Faith and Access: The Conflict Inside Catholic Hospitals

Why should publicly funded hospitals get to limit access on religious grounds?

BY WENDY GLAUSER
Feb. 23, 2022 / MARCH-APRIL 2022 issue, Walrus Magazine

IN THE FALL OF 2020, Susan Camm was among a small group of employees touring a brand new seventeen-storey tower at St. Michael’s Hospital, in downtown Toronto. She liked the large single-patient rooms—a hallmark of modern hospital design—and the big windows that filled the space with sunshine. But something caught her eye: a brass crucifix on the wall. “I had an almost visceral reaction,” she recalls.

Camm, who was then a clinical manager at the hospital, had come across crucifixes at St. Michael’s before. But most had been taken down over the years. What shocked her is that the Christian symbols were in brand new rooms. This wasn’t a decision someone had made decades ago; it was one made in 2020. Later, when she had the chance to enter a patient room alone, she dragged a stool over to the crucifix, stood up, and tried to pull the figure off the wall. Unlike the ones in older rooms, it wasn’t simply hanging on a nail. She would have needed a chisel to pry it off.

Continued: https://thewalrus.ca/catholic-hospitals/


How the wave of U.S. restrictions will affect Canadian women sent there for abortions

How the wave of U.S. restrictions will affect Canadian women sent there for abortions

By Amanda Connolly and Rachel Browne, Global News
May 28, 2019

Dozens of Canadian women travel to the U.S. every year for abortions paid for by their provincial governments, according to data obtained by Global News.

But as some states move to restrict and criminalize the medical procedure, experts say that could have a big impact on Canadian women by both limiting options for out-of-country care and potentially increasing wait times in Canada.

Continued: https://globalnews.ca/news/4354376/donald-trump-abortion-rights-canada-access/


Abortion-pill inequality: How access varies widely across Canada

Abortion-pill inequality: How access varies widely across Canada
Two years after Canadians got access to Mifegymiso, some regions have seen thousands of prescriptions, but others have had hardly any, according to figures obtained by The Globe and Mail. The numbers point to deeply rooted problems in regional abortion care

Carly Week
October 12, 2018

Women’s health advocates have hailed the abortion pill as the key to eliminating barriers to abortion in Canada because it can be prescribed by a family doctor and taken at home, no matter where a woman lives. Yet, nearly two years after Mifegymiso became available, many women still have to travel to abortion clinics, endure lengthy waits and pay out-of-pocket if they want to use it to end their pregnancies.

Prescribing data provided to The Globe and Mail show large regional disparities in access to the abortion pill, which the World Health Organization says is a safe and effective method of terminating pregnancies in the first nine weeks. In Manitoba, where nearly 4,000 abortions are performed every year, no prescriptions for Mifegymiso have been dispensed from retail pharmacies since it came on the market, according to the data. But in Ontario, which has about 40,000 abortions every year, more than 6,600 prescriptions were dispensed last year and this year, up to August, 2018.

Continued: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-abortion-pill-inequality-how-access-varies-widely-across-canada/


Canada – Abortion expert urges Nova Scotia to drop ultrasound rule if access slowed

Abortion expert urges Nova Scotia to drop ultrasound rule if access slowed

Carly Weeks
Published September 26, 2018

The lead author of Canada’s national guidelines on drug-induced abortion says Nova Scotia should drop the practice of insisting on an ultrasound when it results in delays in providing the procedure.

The issue was raised this week after The Globe and Mail reported that Nova Scotia’s only abortion clinic is not allowed to perform ultrasounds to determine how far along a pregnancy is, leaving women to wait days or weeks for an appointment at the hospital’s diagnostic imaging unit. In an essay published Saturday, reporter Jessica Leeder outlined the challenges she faced earlier this year in obtaining a medical abortion. Ms. Leeder was told she would need to wait about two weeks for an ultrasound before a doctor could prescribe the abortion drug Mifegymiso. She eventually travelled out of province and paid out of pocket to have a timelier abortion.

Continued: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-abortion-expert-urges-nova-scotia-to-drop-ultrasound-rule-if-access/