u/Neowza

Title: AMA about *Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada: Joyce Arthur (Executive Director) on July 8th

Hi AuntieNetworkCanada,

I’ve been an abortion rights activist for 38 years and a feminist for 60 years. This is my life’s work. I’m convinced that the right to abortion is foundational – it’s impossible to achieve gender equality without it.

In 2005, I founded the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada (www.arcc-cdac.ca), a national advocacy group that defends your legal right to abortion, works to improve access, and counters anti-choice initiatives.

AMA about myself or ARCC! July 8.

/u/ARCC-CDAC

.- Joyce

Message from the Mod: We are delighted and humbled to have an OG Canadian abortion rights advocate here at ANC to answer your questions! Feel free to post your questions in the thread between now and July 8th, and Joyce will answer as many as she can.

Happy Canada Day!

Below you'll find information and links to help advocate for Reproductive Freedoms and Abortion care in Canada and emerging policy issues with the Reddit platform. This is a recurring post and will be periodically updated as needed. Feel free to post additional information and discussions in the comments.

Advocating for Abortion Care in Canada:

• There is a serious lack of Abortion Care options in parts of Canada, particularly in the rural areas, and for those living on reserves, they have almost no access to Abortion care. People may have to travel more than 100km and across provincial lines to access abortion. Some have to travel by plane from their rural community to one with an abortion clinic or hospital. This puts an unfair financial and logistical burden on those that need to access abortion care. Provincial Health Insurance Plans do not cover travel costs related to receiving medical care.
• Because many provinces have few facilities that provide Abortion care, this places an unreasonable load on the clinics that do exist, forcing clients to look elsewhere for facilities with capacity to help them. In Alberta, there is one clinic for every 209,077 people who can become pregnant (number of assigned-at-birth females between the ages of 15-29). PEI, the Northwest Territories and the Yukon Territory each only have 1 Abortion care provider. Nunavut only has 2 abortion providers, and of those, only one offers medical abortion covered by the provincial health insurance plan. In fact, 9 (out of a total of 13) Canadian provinces and territories have five or fewer facililities offering abortion care in their entire province. And 10 Canadian provinces and territories have one or fewer (0) rural facilities offering abortion care.
• Some provinces, have more restrictive guidelines regarding abortion, limiting access to abortion care to those with a gestational period of less than 12 weeks (meaning, 12 weeks since the first day of your last period, not 12 weeks since you discovered you were pregnant or when you had sex). Many people who menstruate have irregular periods. Some people might only menstruate every 2 or 3 months, and might only discover that they are pregnant near the gestation limit of 12 weeks.
• Insurance coverage also limits access to abortions. Some provinces, like Nunavut, do not offer coverage for medical abortions unless they are prescribed and performed in a hospital. And being a rural province, there also happens to be only 1 hospital in Nunavut - Qikiqtani General Hospital in Iqualuit that can perform medical abortions. New Brunswick will only cover abortion services in a hospital setting, which means that abortion medical care provided in clinics are not covered by their Provincial Health Insurance Plan.
• Sexual and reproductive health services are among the services that physicians, pharmacists and nurse practitioners are most frequently unwilling to provide on moral or religious grounds. People who have been harassed and/or attacked while visiting an Abortion clinic may experience stigma and/or discrimination from their peers, especially in smaller, rural communities where everyone knows one another. People refused care by health care professionals because of personal beliefs may experience stigma and/or discrimination, forcing them to travel outside of their community to receive the care they need. This can all be particularly daunting for young people or those with limited resources.
• Everyone in Canada is supposed to have equal rights to access health care, regardless of race, age, class, immigration status, gender expression, sexuality or ability. Nevertheless, everyone's right to seek abortion care can be be impacted by discrimination and bigotry, both systemic and as a result of individual prejudice on the part of service providers. Racism, xenophobia, classism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, and ageism in Canada are all direct and intersecting barriers to accessing abortion. It is much more difficult for a person who doesn't speak English to access abortion services, despite the presence of a translator. Transpeople also experience discrimination at higher rates in reproductive health care settings. Providers may also lack the knowledge or training to provide trans-affirming abortion care and abortion services are typically housed within *women's* health care departments.
• Further compounding the issue of inequitable abortion access are unregulated crisis pregnancy centres (CPCs), which are anti-choice pregnancy centres that advertise in hospitals, doctor's offices, churches, schools and community centre. They deceive people coming to them for options and advice by giving misinformation about abortion or by insisting on options that may delay or interfere with the clients ability to access the care they need. CPCs far outnumber abortion care providers in Canada. In Ontario alone, there are 77 active CPCs but only 38 abortion care providers. Overall, in Canada, there are 165 known CPCs compared to 147 abortion care providers (as of August 2022).

Reference: Policy Options, via the Institute for Research on Public Policy and Action Canada for Sexual Health & Rights

What can you do to improve access to abortion care in Canada?

