On Friday, January 15, French Health Minister, Marisol Touraine, revealed her national action plan for access to abortion, which was launched one year ago.
She made a flagship announcement, which is part of the January 2015 plan “All medical acts concerning abortion (consultations, analyses, ultrasound exams…) will be 100% reimbursed starting on April 1st”. This measure will lead to a troubling discrimination between abortion vs. pursuing pregnancy, since for example the first 2 ultrasound exams before the 5th month of pregnancy are only 70% reimbursed.
She recalled that several measures have been addressed within the framework of the Health law, currently being verified by the constitutional Council. The majority of these had been introduced “by amendment” and without any real debate, especially the elimination of the one-week period of reflection. This decision is particularly worrisome, as Alliance VITA has emphasized several times: it is disrespectful of women, and doctors, since we are dealing there with final solutions, where human lives are at stake.
On the contrary, there is no genuine preventive abortion measure being planned. Instead, the Regional Health Agencies must now provide action plans for abortion access, on the basis of the standard plan elaborated on the national level. This standard regional plan should provide for including abortion activity in the objectives and means agreements which bind the Regional Agencies to health establishments. In other words, they could fix quotas for the number of abortions to be performed per hospital or clinic. This approach appears to be clearly contradictory with the objectives of abortion surveillance, which by nature aim to decrease the number of abortions performed every year.
Alliance VITA again emphasizes the urgency of a genuine political prevention policy for abortion. Yet we observe a loss of responsibility from public authorities and from society. Informing women whose pregnancy is unplanned or difficult, about the benefits and support to which they are entitled, is nevertheless essential if abortion is not to be a fatality.
