Sexually active woman? Stay away from New Brunswick!

I'm so angry it's hard to type. The Chalmers Hospital in Fredericton, the primary facility in New Brunswick that provides abortions, has just announced it will no longer be performing this procedure as of June 30. That's right: NB only has one major facility serving the needs of all the women in the province. And now, ahem, it has none.

Let me break it down:
Only abortions performed in a provincial hospital are covered by Medicare. In order to have an abortion a woman must get the approval and signatures of TWO doctors. This "committee"-style process is unheard of in other provinces. In fact, this practice was thrown out by the Supreme Court in 1988! And NB still requires it!

Women unable to get signatures have the option of visiting a private clinic, such Morgentaler's in downtown Fredericton, where they will pay between $500 and $750 out of their own pocket. [As you can see, women from Northern NB or other regions must therefore pay and arrange for transportation, leave from work, possibly child-care, and make the trek to the River Valley Region to have this procedure.]

NB is the only province in the country that forces women to pay for this essential procedure. It is in direct contravention of the Canada Health Act.

But this is all in the past! Now, not only will the province refuse to pay for most abortions, it will not be providing them at all! Ladies, you're gonna have those babies! And in the mean time, we're going to stop teaching safe sex practices in middle school, and misinform kids about the efficiency of condoms. How about a dose of cervical cancer and STIs with that unplanned pregnancy, slut! [cf Dan Savage]

In 2002 and 2003 the rate of abortions in NB were lower than those for the rest of Canada, especially in the teenage demographic. Obviously, this is not because less young women are getting pregnant, but because the province makes it cruelly and un-necessarily difficult to attain an abortion.

Compare that stat with the fact that NB has the highest occurrence of C-sections in Canada. Nope, it's not a case of "too-posh-to-push." Try "too-poor-to-protest". NB Hospitals are just too under-staffed, under-funded, and over-worked. If you're taking too long to push that baby out, they're just gonna go in and get it. Unable to become a mother right now? Too bad, there's no one here to perform an abortion. They're all down the hall inducing labour and performing unnecessary ceasarians.


**Update: CBC article> states Health Minister Brad Green is looking for other options.
The article notes that "Last year, Morgentaler wrote Premier Bernard Lord, offering to sell his clinic to the government so it could become part of the hospital system and fall under the medicare umbrella, but he said he never received an answer."
That sounds like a solution to me; come on New Brunswick.