Access to abortion in French is difficult, if not impossible, for some women in Ontario. The only French-speaking university health establishment in the province – the Montfort Hospital in Ottawa – that does not perform voluntary surgical abortions, Franco-Ontarians sometimes have to turn to English-speaking clinics or go to Quebec to obtain the service.
University of Ottawa law professor Anne Levesque deplores the situation. The absence of elective abortion care – carried out by personal choice – at the Montfort hospital demonstrates that the health establishment “is not a hospital by and for Franco-Ontarians”, she judges.
Between 2019 and 2020, 74 Ontario women chose to obtain a voluntary termination of pregnancy (abortion) at the Clinique des femmes de l’Outaouais, in Gatineau. The director of the clinic, Patricia LaRue, cites the clinic’s offer of services in French as the main reason that motivates women to go there.
Some gynecologists at Montfort Hospital can offer medical abortion up to the ninth week for women whose fetuses are not viable, but patients who are not eligible are referred to clinics in the community, including that of Patricia LaRue. Others, according to the hospital’s director of communications, are being directed to the Morgentaler clinic in Ottawa. But the clinic’s director of operations, Shayna Hodson, says very few Montfort patients are referred to her, even though she employs French-speaking doctors.
French speaking battle
The Montfort Hospital has been designated under Ontario’s French Language Services Act since 1989, which ensures that patients can receive services in French. It was in fact by invoking the violation of this law by the provincial government that in 2002, lawyers overturned the decision of the Progressive Conservative Party at the time to eliminate the hospital.
But there was no question of protecting the right to abortion in French during the SOS Montfort campaign, a coalition born out of the movement to save the hospital. Me Ronald Caza, a lawyer specializing in language rights and who had pleaded the case for the hospital at the time, admits that he was not aware of this issue until very recently. “When I received your call, it was the first time that I realized that there was a lack in the elective abortion service,” he said.
“The hospital environment is not necessarily the best environment for a voluntary termination of pregnancy,” argues Geneviève Picard, director of communications at Montfort hospital. But other hospitals in the province, including the Ottawa Hospital, which has at least one French-speaking doctor in its clinic, offer the service. “It’s a simple procedure to offer and which should be offered in all hospitals”, thinks for her part Frédérique Chabot, director of health promotion at Action Canada for sexual health and rights.
When we look at the language rights activists of francophones outside Quebec, they are mostly white men, so there may be blind spots.
By not offering elective surgery, the Montfort hospital breaks the continuity of services in French for women with pregnancy problems, criticizes law professor Anne Levesque.
Desert of services
But access issues are not limited to Ottawa. According to Emilie Crakondji, director of the Carrefour des femmes du sud-ouest de l’Ontario, there is no French-speaking doctor who performs abortions in the region served by her organization.
“We are unable to provide information on French language service providers in our region,” says Janice Schooler, director of the Umbrella Medical Clinic in Thunder Bay, in the northwest of the province. The Options clinic at Horizon Health North Hospital, located in Sudbury, performs surgical abortions. But a spokesperson for the hospital did not want to confirm whether a French-speaking doctor was working there.
In Toronto, the Bay Center clinic at Women’s College Hospital employs a French-speaking doctor. This is not the case, however, at the Morgentaler clinic in Toronto, according to Dr. Henry Morgentaler, who has offered end-of-pregnancy care in French in Toronto for nearly 20 years.
Little studied
According to a report published in 2001 by the Federation of Francophone and Acadian Communities (FCFA), only 9% of Francophone and Acadian communities have partial or total access to abortion services in French. The health issue in French in minority settings is no longer in the hands of the FCFA, however, and the body responsible for the issue today, Société Santé en français, has not studied the issue since.
“One problem is that when we look at the activists in the language rights of francophones outside Quebec, they are mostly white men, so there may be blind spots,” observes Anne Levesque.
In the course of her research alongside her students at the University of Ottawa, the professor found that terms such as “gender” and “sexual identity” were practically absent from all the reports of the French Language Services Commissioner. Ontario or the Commissioner of Official Languages for the past ten years.
In the spring of 2022, Anne Levesque will publish an article in which she will detail the final results of her work. The lawyer by training is currently analyzing, as part of a research project, the attention paid to marginalized communities by the various French language services and official languages commissioners of Ontario and Canada, during the last decade. In an excerpt shared with The duty, the professor writes that “the mere existence of women or members of other groups seeking equality in linguistic minority situations is rarely recognized in reports or recommendations”.
This story is supported by the Local Journalism Initiative, funded by the Government of Canada.