Sept 13, 2012
Each day we all make choices. What to have for breakfast, what clothes to wear.
For some at our clinic, the choices have recently become a little more serious, a little more devastating. For some, their choice comes down to the future of their unborn child. It comes down to the destruction of their family, their dreams, their souls.
It is not something she wants to face. There are complications that would require more in depth assessment and care. But, the withdrawal of IFH coverage from this pregnant mother ( she is not our only example), means carrying her unborn of 9 weeks to term and a safe delivery will cost money she does not have. This has her contemplating the termination of her pregnancy. She told us that the uncertainty of her refugee hearing outcome is too big a risk to take. How would she feed her children, if she is denied?
She has but a few weeks to decide. Her tears, her look away, tell us she has reluctantly made her decision.
New to Canada, from a country far across the ocean, our patient gathered her children and fled for their safety. She fled from a place where a brutal and crushing regime of political thugs disemboweled her friend, in the street, in a political protest, and left her to die. She fled to Canada because she “knew” ours was a better place, a place where her children would be safe.
What would you do? If you were this mother, just what exactly would you do to protect your children, your family? There was no time to wait the years necessary for a UN sanction as a convention refugee.
In Canada, she applied for refugee status. She received IFH back then, IFH that offered pregnancy care until her claim was heard. Her claim, now 18 months later, still awaits, still unheard. So, caught in Government delays and the confusing web of their new IFH rules, she has been “reclassified”. Her IFH no longer covers pregnancy care. It will again if her refugee claim is successful. Every cent her husband now earns goes to their rent, and food for their 2 children. She can’t take that chance, she can’t make that choice.
When you leave a brutal country laden with political thugs, with 2 children, and just the shirts on your backs, then take low paying work in Canada – there’s nothing left for “discretionary” spending, or for those “luxury” items.
Something had to go. Damn those political thugs.