Alberta premier Ralph Klein has recently stepped up his campaign to reduce spending on health care. In late February at a premiers’ meeting he pushed for significant changes to the way health care is delivered. He even mused before the meeting that he would look at de-insuring some services.

This is an opportune time for Albertans to press the issue of de-insuring abortions. We know from successive Leger polls (the most recent in October, 2003) that three-quarters of Albertans polled support de-insuring abortion except when the mother’s life is threatened or in cases of rape and incest. Alberta Pro-Life has sent these poll results to every MLA.

We do not know what Alberta Health pays for all the abortions performed in the province. In 2000, there were 10,417 abortions paid for by taxpayers in Alberta. We do know, however, that the health authorities in Calgary and Edmonton contract with private, for-profit abortion clinics to have them perform abortions. Between October 1, 2002 and September 30, 2003, the Calgary Health Region’s contract with Calgary’s Kensington Clinic was valued at $1.4 million. Edmonton’s Capital Health Authority had a contract with the Morgentaler Clinic for $2.8 million for the period October 1, 2000 to March 31, 2003. Clinics perform almost half of the province’s abortions and probably do it less expensively than hospitals. It is safe and probably a conservative estimate that the provincial government spends over $5 million a year on abortions. This amount excludes indirect costs, that is, whatever is spent on complications, side effects, and post-abortion trauma experienced by women.

If the provincial government is serious about reducing health care costs, there is no better place to start than with de-insuring abortions. Albertans would object if the province imposed user fees on any other service, without first deinsuring abortions, the vast majority of which are done because women ask for them, not because they are medically indicated.

A new study by Dr. Michael New, a researcher at the Harvard-MIT Data Center, looked at legislative initiatives by various state governments in the US to determine what effect they had on abortion rates. He included state laws to de-insure Medicaid abortions (Medicaid is publicly funded health care for low-income people), informed consent laws, parental consent laws, and waiting periods. He found that of all these initiatives, removing abortion funding had the greatest impact on abortion rates. Overall, defunding reduced the abortion rate (the number of abortions per thousand women of childbearing age) by 2.08. It reduced the abortion ratio (the number of abortions per 1,000 births) by 29.66. These were far more significant than the other measures enacted.

So, de-insuring abortions would reduce health costs and if the US situation applies here, it would lead to a reduction in the number of abortions performed. Since all sides of the abortion debate say they want to reduce the number of abortions, de-insuring should be a high priority. Why isn’t it?

Politicians know that most people do not support using tax dollars to pay for abortions, especially when a third of them, that’s over 3,000 a year in Alberta, are performed on women who have already had one or more abortions. But they also think abortion funding is a low priority for voters – they are not afraid of losing votes if they don’t de-insure abortion.

That means that we have not done our jobs. Politicians finally understand that we do not want to pay for someone’s personal choice to take an innocent human life, but we have not convinced them that we are serious about it. They understand that they could lose votes over high energy prices or BSE compensation but abortion funding? It is not on the voter radar screen.

Our job in the next year leading up to the provincial election is to convince every MLA in Alberta, that abortion funding matters just as much as energy prices, agriculture policy, privatization, and whatever issue hits the fan over the next few months. We all have a trump card in our hands, the power to vote and we should not be afraid to use it. Tell your MLA that your support depends on a commitment to de-insure abortions. And tell everyone you know to make the same demand. Let’s make 2005 a double celebration – a great 100th birthday bash for the province and the year that we de-insure abortion.

Joanne Byfield is Alberta’s rep on LifeCanada’s board of directors and president of Alberta Pro-Life.