete absence of brain function. This was not a “coma” or “vegetative state.” It is the legal and medical definition of dead.

Marlise Muñoz was an emergency medical technician, a paramedic familiar with end-of-life issues who had told her husband that she would not want to be kept "alive" by machines.

Her family hired a lawyer; a rational, sane judge heard their arguments and ordered the hospital to stop preserving the decaying body of their beloved in a technologically-assisted embalmed state.  Marlise had been declared medically and legally dead; in trying to protect the rights of the fetus as it believed Texas law instructed it to do, the hospital (or fetushists on staff) turned her into a "cadaverous incubator". More medical information here, from Dr Jen Gunter.

THIS is the nightmare that CPC MPs Vellacott and Woodworth would inflict upon Canadian women and their families.

Knight of Columbus Stephen Woodworth claims how "savage and inhumane it is to have a law on the Canadian books which falsely condemns as non-human people who are human" - quite a whopper of a word-salad obfuscation. Women have tried to instruct this obdurate Vatican Taliban foot-soldier on how women experience pregnancy — wanted or not — but he won't listen.  In his mind, he is a grandiloquent medieval cavalier, "saving" fetus everywhere and forcing women to carry unwanted pregnancies to term.

"Savage and inhumane" is exactly the treatment that women would suffer if *fetus rights* forced hospitals to use women like meat incubators to placate anti-choice zealots' ideologically-dictated demands.  Would gestating women who smoke, who drink alcohol, who eat the "wrong" food, who are addicted to legal or illegal drugs and who have sex while pregnant, get strapped down and supervised to prevent actions that could imperil their fetus?

Not in my Canada.  

I applaud the recent commentary in the Canadian Medical Association Journal as well as those who are urging Health Canada to approve mifepristone as a physician-facilitated medical abortion. Also known as RU486, it is administered very early in the pregnancy instead of surgery. It induces a miscarriage, similar to spontaneous abortions that occur frequently during the first trimester.

In support of Canadian women's ongoing push-back against the reactionary individuals and groups who would deprive them of basic reproductive rights, I will continue writing and tweeting on these issues.

RU-486 Is Back, Now With Godwin's Law

Health Canada is an odd organization, isn't it?

Back in November, the Canadian Medical Association Journal published a commentary advocating for the approval of RU-486, the preferred medical abortion drug, unaccountably not yet sanctioned in pro-choice Canada.

It explained:

A manufacturer must apply to bring the drug to market in Canada. Health Canada, citing confidentiality laws, would not confirm whether it is currently studying such an application.

However, [Dr. Sheila] Dunn said an application had been made within the last year. She said it may have taken time for a manufacturer to apply, owing to the expense and Canada’s relatively small population.

When the inevitable shit hit the fan from the fetus fetishists, Health Canada denied there was an application pending.

But now LifeShite reveals that the abortion activists did know what the hell they were talking about.

Health Canada has admitted that its deputy health minister misspoke when he told a parliament health committee in November that there is no pending application to have the controversial abortion drug RU-486 (mifepristone) approved in Canada. 

“An application has indeed been filed with Health Canada and is under review,” Health Canada’s Bureau of Metabolism, Oncology and Reproductive Sciences wrote on January 2 in an email obtained by LifeSiteNews.com.

So, the antis are revving up again, citing old bullshit studies and stats from The Way Back Machine, before treatment regimes were find-tuned.

And ya gotta love this from CampaignLie's petition page.

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. That's how desperately short of actual facts and arguments they are. They went for the Nazi supplier! shriek.

Ja, like Kodak, Coca-Cola, IBM etc.

For background and more info, check out DJ's previous posts on RU-486.

One step forward for Italy; two steps back for Québec?

Italian women may soon have access to RU 486 medication on a limited basis.

The Vatican and Catholic politicians today reacted with dismay to a decision by Italy's drugs agency to approve limited use of the abortion pill Mifepristone, which has been available in much of the rest of Europe since the 1990s. Senior Vatican officials said women who took the pill would be excommunicating themselves, as would doctors who prescribed it and nurses who administered it. Because of the high proportion of conscientious objectors to abortion in the Italian health service – some 70% – it is likely that use of the pill will be circumscribed.

After a reportedly heated four-hour session that ended late on Thursday, the board of the Italian pharmaceuticals agency, AIFA, voted by four to one to approve Mifepristone. But it stipulated that the pill should only be administered in hospital during the first seven weeks of pregnancy.

Unfortunately it appears that new health care regulations in Québec will make it more difficult for women to obtain a IVG (interruption volontaire de grossesse) in the future. Le Devoir and other media report that the requirements of Bill 34 which establishes understandably rigorous standards for private clinics, in the wake of medical accidents such as Micheline Charest's death in 2004, may lead to the closure of some abortion clinics. Physicians and obstetricians are lobbying the government to exclude IVG procedures from Bill 34, since in their professional opinion there is no justification to apply such requirements. Abortions practised in the first trimester are normally performed with the administration of a local anaesthetic; complex root canals are more risky than such IVG. Doctors and nurses who work in clinics and in hospitals have pointed out that first trimester abortions provided in institutional settings do not have to meet these requirements.

It's one of those events that, as with federal Bill C-484 (now-defunct), makes you wonder if a tiny group of anti-choice bureaucrats and politicians hoped to sneak these restrictions under the radar, without the benefit of public scrutiny. Polls have indicated that the majority of Canadians support access to abortion.

One inadvertently comic note about the Italian story, which includes far too much information about the Italian prime minister (emphasis ours):

For Silvio Berlusconi's government and its supporters, this was a delicate moment for any announcement bearing on sexual ethics. Recordings purportedly made by a prostitute who claims that she spent the night with Italy's 72-year-old married prime minister have focused public attention on his own apparently wide-ranging sex life. In one, a businessman who allegedly supplied women for parties at Berlusconi's home can be heard warning one of them that the prime minister never uses a condom.

That must make him a good Catholic - right?