With the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, Susan Brison is reminded of her late sister’s decision to get an abortion in 1967, when the procedure was still illegal in Canada.
Brison’s sister, Kate Daller, had been 19 at the time, she said. It was after Brison’s family moved from northern British Columbia to Toronto that Daller became pregnant. Having only lived in Toronto for two years, Brison’s family wasn’t able to find a doctor willing to perform an abortion in the city, she said.
“My mother contacted our old family doctor, who we knew from Vancouver, and she begged him to help us, and he agreed,” Brison told CTVNews.ca in a telephone interview on Wednesday.
About three months along in her pregnancy, Daller flew to British Columbia for a surgical abortion.
“That poor young woman, terrified, [was] put on a plane for an illegal procedure … with a doctor who was horrified,” Brison said. “While flying home, [she was] hemorrhaging [and] continued to hemorrhage for several days at home before she was finally taken by ambulance to a hospital.”
At that point, Daller remained at the hospital for a few days and was questioned about whether she had an illegal abortion, Brison said. The doctor who performed the procedure also told Brison’s family to never contact him again.
In the late 1970s, when Brison decided to have an abortion herself, her experience was entirely different from that of her sister, who passed away in 2019. Brison was in her early 20s when she became pregnant despite using the Dalkon Shield, an intrauterine contraceptive device.
“We were poor… We had nothing to offer a child at that point,” Brison said.
Soon after realizing she was pregnant, Brison saw her general practitioner, who she said supported her decision to have an abortion. As of 1969, it had been legal to perform abortions in Canada under limited circumstances. In 1988, the procedure became completely decriminalized. Within less than a month, Brison had the procedure done at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto.
“Everything went very smoothly. There was no hassle, nobody was rude to me,” Brison said.
Brison is one of several women who reached out to CTVNews.ca to share their experiences with getting an abortion in Canada. But according to Meghan Doherty, the director of global policy and advocacy for Action Canada for Sexual Health and Rights, access to abortion is not as simple for all Canadians as it was for Brison, even today, despite the procedure being legal.
“I don’t think that’s a uniform experience across Canada,” Doherty told CTVNews.ca on Wednesday in a telephone interview.
GEOGRAPHICAL BARRIERS IN RURAL AREAS
In 2016, a United Nations Human Rights Commissioners report highlighted a concerning lack of access to abortion and related services in Canada. Action Canada for Sexual Health and Rights has a toll-free and confidential phone and text line that receives an average of 250 to 400 calls each month from those looking for information on abortion and other reproductive health services. One of the main concerns among callers is a lack of abortion providers in their community, particularly among those who live in rural areas, Doherty said.
“We see that a lot of smaller hospitals in these areas are having difficulties with staffing and in terms of the kinds of services that they’re able to offer,” said Doherty. “That is also reflected on the availability of abortion care.”
For some people, this means travelling to other parts of the country for an abortion, said Jill Doctoroff, executive director of the National Abortion Federation of Canada. This can lead to complex travel arrangements that might involve securing child care services if the person already has children, or taking time off work, she said.
“In rural parts of the country [with] communities that don’t have bus or train services and your nearest option for abortion care is in the next town over, that might be an hour away,” she said. “For people who have limited resources … figuring out how to pay for that can be really hard.”
Ariane Lachance had an abortion earlier this year. Thankfully, she said, she was able to have the procedure done at a women’s health clinic within walking distance from where she lives in Montreal.
Without the financial means to care for a child or support from a partner, the 24-year-old said she broke down crying when she discovered she was pregnant.
“The only option was to get an abortion,” Lachance told CTVNews.ca in a telephone interview on Wednesday.
After searching for clinics online and speaking to others who previously had an abortion themselves, she scheduled an appointment. Within a week, Lachance had the procedure.
“I can’t even imagine the struggle that these people must go through, either traveling out of state or out of country to get access,” she said.
RACIAL BARRIERS TO ACCESS
Since the introduction of medical abortion in 2017, which involves taking medication to induce an abortion, the procedure has become easier for those in remote communities to access, said Doctoroff. However, medical abortions can only be prescribed to those who have been pregnant for less than 10 weeks.
