![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Rose-Gervais-pregnant.jpg\")
A pregnant Rose Gervais, smiles as she holds her child. (Credit: Rose Gervais)<\/p>\nThree years ago, in the 13th week of her third pregnancy, Gasp\u00e9 resident Rose Gervais was given heartbreaking news: her baby was growing without a brain.<\/p>\n
As much as she wanted to bring her child into this world, the pregnancy simply wasn\u2019t viable, and Gervais was forced to make the difficult decision to have an abortion, which she says was only the beginning of the nightmare.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s such a profound loss. We don\u2019t talk enough about perinatal bereavement,\u201d says Gervais, who is currently a mother of three, after giving birth to her third child just a few months ago.<\/p>\n
Back in 2023, Gervais says she was already past 12 weeks and six days in her pregnancy, so the local hospital didn\u2019t take her case.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u201cI left the obstetrics department, knowing full well that I\u2019ll have to abort this baby somewhere other than Gasp\u00e9,\u201d Gervais says.<\/p>\n
A pregnant Rose Gervais, smiles as she holds her child. (Credit: Rose Gervais)<\/p>\n
While there\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen 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,\u201d says L\u00e9a Blouin-Rodrigue, project manager at Table de concertation f\u00e9ministe.<\/p>\n
Since Gervais\u2019 clinic in Gasp\u00e9 didn\u2019t offer the procedure, she says she was forced to travel to Montreal.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe choose to live in a remote area, we choose the Gasp\u00e9sie peninsula, but we don\u2019t choose to have a medical termination of pregnancy 900 kilometres away from home,\u201d Gervais says. \u201cIt\u2019s not part of our choice to move away from our family just to go through that ordeal.\u201d<\/p>\n
Blouin-Rodrigue says the travelling long distances for abortion could pose other challenges.<\/p>\n
\u201c(Travelling for abortion) means that it\u2019s 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,\u201d Blouin-Rodrigue says.<\/p>\n
That was Gervais\u2019 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\u2019s.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey made the appointment for me at the abortion clinic. After that, everything else was up to me\u2014taking 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?\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Rose-Gervais-and-partner-2.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Rose Gervais with her longtime partner, posing for a picture together. (Credit: Rose Gervais)<\/p>\n
While Gervais says she\u2019s thankful to all the medical professionals who helped, her experience leaves her and many others wanting action from the provincial government.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a vulnerable situation. Women are vulnerable. Families are vulnerable. We need to feel supported. We don\u2019t 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,\u201d Gervais says.<\/p>\n
Blouin-Rodrigue says the government hasn\u2019t acted to improve access to abortion the last few years.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve been talking about abortion access in the region since 2022 and we\u2019ve been saying the same things that we need to work on, the physical access to surgical abortion,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe 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\u2019t been hearing of it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Three years ago, in the 13th week of her third pregnancy, Gasp\u00e9 resident Rose Gervais was given heartbreaking…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":567789,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194292],"tags":[49,48,2338],"class_list":["post-567788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-montreal","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-montreal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=567788"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567788\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/567789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=567788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=567788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=567788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}