?I wanted to have my babies at home.? Brenda Atlookan rubs her nine-months-pregnant belly, soothing a Braxton Hicks contraction. Atlookan is three days away from her due date and 360 kilometres from home, at a hostel in Thunder Bay, Ont. Three weeks ago, she got on a small plane at Eabametoong First Nation, accessible only by plane (or, for a few months of the year, by ice roads), for the four-hour flight south. (The trip takes a while because the route stops at several other small communities on the way.) Her husband, Waylon, and her three kids?two sons ages 4 and 19, and her two-year-old daughter?are all back at home. In the meantime, she?s posting brief ?Still waiting?? updates on Facebook, and trying to keep in touch with phone calls. Her chats with her four-year-old, while amusing, leave her feeling wistful: ?Mom, did the baby come out yet" No" OK, bye!? She?s one of at least 40,000 Canadian women each year who have to travel from rural and remote areas, mostly in the North, to have a hospital birth. And if you?re an Indigenous Canadian woman who lives on a remote or rural reserve, federal regulations require you to leave your home at 36 to 38 weeks?or earlier, if you have a high-risk pregnancy?to await the birth of your baby in an unfamiliar city. This means that across northern Canada, hundreds of heavily pregnant women board buses, planes, boats or snowmobiles to travel hundreds of kilometres from home.
Instead of provincial health care, Atlookan, like al...