I apologize for the disgusting nature of the site below, and its comments, but sources like this are the only ones I can find. The basic facts it reports are, as far as I know, quite true. The thing is that nobody but these cretins seem to think the facts newsworthy.
http://ifrl.org/IFRLDailyNews/040913/2/Canada Sending Women to Kansas for Late Term Abortions by Controversial Abortionist "Tiller the Killer"
(LifeSiteNews.com) MONTREAL, Pregnant mothers from Quebec whose unborn children are beyond 24 weeks gestation, are being sent to Wichita, Kansas for late-term abortions, at the private clinic of controversial abortionist George Tiller. Each procedure costs Canadian taxpayers at least $5000.00 U.S.
... Last year 30 Quebec late-term abortions were committed in Kansas and New York. So far this year from April to August, nine women have been sent to Kansas for abortions.
I'll summarize the remaining salient points without subjecting gentle readers to the revolting rhetoric.
Abortions in Canada are performed in both hospitals (most hospitals are publicly owned and operated; the few that aren't are mainly left-over RC and Sally Ann institutions that don't perform abortions) and private clinics. The private clinics are permitted to operate as an exception to the prohibition on private hospital/surgical facilities, in recognition of the fact that hospitals could/would not meet the demand. Abortion is covered under provincial health care plans. (There are a couple of complications involving small recalcitrant provinces that are violating the Canada Health Act and not being dealt with appropriately.)
But abortion providers in Canada do not have the skills and training to provide late-term abortions; the procedure is sufficiently rare that the need for it here has not been high enough that any doctors have prepared to be able to provide it. Late-term abortions could not be provided in the existing private clinics, which are not equipped for this more major and risky procedure.
So the Cdn provincial health care plans pay for women who need late-term abortions to obtain them in the US. I expect that travel expenses would be covered to some extent too, as they have been for people needing, e.g., radiation therapy while there has been a shortage of personnel in some places in Canada. One problem with this is that the costs of all medical care in the US are higher than in Canada, and so the plans are paying US providers probably a multiple of several times the approved fee for Cdn providers.
Of course the very fact of having to travel is a hardship for the women involved, but actually a woman in, say, Saskatchewan would likely have to travel to Toronto or Vancouver for such a procedure anyway, even if there were a doctor or two in Canada performing it.
Oh, I suppose I should mention that the women in question are probably almost exclusively women who have been determined to be carrying fatally defective fetuses. (I think that if the situation were one in which the woman herself were at risk of death or serious injury, some way of performing a late-term termination would be found here.) From the same ugly source as above:
Quebec Health Minister Philippe Couillard admitted this morning that the majority of the 30 abortions were done because of "congential malformations".
Now here's a weird one -- and again, apologies for the source and tone:
http://pro.lifewithchrist.org/permalink/9264Woman Dies after being Rushed from George "the Killer" Tiller's Late-Term Abortion Mill
Was the woman a Canadian?
WICHITA, January 27, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Today, LifeSiteNews.com learned that a woman, who was likely undergoing an abortion on January 13 at notorious late-term abortionist George "the Killer" Tiller's abortion facility, has died. Operation Rescue members, who keep a constant vigil outside Tiller's premises, reported that the woman, whose name has not yet been released, was rushed to Wesley Medical Center and died a few days later.
911 transcripts from the day show that an ambulance was requested by Tiller office worker Marguerite Reed, who, according to 911 dispatch records was being "very evasive" and "refused to give any information about the patient." Nothing is known about the identity of the woman and LifeSiteNews.com is attempting to discover if she was Canadian.
I have no idea what would have led them to speculate this, but I've certainly seen nothing about this in the real news in the 2 months since it allegedly happened.
on edit: apparently no basis at all. The woman was from Texas:
http://www.ljworld.com/section/breaking/story/197036Anyhow. The proposed search of medical records is indeed a fishing expedition. And you can bet that no Canadian woman who had to travel to Kansas in the tragic circumstances that make that trip necessary wants any of these scum reading her personal information. We get very crotchety about our personal info up here, and in fact there have been a couple of recent incidents where medical records somehow got disposed of improperly that became major scandals in the media.
This little assault on women's privacy has been reported in the Cdn media:
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/1109345358618_9/?hub=HealthI wonder whether any of our health ministers have made representations to the Kansas state govt about this (the files obviously contain billing information, info that is confidential and belongs to the woman and the insuring public health plan) ... maybe I'll go write my MP (an opposition member of Parliament, federally) and MPP (a government member of the provincial legislature) and suggest that the question be raised.
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