Three years ago, in the 13th week of her third pregnancy, Gaspé resident Rose Gervais was given heartbreaking news: her baby was growing without a brain.
As much as she wanted to bring her child into this world, the pregnancy simply wasn’t viable, and Gervais was forced to make the difficult decision to have an abortion, which she says was only the beginning of the nightmare.
“It’s such a profound loss. We don’t talk enough about perinatal bereavement,” says Gervais, who is currently a mother of three, after giving birth to her third child just a few months ago.
Back in 2023, Gervais says she was already past 12 weeks and six days in her pregnancy, so the local hospital didn’t take her case.
“I left the obstetrics department, knowing full well that I’ll have to abort this baby somewhere other than Gaspé,” Gervais says.
While there’s no legal limit, according to Quebec law, to receive an abortion, only certain facilities offer the surgical procedure up to 16 weeks, or even 23 weeks during pregnancy.
“When you exceed 12 weeks and six days of pregnancy, you have to travel outside of the region to get the abortion in Quebec City and sometimes in Montreal,” says Léa Blouin-Rodrigue, project manager at Table de concertation féministe.
Since Gervais’ clinic in Gaspé didn’t offer the procedure, she says she was forced to travel to Montreal.
“We choose to live in a remote area, we choose the Gaspésie peninsula, but we don’t choose to have a medical termination of pregnancy 900 kilometres away from home,” Gervais says. “It’s not part of our choice to move away from our family just to go through that ordeal.”
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Blouin-Rodrigue says the travelling long distances for abortion could pose other challenges.
“(Travelling for abortion) means that it’s way more logistics and also leave of absence of work and also stress because you are far away from your loved ones and your support network,” Blouin-Rodrigue says.
That was Gervais’ case. She says she had to deal with the emotional and financial stress of potentially travelling to the city alone, as only her expenses were covered, not her partner’s.
“They made the appointment for me at the abortion clinic. After that, everything else was up to me—taking time off work, finding a babysitter since I already had two kids, and talking it over with my partner. Financially, would we pay for his plane tickets? Would we drive there? Would I go alone?”
While Gervais says she’s thankful to all the medical professionals who helped, her experience leaves her and many others wanting action from the provincial government.
“This is a vulnerable situation. Women are vulnerable. Families are vulnerable. We need to feel supported. We don’t need to be pushed aside and sent away. We need to be with our loved ones. So, the government needs to support women throughout the entire pregnancy process in these situations as well,” Gervais says.
Blouin-Rodrigue says the government hasn’t acted to improve access to abortion the last few years.
“We’ve been talking about abortion access in the region since 2022 and we’ve been saying the same things that we need to work on, the physical access to surgical abortion,” she said.
“The former minister for the Status of Women, Martine Biron, did a consultation on the field with the groups that are working on the matter and she released an action plan on access regarding abortion, surgical abortion, but since then we haven’t been hearing of it.”
