By Thaddeus M. Baklinski
FREDERICTON, NB, May 15, 2009 (LifeSIteNews.com) – New Brunswick Right to Life Association says that the province’s abortion laws are being abused at two hospitals where hundreds of abortions are taking place each year at taxpayers’ expense.
NB Right to Life Executive Director Peter Ryan said in a press release that the Chaleur Hospital in Bathurst and the Dr. Georges Dumont Hospital in Moncton “are doing abortion on demand, contrary to provincial law which only allows for ‘medically necessary’ abortions to be covered under Medicare.”
Ryan explained that following the 2006 cessation of abortions at the Dr. Everett Chalmers Hospital in Fredericton, the then Minister of Health, Brad Green, announced he had found doctors at two other provincial hospitals willing to perform abortions. Because the Health Department has never disclosed the location of those two hospitals, the public is generally unaware which hospitals now perform abortions. Prior to 2006-07, the Chaleur and Dumont hospitals did few abortions.
NB Right to Life reports that according to health department statistics, 370 abortions were performed in a one year period (2007-08) at the two hospitals, out of a provincial total of 458 hospital abortions. Additional abortions take place at the Morgentaler Facility in Fredericton, which is not funded by the province. The Association estimates the number of abortions at the facility at about 600 a year.
“It’s one thing for abortions to be done on demand at a private facility. It’s another thing altogether when the lives of in utero babies are ended on demand in our hospitals with our tax dollars. Hospitals are supposed to be about saving lives,” Ryan stated, “not taking them.”
Ryan said what is happening is that unwanted pregnancies are being terminated under the guise of “medical necessity” and “that is dishonest. The physicians involved should be ashamed, and by not intervening the Minister of Health is failing in his duties.”
NB Right to Life has written three times to Health Minister Michael Murphy about the abuse, but so far Murphy has refused to take action. The correspondence with the Minister of Health is available on the Association’s website: www.nbrighttolife.ca
“It seems we have not yet learned the lesson of Baby Taylor’s death in Moncton, that each and every child is precious, even the so-called unwanted,” Ryan concluded. ‘Baby Taylor’ was the name given to an unidentified newborn baby boy found dead in a snowbank along the Taylor Road in April.
“Here we have hundreds of distraught pregnant mothers abandoning their babies each year before birth. The heartrending question is, why is the Province of New Brunswick party to this tragedy, rather than doing something constructive about it?”
See related LSN coverage:
Last Abortion-Performing Hospital in New Brunswick to Quit Abortion At the End of June
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/may/06051706.html
Doctors Volunteer to Keep Abortion “Alive” in New Brunswick
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/may/06052605.html
New Brunswick Hospital About to Take Up Abortion: Once Named “House of God”
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/jun/06062006.html
New Brunswick Hospital Refuses To Confirm Expanded Abortion Services
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/jun/06062310.html