[ Ottawa Sun ] November 30, 2007 New funding trims abortion wait time Ann Marie McQueen New provincial funding seems to have tackled the case of women facing lengthy waiting times for an abortion in Ottawa. Over the summer, the waiting time in the capital reached as high as six weeks, one of the longest in the country, said Patricia LaRue, executive director of Canadians For Choice (CFC). Now, new funding has cut the wait time to terminate a pregnancy to about a week. The situation reached its peak for a month this summer when doctors at the Ottawa Hospital, where 30 to 40 abortions are normally performed each month, took holidays. It then stabilized to a three-to-four-week wait in the fall. The Morgentaler Clinic, which had performed 2,350 abortions a year two days a week, was left to keep up with demand. Premier Dalton McGuinty vowed to tackle the issue when asked about it on the campaign trail. And on Nov. 1, new funding was approved to allow 1,175 abortions a year to be performed at the Bank St. clinic. "It's permanent," said David Jensen, a spokesman for the Ministry of Health. "Basically it was just responding to the fact the clinic had unused capacity and it could increase its capacity without any capital funding." FELT 'HORRIBLE' One 27-year-old woman who had an abortion at the Ottawa clinic as a teenager, but didn't want to give her name, said she felt "horrible" during the short time she waited and couldn't imagine going six weeks. "I didn't eat a thing," she said. "I was so nervous and so sick to my stomach. I was tired. I was going through all the things a pregnant person goes through." Heather Greenwood, volunteer and options program co-ordinator at Planned Parenthood Ottawa, said it can be very difficult for a woman to endure the physical and hormonal changes that come with being pregnant when she has already made a decision to end it. "It has such a big impact on women when they have to wait like that," said Greenwood. "Now that it's down to one week, we are very happy." Abortion has been legal for almost 20 years in Canada. But in a report released this spring, the CFC found significant barriers to access across the country. When a CFC researcher surveyed 791 Canadian hospitals, she found just one in six offered the service. In one of four calls, the person answering the phone couldn't say whether their facility provided the service. "We won the right to have access to the service. It's recognized as a medically necessary health service," says LaRue. "And still women have to fight to have one."