Beyond those early stages, surgical intervention is required, and the majority of those services are provided in urban centres, Doherty said.
Those who require an abortion later on in their pregnancy term face additional barriers to accessing services, Doctoroff said. In provinces such as Nova Scotia, surgical abortions are not performed after more than 16 weeks of pregnancy, for example. This may require people to travel to other parts of the country for the procedure. According to a study published by Action Canada for Sexual Health and Rights in 2019, no providers offer abortion services to Canadians more than 23 weeks and six days into their pregnancy. Those who are this far into their pregnancy and looking for an abortion often travel to the United States for the procedure instead.
Another group that often struggles to access abortion services is immigrants, said Doherty. Those without proper documentation may find it challenging to get an abortion, as they might not have health insurance to cover related costs.
Much of the systemic racism that exists in Canadian institutions also affects those looking to access abortion services in Canada, she said. This can lead to the discrimination of racialized communities, such as those who are Black, Indigenous or people of colour, in search of abortion services. The forced sterilization of Indigenous women that continues today is an example of the “racist treatment” racialized communities face in hospitals, said Doherty.
“Looking at health disparities across the country, we can see that people who are more likely to be subjected to discrimination on a range of grounds, but including race, are more likely to experience barriers in accessing all kinds of health services, including abortion,” Doherty said.
“We live in a patriarchal society with particular gender norms and anything that is in relation to sexuality and gender that goes beyond that very narrow frame often comes under scrutiny, and with it comes stigma,” she said.
The more people talk about abortion, and work to ensure that it’s available to everyone in Canada, the easier it will be to normalize it as a common procedure and break the stigma, Doherty said.
For Jenn Howson, who lives in Calgary, the process of getting an abortion in 2018 was relatively hassle-free, she said. At 38 years old, Howson became pregnant unexpectedly. She and her husband already had a child together, and were not in the financial position to have another, she said.
“In that case, [abortion] was an option … that was available to me, and I had choices to make,” Howson told CTVNews.ca on Wednesday in a telephone interview. “If we relate it to stuff that’s happening south of the border, they don’t have that choice.”
After calling to book the appointment, Howson said she had a surgical abortion within a couple of weeks during her first trimester at a nearby hospital.
“I did a quick Google search, found the phone number to call [and] called them,” Howson said, describing the process to book an appointment. “It was quick and easy … that’s how it should be when it comes to anything for our health.”
Despite the relatively easy process, Howson said she faced mental barriers related to the stigma around having an abortion, fearing that others might think of her for having the procedure.
In addition to her abortion in 2018, Howson previously underwent a dilation and curettage procedure in 2011. Howson had the procedure, which is considered a method of early abortion, after suffering a miscarriage.
“Abortions are also done because they’re medically necessary,” she said. “We shouldn’t be shamed to have these types of procedures.”
In sharing her story, Howson hopes to contribute to a conversation where people realize it’s OK to talk about openly abortion. Part of the solution also lies in health-care providers being more vocal about the abortion services they provide, said Dr. Sarah Munro, an assistant professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at the University of British Columbia.
While most people may think they need to go to a clinic for an abortion, medical abortions in particular can be accessed through primary health-care providers, she said.
“It can be challenging, because of internalized stigma, for a client to ask their primary care provider about abortion options,” Munro told CTVNews.ca in a telephone interview on Wednesday. “In turn, it can be challenging for primary care providers to advertise to their clients that this is part of [their] practice.
“Stigma goes both ways.”
Along with increased awareness of abortion services, Action Canada for Sexual Health and Rights is also calling on the federal government to grant more funding so that clinics can keep up with demand, a struggle health centres in Ontario and Alberta continue to face, Doherty said.
With files from CTVNews.ca’s Rhythm Sachdeva and The Canadian Press
NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. syphilis epidemic slowed dramatically last year, gonorrhea cases fell and chlamydia cases remained below prepandemic levels, according to federal data released Tuesday.
