The Canadian Taxpayer’s Federation Comes Out Against EI After an Abortion, Regardless of Cause

I was surfing the web a bit today and came across an article from the “Canadian Taxpayer’s Federation” claiming that women were getting employment insurance (EI) for having abortions and called the assertion that “abortion being a private matter between a woman and her doctor” a “a clever jingle, but not entirely true”.

Interestingly, theirs is also “a clever jingle, but not entirely true”.  Since my wife recently had a miscarriage, I have learned a lot about miscarriage and why women should get EI while they are recovering from it.  After going to group meetings and listening to a lot of people’s stories, all I can say is that what is officially termed an abortion is often not that simple.  Here are a few examples:
– the surgery that my wife had was termed an abortion.  Our son had been dead for weeks and it was definitely not by our choice.  At that point, he had to be removed for my wife’s health, but we would do anything to have him back.  My wife was on EI while she worked through the grief of losing our baby.
– I know of several women who had abortions because the baby could not live.  These were usually missing key organs (i.e. the brain) and not developing in a manor deemed “compatible with life”.  This was definitely not a casual decision for these families and they are left dealing with a lot of pain from the decision even in cases where there was no doubt that the baby would not have lived.

These are not unwanted babies, but rather much loved babies who have either died in the womb or just would not have survived if they were born.

Now, after these women have lost everything (and yes, it really does feel that way when you go through it), the Canadian Taxpayers Federation wants them back at work on Monday so that they can sit on their high horse and save a few dollars.

This rule also allows for cases like a woman who conceives a baby from rape and has to have an abortion to take a few weeks off to recover.

While I totally understand not wasting my taxpayer money, and I am totally against getting EI if you don’t really need it or the rare case where someone just got pregnant causally and casually decided to have an abortion, all I can say to the Canadian Taxpayers Federation is have a heart, and grab a brain!  Of the people that I have met through my ordeal none of them have abused EI and all of them have needed some time to work though the pain of the worst loss of their life.  Yes, I realize that there are opportunities for abuse but since you still need to get a doctor to sign off on the time off, I would say that the risk of abuse is worth it when you consider the very real problems that this rule is trying to address.

An interesting note:  In the interest of fairness, I tried to find a way to send the Canadian Taxpayers Federation a comment on their article, but they do not allow comments on their posts.  I did email them, but I never got any response.  Apparently they feel that taxpayers are not worth dealing with…