Informed Consent
Women have a right to know the risks and consequences of abortion, and Isabelle Bégin of Respect de la Vie Outaouais is doing something about it.

In February of this year, a women's clinic in Hull, Quebec, la Clinique des femmes de l'Outaouais, filed a lawsuit against Respect de la Vie Outaouais (RVO). The Clinic accused RVO of "irreparable damages" caused to its abortion business because of a pamphlet produced by RVO entitled "One out of twenty-five women hospitalised up to seven days after legally induced abortion in Canada." The Clinic said the pamphlet was "fallacious, morbid and alarmist," and supported its claim by referring to a Statistics Canada table which indicated the complication rate was only 1.1%.

Then in July, the Clinic withdrew its legal action against RVO.

LifeCanada: Why did the Clinic drop the suit?

Isabelle B é gin: They realized they could not refute our research and feared that the judge would grant our request that the Clinic be closed until they could prove they observed all the requirements of informed consent.

LC: The Clinic claimed that, according to Statistics Canada, the complication rate is 1.1%. Is this statistic incorrect?

IB: The Clinic chose not to inform the population of the endnotes of the table in question which specify that the 1.1% statistic represents only hospital cases. A third of all abortions are practiced in clinics, and only 75% of hospitals report abortions to the Statistics Canada Therapeutic Abortions database. Only a limited number of these cases have their medical complications declared, and only immediate complications are taken into account. Delayed complications-for example, sterility, ectopic pregnancy, premature delivery, spontaneous abortion (before 20 weeks), miscarriage (20 weeks and beyond), breast cancer, and suicide- are not taken into account.

LC: What will you do with your research findings?

IB: For one thing, we have created a website called "Right-To-Know: Abortion and Contraception Canada" (See sidebar.) The site is designed to inform women and medical and social work personnel about the process of informed consent to abortion and/or contraception.

We are also going to promote the "Informed Consent" package of the "Right-To-Know" website (pregnancy, family, chastity, and adoption support resources) with the Health Canada Sexual Health Education programs. The national

guidelines for Sexual Health Education were developed in 1994. They incorporate the general principles that provincial sexual education programs should observe. I will need to get in touch with all provincial managers of sex ed programs, as they are responsible for the specifics. We will also try to have our resources included on the Health Canada Network Website.

Then there's the Induced Abortion Committee of the Bureau of Reproductive and Child Health. They look at the epidemiology of abortion (morbidity and mortality) which is right up my alley. I will submit a paper to them based on the website and ask to present my findings. We'll see where that leads.

LC: You seem to have quite a passion for researching abortion facts, exposing flawed data, and informing women about their rights. Where does this passion come from?

IB: In 1998, I started doing research on abortion complications and mortality after reading Henry Morgentaler's book of 1982, Abortion and Contraception , in which he describes in full horrid detail the risks of complications, mortality, and long term consequences of abortion for women, as if they were insignificant, secondary details. I was sickened by the deceit with which he has convinced our leaders that legally induced abortion would somehow erase all the inherent problems of induced abortion.

Then I read two books by U.S. researcher Kevin Sherlock and another by U.S. researcher Mark Crutcher in which the stories of hundreds of women killed by legally induced abortion in the 1980's are described in full detail. I set out to find out how these deaths never made it to national mortality statistics and found nothing but systematically structured deceit.

I came to the realization that "safe, legal abortion," apart from representing a horrific massacre of children in the womb, is a tragic and horrific lie that must be shattered to save women's lives.

Once leaders and the public are cognisant of the tremendous hoax that is being spun, it is my hope that measures will be taken to put an end to this exploitation of women's health and lives and to preserve the life of her child, and other measures put in place to promote adoption and pregnancy, family and chastity support resources.

Ms. B é gin will be giving a conference entitled "La grandeur de la vie humaine" in Gatineau, Quebec on January 20, 2002. She will be speaking at the Manitoba League For Life Annual Brunch on February 4, 2002. The title will be "Abortion Right-to-Know: Removing Obstacles to Life."

For more information, contact:

Respect de la Vie Outaouais
Box 2204, Station B,
Hull, Quebec J8X 3Z4
tel: (819) 246-8284
FAX: (819) 246-0071
email: ibegin@magma.ca