The numbers represented some good news about sexually transmitted diseases, which experienced some alarming increases in past years due to declining condom use, inadequate sex education, and reduced testing and treatment when the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
Last year, cases of the most infectious stages of syphilis fell 10% from the year before — the first substantial decline in more than two decades. Gonorrhea cases dropped 7%, marking a second straight year of decline and bringing the number below what it was in 2019.
“I’m encouraged, and it’s been a long time since I felt that way” about the nation’s epidemic of sexually transmitted infections, said the CDC’s Dr. Jonathan Mermin. “Something is working.”
More than 2.4 million cases of syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia were diagnosed and reported last year — 1.6 million cases of chlamydia, 600,000 of gonorrhea, and more than 209,000 of syphilis.
Syphilis is a particular concern. For centuries, it was a common but feared infection that could deform the body and end in death. New cases plummeted in the U.S. starting in the 1940s when infection-fighting antibiotics became widely available, and they trended down for a half century after that. By 2002, however, cases began rising again, with men who have sex with other men being disproportionately affected.
The new report found cases of syphilis in their early, most infectious stages dropped 13% among gay and bisexual men. It was the first such drop since the agency began reporting data for that group in the mid-2000s.
However, there was a 12% increase in the rate of cases of unknown- or later-stage syphilis — a reflection of people infected years ago.
Cases of syphilis in newborns, passed on from infected mothers, also rose. There were nearly 4,000 cases, including 279 stillbirths and infant deaths.
“This means pregnant women are not being tested often enough,” said Dr. Jeffrey Klausner, a professor of medicine at the University of Southern California.
What caused some of the STD trends to improve? Several experts say one contributor is the growing use of an antibiotic as a “morning-after pill.” Studies have shown that taking doxycycline within 72 hours of unprotected sex cuts the risk of developing syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia.
In June, the CDC started recommending doxycycline as a morning-after pill, specifically for gay and bisexual men and transgender women who recently had an STD diagnosis. But health departments and organizations in some cities had been giving the pills to people for a couple years.
Some experts believe that the 2022 mpox outbreak — which mainly hit gay and bisexual men — may have had a lingering effect on sexual behavior in 2023, or at least on people’s willingness to get tested when strange sores appeared.
Another factor may have been an increase in the number of health workers testing people for infections, doing contact tracing and connecting people to treatment. Congress gave $1.2 billion to expand the workforce over five years, including $600 million to states, cities and territories that get STD prevention funding from CDC.
Last year had the “most activity with that funding throughout the U.S.,” said David Harvey, executive director of the National Coalition of STD Directors.
However, Congress ended the funds early as a part of last year’s debt ceiling deal, cutting off $400 million. Some people already have lost their jobs, said a spokeswoman for Harvey’s organization.
Still, Harvey said he had reasons for optimism, including the growing use of doxycycline and a push for at-home STD test kits.
Also, there are reasons to think the next presidential administration could get behind STD prevention. In 2019, then-President Donald Trump announced a campaign to “eliminate” the U.S. HIV epidemic by 2030. (Federal health officials later clarified that the actual goal was a huge reduction in new infections — fewer than 3,000 a year.)
There were nearly 32,000 new HIV infections in 2022, the CDC estimates. But a boost in public health funding for HIV could also also help bring down other sexually transmitted infections, experts said.
“When the government puts in resources, puts in money, we see declines in STDs,” Klausner said.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Scientists can’t know precisely when a volcano is about to erupt, but they can sometimes pick up telltale signs.
That happened two years ago with the world’s largest active volcano. About two months before Mauna Loa spewed rivers of glowing orange molten lava, geologists detected small earthquakes nearby and other signs, and they warned residents on Hawaii‘s Big Island.
Now a study of the volcano’s lava confirms their timeline for when the molten rock below was on the move.
“Volcanoes are tricky because we don’t get to watch directly what’s happening inside – we have to look for other signs,” said Erik Klemetti Gonzalez, a volcano expert at Denison University, who was not involved in the study.
Upswelling ground and increased earthquake activity near the volcano resulted from magma rising from lower levels of Earth’s crust to fill chambers beneath the volcano, said Kendra Lynn, a research geologist at the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory and co-author of a new study in Nature Communications.
