In May 2017, LEAF Halifax submitted a letter to Nova Scotia’s Minister of Health. The letter urged the Minister to make mifepristone-misoprostol (the medications that together may be referred to as “medical abortion”) available to all women in Nova Scotia without personal cost.
Mifepristone-misoprostol gives women a safe and effective alternative to surgery in the termination of early pregnancies. The availability of medical abortion can increase access to abortion for women in rural communities, since it can be prescribed by family physicians.
At the time of the letter, only five of Nova Scotia’s 43 hospitals provided surgical abortions. Provincial funding of medical abortion would save Nova Scotian women the excessive financial and temporal burdens of travelling hundreds of kilometres to access an abortion at a hospital.
The letter also noted that the Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health’s analysis had suggested that provincial funding of medical abortion is the most economical use of public funding in providing health services, since it is significantly less expensive for the province than funding surgical abortions in a hospital.
Read and download the letter below.
LEAF-Provincial-Funding-for-Medical-Abortion
Provincial Funding for Medical Abortion (97 KB) - 