Mr. Speaker, the first part of the motion before us asks that the Standing Committee on Health to fully examine whether or not abortions are medically necessary for the purpose of maintaining health, preventing disease or diagnosing or treating an injury, illness or disability.
The Government of Canada attaches considerable importance to the surveillance of issues affecting the health of Canadians. In 1995, the department began developing the Canadian perinatal surveillance system, or CPSS, as part of a departmental initiative to fill the gaps in national public health surveillance.
The CPSS collaborates with Statistics Canada, the Canadian Institute for Health Information, provincial and territorial governments, health professionals organizations, advocacy groups and university researchers. Representatives of these groups and several international experts serve on the CPSS steering committee and its study groups.
The CPSS considers a health surveillance system to be a core system of ongoing data collection, analysis and interpretation on vital public health issues. Two issues related to public health surveillance, which greatly interest the CPSS and Canadian women, are the health effects associated with induced abortions and those associated with and full-term pregnancies.
There are no studies directly comparing the risks associated with induced abortions and those associated with full-term pregnancies in scientific journals. This can be attributed to the fact that Canadian women and their health care providers do not consider direct comparisons very important.
The physiology of pregnancy varies widely from one stage to the next. The risks associated with most undesirable events during pregnancy are, in all likelihood, higher later in pregnancy than at the stage when induced abortions are performed.
The close monitoring of undesirable events on health and the risk factors are more instructive in the case of induced abortions and full-term pregnancies. The department, thanks to the CPSS, has undertaken several important initiatives in this regard.
As far as induced abortions are concerned, the maternal health task force of the CPSS is looking thoroughly into the statistics on this provided by Statistics Canada. In addition to examining the complication rate as reported by Statistics Canada, the CPSS is examining delayed complications via a study on readmissions after discharge from hospital.
These efforts to link induced abortions in hospital with subsequent readmissions will further our understanding of the nature and frequency of serious complications connected to induced abortions.
As far as the health risks relating to pregnancy in general, the CPSS is involved in two pertinent initiatives. The first of these is a national study of maternal deaths, a first of its kind in Canada, which will attempt to examine all maternal deaths from 1997 to 2000, regardless of cause. A summary of the various provincial and territorial review processes for maternal death coupled with a study by experts on reported maternal deaths will be published by the department in 2004.
Fortunately, maternal deaths are still relatively rare in Canada, but the CPSS recognizes the need to monitor serious pregnancy outcomes that do not lead to deaths.
As a result, a study is currently under way to examine the profile of serious maternal morbidity in Canada. It will use surrogate variables including blood transfusions and admissions to intensive care to establish serious negative events involving pregnant women. These two initiatives will yield a more thorough knowledge of the risk factors and of the scope of serious outcomes affecting the health of Canadian women during pregnancy.
In short, a direct comparison of the health risks for women undergoing induced abortions and women going to full term does not necessarily represent the optimum approach. A careful monitoring of serious events for women's health at all stages of pregnancy will provide the basis for policies and programs designed to provide Canadian women with the safest possible perinatal health services.
The department is fully behind this effort with these initiatives for surveillance.