When pressure was high enough, the magma broke through brittle surface rock and became lava – and the eruption began in late November 2022. Later, researchers collected samples of volcanic rock for analysis.
The chemical makeup of certain crystals within the lava indicated that around 70 days before the eruption, large quantities of molten rock had moved from around 1.9 miles (3 kilometers) to 3 miles (5 kilometers) under the summit to a mile (2 kilometers) or less beneath, the study found. This matched the timeline the geologists had observed with other signs.
The last time Mauna Loa erupted was in 1984. Most of the U.S. volcanoes that scientists consider to be active are found in Hawaii, Alaska and the West Coast.
Worldwide, around 585 volcanoes are considered active.
Scientists can’t predict eruptions, but they can make a “forecast,” said Ben Andrews, who heads the global volcano program at the Smithsonian Institution and who was not involved in the study.
Andrews compared volcano forecasts to weather forecasts – informed “probabilities” that an event will occur. And better data about the past behavior of specific volcanos can help researchers finetune forecasts of future activity, experts say.
(asterisk)We can look for similar patterns in the future and expect that there’s a higher probability of conditions for an eruption happening,” said Klemetti Gonzalez.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Waymo on Tuesday opened its robotaxi service to anyone who wants a ride around Los Angeles, marking another milestone in the evolution of self-driving car technology since the company began as a secret project at Google 15 years ago.
The expansion comes eight months after Waymo began offering rides in Los Angeles to a limited group of passengers chosen from a waiting list that had ballooned to more than 300,000 people. Now, anyone with the Waymo One smartphone app will be able to request a ride around an 80-square-mile (129-square-kilometer) territory spanning the second largest U.S. city.
After Waymo received approval from California regulators to charge for rides 15 months ago, the company initially chose to launch its operations in San Francisco before offering a limited service in Los Angeles.
Before deciding to compete against conventional ride-hailing pioneers Uber and Lyft in California, Waymo unleashed its robotaxis in Phoenix in 2020 and has been steadily extending the reach of its service in that Arizona city ever since.
Driverless rides are proving to be more than just a novelty. Waymo says it now transports more than 50,000 weekly passengers in its robotaxis, a volume of business numbers that helped the company recently raise $5.6 billion from its corporate parent Alphabet and a list of other investors that included venture capital firm Andreesen Horowitz and financial management firm T. Rowe Price.
“Our service has matured quickly and our riders are embracing the many benefits of fully autonomous driving,” Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana said in a blog post.
Despite its inroads, Waymo is still believed to be losing money. Although Alphabet doesn’t disclose Waymo’s financial results, the robotaxi is a major part of an “Other Bets” division that had suffered an operating loss of $3.3 billion through the first nine months of this year, down from a setback of $4.2 billion at the same time last year.
But Waymo has come a long way since Google began working on self-driving cars in 2009 as part of project “Chauffeur.” Since its 2016 spinoff from Google, Waymo has established itself as the clear leader in a robotaxi industry that’s getting more congested.
Electric auto pioneer Tesla is aiming to launch a rival “Cybercab” service by 2026, although its CEO Elon Musk said he hopes the company can get the required regulatory clearances to operate in Texas and California by next year.
Tesla’s projected timeline for competing against Waymo has been met with skepticism because Musk has made unfulfilled promises about the company’s self-driving car technology for nearly a decade.
Meanwhile, Waymo’s robotaxis have driven more than 20 million fully autonomous miles and provided more than 2 million rides to passengers without encountering a serious accident that resulted in its operations being sidelined.
That safety record is a stark contrast to one of its early rivals, Cruise, a robotaxi service owned by General Motors. Cruise’s California license was suspended last year after one of its driverless cars in San Francisco dragged a jaywalking pedestrian who had been struck by a different car driven by a human.
Cruise is now trying to rebound by joining forces with Uber to make some of its services available next year in U.S. cities that still haven’t been announced. But Waymo also has forged a similar alliance with Uber to dispatch its robotaxi in Atlanta and Austin, Texas next year.
Another robotaxi service, Amazon’s Zoox, is hoping to begin offering driverless rides to the general public in Las Vegas at some point next year before also launching in San Francisco.
