You’re invited! Join LifeSite in celebrating 25 years of pro-life and pro-family reporting at our anniversary Gala August 17th in Naples, Florida. Tickets and sponsorships can be purchased by clicking here.
MONTREAL, Quebec (LifeSiteNews) – Quebec has dropped its requirement that women receive an ultrasound before being prescribed abortion pills, despite it being standard medical practice to determine an unborn child’s age and to rule out ectopic pregnancy.
According to CTV News, hundreds of doctors appealed to the Quebec College of Physicians to implement this new policy so it would be easier for women to obtain abortions. Other provinces scrapped the pre-abortion pill ultrasound requirement in 2019; Quebec temporarily suspended it in February 2021 due to COVID-19.
“In the last few days, the College has decided that this measure will be made permanent,” the Quebec College of Physician’s spokesperson Leslie Labranche told CTV News.
Dr. Dario Garcia, President of Quebec’s Association for Obstetricians and Gynecologists, claimed that the ultrasound requirement can bar women from choosing abortion.
“It’s really hard, nowadays especially, to get access to laboratory tests or imaging tests,” he asserted. He further stated that having an ultrasound “doesn’t change the results.”
Serious complications can occur if a woman farther along in pregnancy than nine weeks takes the abortion pill regimen, or if a woman with an ectopic pregnancy does.
“Physicians must use their clinical judgment and decide on a case-by-case basis whether or not an ultrasound is necessary,” Labranche said.
In 2019, when Health Canada changed the rule for most provinces, it claimed that the risks of the ultrasound outweighed the benefits. However, it failed to explain what risks are posed by a doctor verifying a preborn child’s age or showing a mother what her unborn baby looks like.
“Missing an ectopic [pregnancy] could be life-threatening to a woman,” Christa Brown, nurse and Abortion Pill Rescue Coordinator for Heartbeat International, told Pregnancy Help News. “If no ultrasound is performed, women will be inadvertently prescribed chemical abortions beyond that [nine-week] mark and even when the baby is not in the uterus.”
In a chemical abortion, the first pill attempts to starve the child developing in utero by blocking the pregnancy hormone progesterone. However, after taking this pill, a woman can still change her mind. She can undergo emergency procedures to reverse the effects of the first pill. Provided she has not taken the second pill, her baby can often be saved through this process, which is known as Abortion Pill Reversal.
Chemical abortions, which when successful are lethal to unborn babies, are often painful for mothers and have been known to cause infection or hemorrhage which can require emergency care. In the U.S. between 2000 and 2011, 14 women died from complications following chemical abortions.
Despite this, Garcia celebrated the new policy, adding, “We still have work to do,” as he advocated for widespread use of the abortion pill.