The author of a new report says people in Ontario with disabilities have often been overlooked in reproductive health care partly because of false assumptions they won’t have children.
Hilary Brown, an adjunct scientist with the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences, says 10 years of data shows women with disabilities were more likely to visit the emergency department than women who didn’t have a disability.
Brown says that tells researchers there’s some gap that could have been addressed by a primary-care provider or obstetrician.
The researchers also interviewed more than 60 people with disabilities, health-care and service providers.
That same report found that many of those people face disrespectful attitudes from doctors and other health-care providers.
Some disabled participants in the study told researchers that nurses and doctors assumed they wanted to get abortions when they were actually seeking pregnancy care