Fewer abortions in province: data

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This article was published 30/03/2017 (3141 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The number of hospital abortions in Manitoba dropped 10 per cent from 2011 to 2015, data released Thursday by the Canadian Institute for Health Information show.

Manitoba recorded 2,476 hospital abortions in 2011 compared with 2,228 in 2015, the most recent year for which data are available.

It’s a decline the head of the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority’s department of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences believes is a result of more doctors providing intrauterine contraceptive devices (IUCDs) at the time of an abortion.

But the program providing the Health Sciences Centre’s Women’s Hospital with hundreds of free IUCDs has been discontinued and Dr. Margaret Morris is concerned about what that means for women who can’t afford them.

“We’re going to need support to continue that practice… to keep those reductions in the abortion rate,” said Morris, one of only two physicians currently trained to prescribe and administer the drug at HSC.

The Women’s Hospital has been receiving about 100 of the devices annually since 2011 from the Ryan Program, a San Francisco-based reproductive health initiative focused on family planning. The hospital received the IUCDs in conjunction with training on their proper insertion.

“Once we are out of our current supply, we will not be able to provide free IUCDs for patients who are not on social assistance but cannot afford to meet their Pharmacare deductible,” Morris said. IUCDs are one of the most effective contraceptives available, but can cost several hundred dollars, depending on the brand.

Agnita Pal, manager of clinical administrative databases operations with the Canadian Institute for Health Information, said she couldn’t say whether contraceptive insertion at the time of an abortion played a role in the drop in the number of hospital abortions.

While the number of hospital abortions is down across the province, Pal said the number of abortions reported by clinics has seen “no significant change between 2011 and 2015.” There were 114 fewer abortions performed in clinics in 2015 compared with 2014, when 1,531 clinic abortions took place.

Overall, the number of abortions reported in Manitoba dropped six per cent from 2011 to 2015. The CIHI report did not say how many non-hospital clinics provide abortions.

The numbers don’t include medical abortions performed in doctor’s offices — the kind made possible by Mifegymiso, a shipment of which recently arrived in Winnipeg. Similarly, clinics and doctors aren’t under the same legal obligations as hospitals to report their activities, meaning the figures for clinic abortions are not necessarily exact.

Mifegymiso is a pack of six pills, two mifepristone tablets to be taken under doctor supervision and four misoprostol tablets to be taken at home the next day. The mifepristone terminates the pregnancy, while the misoprostol “will initiate the process of the uterus emptying the products of conception.” Patients then have to return to the hospital within a week or so to confirm the pregnancy has ended. In five per cent of cases, women who take Mifegymiso do require surgical follow up.

This year, CIHI was able to use physician billing information provided by the Ontario government to more accurately track abortions in clinics and doctors’ offices. A spokesman for the Manitoba government said it has also begun passing the billing information along to CIHI, raising the likelihood next year’s figures will give the province a more accurate depiction of how many women are choosing to abort pregnancies.

The end of the IUCD program was not a government cut, as the Ryan Program was providing IUCDs and training but not being funded by the province.

jane.gerster@freepress.mb.ca