Why the Delay Approving RU486 in Canada?

by Jarrah Hodge

Australia is well on its way to making publicly available mifepristone and misoprostol, two drugs that make up RU486, used for abortion up to 49 days after becoming pregnant. If you’ve never heard of it it might sound a little scary, and that’s the angle anti-choice activists and legislators love to promote, but the truth is RU486 has been around for more than 20 years and has been demonstrated to be very safe. It is approved for use in 38 countries and is the preferred method for medical abortion in many, including France.

According to the Association of Reproductive Health Professionals, RU486 has been associated with proportionately fewer deaths than Tylenol or Viagra. It’s also less risky than going through a full-term pregnancy.

Gail Rhyno at ROAR notes that RU486 is on the World Health Organization’s Model List of Essential Medicines, which catalogues 312 drugs considered international benchmarks in meeting “priority care needs”.

If a woman needs to terminate a pregnancy, it doesn’t make sense to prevent her from choosing this option. It allows a woman to make the decision with her family doctor and not have to face in many cases travelling long distances to a clinic where they may be subject to anti-choice harassment. Even more importantly, it has lower complication rates and is significantly cheaper than other forms of medical abortion. In Australia, public pharmaceutical coverage is likely to make RU486 available to all women for $36, and $12 for women who receive benefits.

So why the delay in Canada? In a country where many women still face barriers to accessing surgical abortion, it would certainly fill a need. It’s important to note there is an approved method of medical abortion in some places in Canada, but it’s not as efficient or effective. Health Canada’s procedures for approving drugs are stringent (as they should be), but the issue is not that the drug has gone through the process and failed; it has never been submitted to the final step for approval. Some RU486 advocates believe that what’s missing to get it through the process is political will and a greater commitment from Health Canada. Fern Hill at Dammit Janet points out that Health Canada’s handling of the recent Apotex birth control pill recall raised questions about the agency’s level of understanding of women’s reproductive health needs.

The best thing to do right now is for people who care about reproductive health to educate themselves on RU486 and to raise the issue with your family doctor or OB/GYN. It’s time for Canada to catch up with the rest of the world on making private abortion safer and more effective.

(photo of pills [not RU486] via Wikimedia Commons)

Posted on May 9, 2013 by jarrahpenguin in Can-Con, Feminism, Politics Leave a comment

April is Abortion Wellbeing Month

by Chanel Dubofsky

It feels hard and strange to write about anything after what happened in Boston on Monday. In a piece for Colorlines, Riku Sen wrote, “I’m so exhausted from the cycle of sorrow, panic, defense and more sorrow that every incident of mass violence evokes in our national consciousness.” That’s more or less how I feel. I lived in Boston for a year after I graduated college, my friends live there, I know the place by heart, but I had to turn off the Twitter feed an hour after finding out about the explosions. That’s how quickly it became too much.

I’m afraid that writing about abortion right now is callous, that paying attention to anything that’s not a CNN news loop of the explosion and the injuries is wrong. The thing I know to be true is that, in spite of the fact that everyone is scared and shocked and desperate for information, most of us just went back to living our lives, because we had to. Abortion is part of people’s lives. The desire to pretend that it’s not, or that it’s not “appropriate” to talk about stems from abortion stigma- the negative things we’re told about abortion and foist upon those who provide and receive them. (It’s not just cis gendered women who can get pregnant.)

Some examples of abortion stigma include the idea that all folks who have abortions are immoral, that the decision to have an abortion is made capriciously, that it’s used as birth control. This is my favorite, because abortion IS birth control (in that it literally stops you from giving birth), and also because 87% of counties in the United States have no abortion provider. (insert source) This means that if the town you live in in Kentucky has no provider, you have to travel to the town where the provider is located, or perhaps to Ohio, West Virginia, or another state where there is a provider. Of course, this all depends on how much money you have to pay for things like transportation and/or childcare, if you can get the day off from work, or if you can get out of town without telling your parents.

Infographic via http://www.thirdwavefoundation.org

Abortion stigma is also about controlling how people who have had abortions feel about their decision. Needless to say, it’s different for everyone, but the point of any stigma is to ignore that tiny detail. Recently, I attended the CLPP conference, From Abortion Rights to Social Justice: Building the Movement for Reproductive Freedom, held every year at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts. In a workshop about early abortion, the provider (who asked that her name not be shared) told us, “People wake up from their abortions and say, “Oh my Gd, you just gave me my life back,” as well as about folks who change their minds before the procedure begins. “The language people use when they come in indicates how they’re feeling about the abortion.” For some folks, this means talking about babies and death, for others, feelings of joy and relief, and everything in between.

April is Abortion Well Being Month, based on the not-so-crazy notion that if you have an abortion, you deserve to be supported, regardless of, well, everything. If you’re having emotional hiccups after reading that sentence, If you’re thinking “But what if it was a later abortion? What if it’s this person’s second (or third, or…) abortion?,” you have probably absorbed some abortion stigma. It’s okay. You have it because you’re alive in the world, the same way we all carry around racist, sexist, classist notions that we’re not even aware of. But that’s not an excuse. We still need to take care of each other.

