Abortion Horror Stories Spur Inquiry : Canada: Questions raised after women allege hospital denied them anesthesia as punishment.

TORONTO — The government of Canada’s Northwest Territories has ordered an inquiry into abortion procedures at a prominent regional hospital after numerous allegations that women given abortions there were denied anesthesia, seemingly as a sort of punishment.

The Northwest Territories Status of Women Council, an independent group in Yellowknife, said that it had received reports from 85 women claiming they had suffered agonizing pain during abortions performed without anesthetics.

Some of the women said they were refused anesthesia when they asked for it. Others said the doctors carrying out the abortions--all of whom were male--made abusive remarks.

One woman quoted her doctor as winding up her abortion with the words, “This really hurt, didn’t it? But let that be a lesson before you get yourself in this situation again.”

The hospital in question, Stanton Yellowknife Hospital, is by far the largest in Canada’s vast Northwest Territories, and the only hospital in the Canadian Arctic or sub-Arctic equipped to do full-blown surgery.

Northern Canadian women seeking abortions have virtually no choice but to travel to Stanton.

The hospital is disputing the allegations, at least in part, saying in a series of press releases that it did offer abortion patients counseling, with warnings that the procedure would cause “discomfort.”

It also said that it offers analgesics for pain and that its abortion procedures “meet the standards of the Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists of Canada.”

But Lynn Brooks, executive director of the Status of Women Council, said that she had been able to find no other hospital in Canada where abortion recipients were given mere analgesics as pain killers.

Stanton’s abortion procedures became controversial about two weeks ago, when a rape victim, Ellen Hamilton of Iqaluit, went to the hospital for an abortion. After the procedure, she went to the media and made a dramatic statement that the abortion had been far worse than the rape.

She said she suffered excruciating pain, was pinned down during the procedure, and was given no counseling.

Hamilton’s remarks were widely publicized in northern Canada and elicited a flood of alarming me-too stories from abortion patients.

One woman reported that she went to Stanton for an abortion and tubal ligation on the same day.

According to the woman’s description of what happened, things proceeded normally until just before the abortion, when, in the woman’s words, “the doctor said, ‘The anesthesiologist does not believe in abortions; we will administer the anesthetic following the abortion, for the tubal ligation.’ ”

The hospital said that it routinely gives patients questionnaires after their procedures and that a survey of the filled-out forms showed no one complaining about unnecessary pain.

But Brooks noted that most women living in the vast, sparsely populated Northwest Territories are Indian or Inuit (Eskimo) women, living in tiny, remote hamlets. Far from doctors, hospitals, and other manifestations of modern technology, she said, the women had little idea of what an abortion was supposed to feel like.

“They tend to be very stoic and just take what’s dished out to them,” she said.

On Wednesday, the hospital issued a statement saying it had developed a new plan “for providing patients with choices for pain control during abortion procedures.”