Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to join in debate on this important proclamation brought forward by my colleague from Yorkton--Melville.
I would like to read into the record once more the motion since some of the debate has strayed quite radically from the wording and intent of the motion. Motion No. 83 states:
That the Standing Committee on Health fully examine, study and report to Parliament on: (a) whether or not abortion;s are medically necessary for the purpose of maintaining health, preventing disease or diagnosing or treating an injury, illness or disability; and (b) the health risks for women undergoing abortions compared to women carrying their babies to full term.
It is very evident to all of us that this is a motion concerned with women's health and concerned with the prudent use of scarce medicare funds to ensure that they are being directed toward medically necessary and not those that are medically unnecessary.
I would like at the outset to point to an experience I had as a member of the Standing Committee on Finance of the House last year when a witness appeared before us, Marilyn Wilson, the executive director of the Canadian Abortion Rights Action League, the principal advocate of the abortion licence in Canada. In her presentation to the finance committee she stated that “the vast majority of abortions performed in Canada are done for socioeconomic reasons”.
I found it very instructive that the principal advocate of the abortion licence in Canada felt that the vast majority of the procedures performed were not related to a health indication and certainly she did not argue they were medically necessary for reasons of prevention of disease, or maintaining health, or diagnosing or treating an injury, illness or disability, but rather for social and economic reasons.
Of course I was not particularly surprised because, as we have heard from other members in the debate today, those who advocate the absence of any kind of regulation of the procedure in law believe that it is an elective matter. It is not a health matter, so much as an elective procedure sought for social and economic reasons.
That is why there is interesting and useful grounds for health committee hearings on this question. Perhaps the health committee could invite before it Marilyn Wilson to expand on the Abortion Rights Action League's view that this is a social and economic and not a health care procedure. Perhaps the health committee could invite Dr. Henry Morgentaler before the committee, who in an article in the 1970s indicated that fewer than 1% of abortions were done for reasons of grave health. Perhaps the committee could invite the former minister of health of the province of Alberta, Shirley McClellan, who once said that pregnancy was not disease. Perhaps the committee could invite as testimony the people from the Government of Saskatchewan, which in 1991 held a referendum on this question where 64% of the electors and a majority in every single electoral district voted to de-insure medically unnecessary procedures in this regard.
Therefore I think there is very deep and wide evidence which could be heard by the committee to determine whether the medicare dollars directed toward financing what appears to be a medically unnecessary procedure could instead be directed toward life-saving procedures perhaps procuring MRIs, hiring more nurses, increasing acute care beds.
At a time when we are looking at very scarce and shrinking dollars for medical procedures, this is a thoughtful motion which deserves the support of all thoughtful members.