Doctors Calls for Informed Consent Before Abortion

Women must be adequately informed about the complications that may follow abortion before they undergo the procedure, said Dr. Deborah Zeni, a senior researcher for the deVeber Institute for Bioethics and Social Research, speaking on the health effects of abortion at a public information meeting hosted by Action Life in Ottawa on November 1. Dr. Zeni criticized political correctness that ignores the physical and psychological fallout from abortion.

“It’s the law in Ontario that physicians can’t do a procedure without informed consent, but the material risks of abortion are never laid out to women. We need some accountability in the system. We need the doctors to give informed consent. The nurses who run the clinics need to sit down and counsel these girls, as they are supposed to.”

There is currently no law in Canada requiring informed consent before an abortion. One of the most common medical procedures performed in our country, abortion has a significantly higher complication rate compared to other routinely performed surgeries which require consent, yet doctors regularly carry out abortions on women who have not been told about the many physical and emotional health risks that accompany the procedure.

There is one abortion for every three live births in Canada. The total complication rate following abortion is as high as 11 percent, according to a recent study sponsored by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario. With a national abortion rate of more than 100,000 per year, that leaves more than 11,000 women each year who are affected by post-abortion complications. Five percent of those women suffer complications that require hospital intervention for bleeding or infection. An additional six percent suffer psychiatric problems requiring hospitalization in the three months following an abortion.

“It is very difficult to get a bed in a hospitalization ward unless you pose a serious harm to yourself or others,” Dr. Zeni said. “It shows the depth of mental suffering these women experience.”

Thirty percent of all infertility in women is linked to Pelvic Inflammatory Disease (PID), a complication that may follow abortion. Abortion procedures introduce the bacteria Chlamydia trachomatis, a common cause of PID, into the uterus. Even with the routine prescription of antibiotics following abortion, the incidence rate for Chlamydia infection is six percent. If a woman has a second PID infection, she has a 50-percent chance of becoming infertile. In many cases PID goes undetected until women have trouble with infertility years after their abortion.

Women have increased rates of premature births following abortions, and their preterm babies often have a greater difficulty in surviving. Many of those babies also suffer from Chlamydia infection that they picked up from their mother, which hampers their growth and development.

Additional complications that may follow abortion include an increased risk of breast cancer, sexual dysfunction, substance abuse and a host of mental and emotional problems.

“Young women are six times more likely to commit suicide if they have had an abortion,” Dr. Zeni stated, citing findings from a 1997 Finland study. “Viewed in conjunction with the fact that the second leading cause of death for young women in Canada, after motor vehicle accidents, is suicide, this a risk factor for abortion that women should be informed of..”

Dr. Zeni, MD, CCFP, specializes in obstetrics and pediatrics, practicing in Georgetown, Ontario. She received the 2006 Mentorship Award for The Rural Ontario Medicine Program and the 2004 Award of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario for Excellence in Community Medicine. Dr. Zeni is a contributing author to the book Women’s Health After Abortion:The Medical and Psychological Evidence.