(LifeSiteNews) — A decade after Health Canada approved the use of the abortion drug RU-486 (more commonly known as Mifepristone) and eight years after the abortion drug regimen became available in January 2017 under the label Mifegymiso, chemical abortion has transformed access to abortion in Canada – and activists are pushing to go even further.
Mifegymiso is prescribed for on-label use to end the life of a pre-born child up to nine weeks of gestation; one abortion activist group noted that doctors can also “prescribe it off-label up to 10 weeks of gestation.” According to a study published in April by the Canadian Medical Association, access to “abortion services” increased in Ontario as a result, but stated that conversely, “surgical abortion services declined.”
As chemical abortion becomes a cheap and convenient method of killing pre-born children, fewer doctors are interested or incentivized to make surgical abortion a part of their practice. The elimination of regulations, making it easier for pharmacists to dispense the abortion pill, has contributed; the CMA study indicates that access to abortion rose from 27 percent in 2017 to 91 percent in 2022, with chemical abortions constituting 56 percent of abortions in 2022, and only 8 percent in 2017.
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Strangely, that has not been the case everywhere. A study in The Lancet indicated that only 17 percent of abortions in Quebec are chemical, and the number is also much lower in Alberta, but everywhere “local access to surgical abortion services declined – from 22 per cent in 2017 to 18 per cent by 2022.” In New Brunswick, however, 68 percent of abortions were committed by Mifegymiso in 2022.
Meanwhile, a CBC report on “abortion access” in New Brunswick expressed frustration that surgical abortion services are on the decline even as the abortion pill makes it more accessible. The report does not mention that the abortion pill is extremely dangerous not only for the pre-born child, but for the mother, as well.
“One year after the New Brunswick government eliminated the last legal limit on access to surgical abortions, there’s been no real change to where the service is available,” the report notes. “Three hospitals in two cities are still offering the service, but no clinics outside hospitals have taken advantage of the Nov. 7, 2024, regulatory change.”
In fact, Health Minister John Dornon said that doctors who had previously indicated a willingness to “offer” abortion were now “less interested.” According to Dornon: “They haven’t stepped up to say ‘We want to start to do this,’ and so if they do, we are ready to be able to support that, but the community of physicians who would do this have not asked us for that, thus far.” Predictably, abortion activists are painting this as a problem; when Premier Susan Holt repealed part of a provincial regulation restricting Medicare funding for abortions to hospitals, they were hoping for a free-standing abortion clinic.
According to the CBC, New Brunswick “funded 724 claims for [abortion pill] prescriptions in 2020-21, a number that rose to 1,224 last year” and is “on pace to exceed 1,300 in 2025.” The abortion rate itself is not rising, while abortion pill usage is. Despite this, the conclusion of abortion activists is the same: abortion access must be improved and increased; they are concerned about the tradeoff between access to chemical abortions and the subsequent decline in availability of surgical abortions.
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Global News warned earlier this year that abortion clinics may be struggling, and that “some of those clinics are closing. Just over a week ago, Vancouver’s Elizabeth Bagshaw Clinic announced it was shuttering after 35 years. Abortion Care Canada had to cut its direct client support program by 75 per cent on April 1. New Brunswick’s only clinic that offered surgical abortions outside of hospitals closed in 2024.”
In short, Canadian physicians are increasingly outsourcing the perpetration of abortion to pharmacists and declining to offer the services themselves.
