N.E. hospital getting women’s health overhaul

The provincial government is spending almost $12 million to improve the women’s health program at the Peter Lougheed Centre in Calgary, officials announced on Thursday.

The money is going to be used for obstetrical services, redeveloping the neonatal unit, the labour facilities and a dedicated operating room at the northeast hospital, Alberta Health Services (AHS) officials said.

“This expansion and redevelopment will help us better serve our growing population,” said Dr. Doug Wilson, who is in charge of obstetrics and gynecology for AHS.

The 32,000-square foot project, which is still in the design phase, will see most of the third floor at the Peter Lougheed Centre (PLC) renovated, officials said.

Construction is slated to begin by the end of the year.

The PLC now delivers 5,835 babies annually. The expansion will provide capacity for 7,000 births per year, officials said.

Poor women fall through a crack in the health-care system

CHICAGO — If you aren’t familiar with the Philadelphia doctor recently charged with eight counts of murder performed in a squalid abortion clinic, you’ve been spared the nightmarish details of the horrors the women and babies allegedly suffered at Kermit Gosnell’s hands.

The 69-year-old general practitioner, who was not certified to perform abortions, ran what prosecutors described in a 281-page grand jury document as “a baby charnel house” littered with fetal remains along with cat urine and excrement. The document detailed an outfit ironically named the Women’s Medical Society bearing little resemblance to any health facility, executing medical procedures with broken medical equipment and used supplies on bloodstained furniture and blankets.

The case has set off alarm bells about government oversight of such clinics. The grand jury said it believed the clinic fell through the cracks because “the women in question were poor and of color, and because the victims were infants without identities, and because the subject was the political football of abortion.”

The reality is that situations like this occur all over the country. Strip away the politics of women’s reproductive choice and the moral debates about a baby’s right to life and what you have left is a case study on the shameful lack of access to health care that poor women have. Though it’s difficult to not view such a tragedy through the lenses of emotion or ethics, we must.

“This is a much bigger issue than the complications of abortion politics,” said Alina Salganicoff, director of women’s health policy for the Kaiser Family Foundation. “There are well-documented disparities in health-care access, so it’s a complicated situation. In many cases, poor women don’t have the money or access to good information about preventative care or quality care.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s “Health Disparities and Inequalities Report — United States, 2011″ found that 17 percent of all women 18-64 had no health insurance. For both men and women, the percentage of the poor without health insurance was 37 percent versus 8.9 percent for the non-poor.

Though it is true that a certain percentage of those living in poverty qualify for Medicaid, preventive screening and care options on reproductive issues are limited even though for women, reproductive health is nearly synonymous with general health.

A 2009 survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation — “Putting women’s health-care disparities on the map: Examining racial and ethnic disparities at the state level” — stated that women of color, like those who sought care in that Philadelphia clinic, fared worse than white women across a broad range of measures.

“All these things are tied together,” said Gaylon Alcaraz, executive director of the Chicago Abortion Fund. “Women who are trying to survive on food stamps and Medicare and go to clinics to access reproductive health care or services generally don’t have a regular doctor. That’s when people take advantage of poor women who have no place left to go — there is always a supply for the demands of women in situations where they can’t access treatment for their health issue.”

The shock of what apparently occurred in one last-resort clinic will eventually fade, but another example of such horror will surely pop up sooner or later.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, the number of women 15-44 covered by private insurance fell from almost 39 million in 2008 to 36.7 million in 2009 as widespread job losses caused many Americans to lose employer-provided insurance.

The institute’s research shows that in 2009 nearly half of all low- and middle-income women wished to delay pregnancy or limit the number of children, but reported skimping on or eliminating their contraceptive use entirely to save money — the forewarning of more tragedies to come.