RE: "Concealing gender for 30 weeks suggested",
To the editor of the Vancouver Sun,
I appreciate the concern expressed by the editorial board of the Canadian Medical Association Journal about the practice of female feticide, the abortion of unborn female children in preference for males.
In the article, Dr. Nahid Azad, president of the Federation of Medical Women of Canada, urged the Canadian Medical Association to undertake a study to determine where feticide is prevalent in Canada. However, the CMA may find some difficulty in doing so as accurate abortion statistics do not exist. For example, some abortion clinics report their statistics and some do not. Three provinces and all territories did not report private clinic abortions in 2007 and 2008. Gestational age is often not reported. Reasons for abortion are not recorded. Ten years ago, the B.C. government passed Bill 21 that restricts the public’s access to abortion data.
The Canadian Institute for Health Information, which took over publishing abortion data from Statistics Canada, has admitted that they are limited in terms of the quality of data that they publish. If Canadian society is going to make public policy decisions about who should or shouldn’t be aborted and for which reasons, such as sex, we need accurate data. Abortion is a procedure funded by taxpayers and billed by doctors to government. It is reasonable to require reporting of data (like any other “medical procedure”) to CIHI for publication, to help understand and address the issue of feticide, among many others.
Faye Sonier
Legal Counsel,
The Evangelical Fellowship of Canada
1810-130 Albert St.
Ottawa, ON, K1P 5G4
613-233-9868 x331
sonierf@theEFC.ca