1. Listen, research and learn. This is always the first step to understand any problem.
2. Send a letter to your MP and MPP. Tell them that access to abortion care is important and how difficult it can be to access it in your province. Urge them to prevent anti-choice groups and CPCs from receiving charitable status, and to revoke the charitable status from CPCs that already have it. Encourage them to include reasonable reimbursement for travel costs related to receiving medical care when it is not available in your community. And push them to pass Safe Access Zone Legislation to protect patients, practitioners and their staff from anti-choice harassment and intimidation.
3. Give a donation to a pro-choice charitable organization of your choice. Remember, if you give a total of $201 CDN or more to Canadian charitable organizations, you'll get a credit of 29% of your total annual donations on your income taxes (for those that file Canadian Income Taxes, only).
4. Sign up for the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada Newsletter. https://www.arcc-cdac.ca/
5. Participate in local marches and rallys in support of access to abortion care.
6. Spread the Word. Tell your friends and family. Encourage them to research, listen and learn. Encourage them to contact their MPP and MPs.
7. If you work in a Doctor's office or as a family physician, consider incorporating Mifegymiso into your practice to ensure patients have timely access to this essential service. If you are a Doctor, Nurse Practitioner or studying to be one, consider opening an Abortion Care practice when you are licensed and qualified to do so, especially in rural areas where there are a lack of options.
8. If you work in politics, consider proposing legislation that will ensure safe access zones for abortion care providers and their clients and covering reasonable travel costs for constituents when medical care is not available in their community.
9. If you are a journalist or work in media, consider preparing pieces sharing the difficulty Canadians can have accessing medical care such as abortions.
10. If you work in the area of Not For Profit/Advocacy, consider partnering with a Pro-choice organization and help them spread information and lobby for improving access to abortion care for Canadians.
11. If you know someone who needs abortion care, consider giving them a ride to a clinic, helping them access the advice and care they need, and provide non-judgemental support.
12. Ensure persons of First Nations, Metis and Inuit heritage know about Jordan's Principle, which ensures that First Nations children (which includes people who can become pregnant under the age of 18) can access the products, services and supports they need, when they need them. https://www.sac-isc.gc.ca/eng/1568396042341/1568396159824
13. Advocate for midwives to have abortion care added to their scope of practice. Currently, midwives are only allowed to provide this care under a medical directive from a doctor, but that directive should not be needed. Midwives have the skills to perform medical abortions in the 1st trimester. Midwives are more likely to be practicing in rural and remote locations. If you see campaigns promoting this option, please consider adding your voice.

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Emerging Policy Issues with Reddit

On August 9, 2024, the reddit CEO confirmed that they would be enabling paywall options for some subreddits. ANC will always strive to be free. If the paywalls are optional, we will not be enabling them. If they are not optional, we will shutdown the reddit site and move to our second home on discord. Let me take this opportunity to share our permanent discord link: https://discord.com/invite/ZmSS8wS2Xf

In March 2024, Reddit had an IPO (Initial Public Offering), and the founder and current CEO, as well as the COO have sold $500,000 of their shares. How does this effect you? Reddit may face pressure to increase revenues to attract investors. This could lead to more ads or new monetization features. There could also be changes to the platform to attract a wider user base, such as bans and censorship on certain topics or words and control over content to appease more conservative shareholders or users.

On September 12, 2023, Reddit will eliminate reddit coins, including removing all accumulated coins, a perk that Reddit Premium users pay for every month. Coins are used to reward comments and posts by showing your appreciation for the effort. Some reddit coins offer the ability to use reddit without ads.

On July 1, 2023, Reddit raised the price to make calls to their API from being free to a level that killed every third party app on Reddit, from Apollo to Reddit is Fun to Narwhal to BaconReader. This policy change meant that mobile users would have a lesser experience browsing Reddit, users with visual difficulties could not browse reddit as screenreaders are not compatible with the official Reddit app, and mods lost tools that they depend on to keep communities on-topic and spam-free. Many subreddits protested this change in June 2023, and the Reddit admins enforced draconian measures such as removing and replacing mods who privatized their subreddits in protest of this policy change.

What can you do to protest policy changes at Reddit?

1. Listen, research and learn. Check r/modcoord for updates
2. Cancel your Reddit Premium membership
3. Participate in subreddit led protests
4. Look for other forums to patronize. We have a forum on Discord called Auntie Network Canada. Permanent invite link to the Discord group: https://discord.com/invite/ZmSS8wS2Xf .
5. Complain. Message the mods of r/reddit.com, who are the admins of the site: message u/reddit: submit a support request: comment in relevant threads on r/reddit. Leave a negative review on their official iOS or Android app.

Old Town Toronto commissioned a number of artists to decorate beavers representing all of the countries participating in the World Cup. These are the beavers.

We adopted him 10 years ago today, and this birthday pup celebrated with homemade pumpkin and blueberry cookies!

Reposted without identifying information.

If found, or if you have information on the whereabouts of the guitar, contact the owner at georgechrist_99@gmail.com or via insta at https://www.instagram.com/georgechrist\_99

Last night at the big fam jam at Drom Taberna, one of the musicians, George, had his guitar stolen

The serial number on the instrument and the description are in the attached photos.