Posted on April 20, 2013 by jarrahpenguin in Feminism 1 Comment

Union Sisters Talk Reproductive Rights

Joyce Arthur, Jackie Larkin and Judy Darcy

by Jarrah Hodge

In the late 70′s and 80′s feminists involved in BC’s labour movement launched “Union Sisters”, regular gatherings of union women who would share a meal, listen to a speaker, and organize on important issues.

This fall a handful of union women decided to re-launch these gatherings. Using only emails, Facebook, and social media they put the word out and attracted about fifty women to the first meeting in September, which featured Dr. Marjorie Griffin-Cohen speaking on the negative impacts of BC Liberal policy on women in BC.

I’m pleased I was able to attend the second “Union Sisters” evening in New Westminster earlier this week. The theme of the night was: “The Current Challenges to our Reproductive Rights” and included an oral history on the 1970s Abortion Caravan, as well as a presentation by Joyce Arthur, Executive Director of the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada.

Addressing the current situation, Arthur put the lie to Harper’s claim that he doesn’t want to “re-open the abortion debate”, noting right off the bat by limiting funding to organizations that provide abortion and contraception in developing countries for the first time in decades, that’s exactly what the Harper government did.

Arthur also touched on the defeat of the anti-choice M-312 in Parliament this fall:

“It was quite a strong defeat but nobody was really happy about it… it was disturbing because 1/3 of the cabinet voted in favour of it, including Status of Women Minister Rona Ambrose.”

Arthur identified fighting anti-choice advertisements through complaints to Advertising Standards Canada as one area in which the ARCC and its feminist allies have had particular success.

“They’re usually demeaning to women in some way,” Arthur said of the ads. Read more

Posted on November 7, 2012 by jarrahpenguin in Feminism 1 Comment

FFFF: Draw the Line on Reproductive Rights

by Jarrah Hodge

The Center for Reproductive Rights has launched a “Draw the Line” campaign with an add featuring well-known celebrities urging signatures on a Bill of Reproductive Rights. Draw the line and tell the US government that reproductive rights are fundamental human rights.

-Jarrah

Posted on October 26, 2012 by jarrahpenguin in FFFF Leave a comment

The Last Weeks of Woodworth: What You Can Do

by Jarrah Hodge

While most of us were enjoying sunny weather, maybe hitting up the beach or lounging on patios if we were lucky, MP Stephen Woodworth was lobbying hard for his Motion 312, which would require a special Parliamentary committee to review the definition of “human being” in Subsection 223(1) of the Criminal Code of Canada to determine if it should be extended to include fetuses.

Although Woodworth has gone to great lengths to try to persuade moderates and progressives that his motion is about having a scientific debate, not primarily about restricting abortion rights, it’s clear he’s talking out of both sides of his mouth (that’s the nicest way I can think of to put it).

Dammit Janet received and published a copy of a letter Woodworth is distributing to his colleagues begging them to support M-312, in which he states:

I am enclosing a copy of Subsection 223(1), the law which is the sole focus of Motion 312. You will see that Subsection 223(1) is a 400 year old law which decrees the dehumanization and exclusion of an entire class of people we know to be human beings, namely, children before the moment of complete birth.

This is a direct assault upon the principle of universal human rights, which insists that every human being has an inherent worth and dignity which the state must recognize rather than merely a value assigned by others based on the utility or inconvenience of that human being.

And:

Laws like Subsection 223(1), which decree the dehumanization and exclusion of an entire class of people, deny the principle of universal human rights. That principle, which asserts that every human being possesses equal and inherent worth and dignity is the bedrock upon which all of other our laws rest.

Dude, we’re not stupid. Fern Hill at Dammit Janet is spot-on when she states: “The clear intent of this charade from its inception has been to close the abortion debate — without, miraculously, opening it — by setting the scene for a law limiting abortion to the period ending at mid-second trimester.”

Woodworth will be holding a press conference tomorrow, the final hour of debate on M-312 will come on Friday the 21, and then the final vote will be September 26.

The plus side is that it’s almost over and we can all take a little breather before the next Conservative backbencher comes up with some similar private member’s motion or bill.

The other positive is that there’s still time to take action, which as Abortion Rights Coalition Executive Director Joyce Arthur points out at Rabble, is necessary even if we think the motion’s passing is a long shot: Read more

Posted on September 16, 2012 by jarrahpenguin in Can-Con, Feminism, Politics 2 Comments

FFFF: Hands Off, Crazy

I’ve never met you
and this is shady.
It’s my vagina,
so hands off, crazy.
You’re on the far right
and women are angry.
It’s my vagina,
so hands off, crazy.

-Jarrah

Posted on August 24, 2012 by jarrahpenguin in Feminism, FFFF, Politics Leave a comment

Contraception is Essential Preventive Health Care

by Jarrah Hodge

Great and informative new informational video from the Guttmacher Institute outlines the benefits of contraceptive use in the United States. ?As the Guttmacher folks say on the video’s YouTube page:

“Proper timing and spacing of births leads to healthier pregnancies; contraception, when used consistently, is highly effective; and cost can be a barrier to a woman using the contraceptive method that’s right for her.”

Full transcript is available at the Institute’s website here.

Posted on July 31, 2012 by jarrahpenguin in Feminism, Politics 1 Comment

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