News

By Hilary White

  OTTAWA, April 3, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Two MP’s with Canada’s socialist New Democrat Party have issued a press release concurring with the country’s abortionists that not enough children are being killed by abortion under the current laws.

  Statistics Canada shows that Canada’s abortion rate apparently remains generally steady at approximately 110,000 children killed each year, equaling about 1/3 of Canadian pregnancies ending in abortion. That is only according to official statistics. Abortion reporting requirements are uneven across the nation. Pro-life leaders note that, accurate statistics are now hard to come by, many surgical abortions are likely not recorded as such and chemical abortions are not tallied in the statistics.

  Canada is unique in the western world in having no legal restrictions on abortion, despite consistent polling evidence showing that the majority of Canadians want abortion restrictions.

  Nonetheless, NDP Health Critic Penny Priddy and NDP Women’s Critic Irene Mathyssen, citing “women’s rights,” complain that many Canadian mothers do not have easy enough access to doctors willing to abort their babies.

  The two quote statistics from an abortion lobby group, Canadians For Choice, that has pointed to a drop in the percentage of Canadian hospitals willing to kill children for a fee, from 17.8% to 15.9%.

  NDP Health Critic Penny Priddy said, “Women’s access to abortion now depends on where she lives and how much money she makes – that’s not fair and it’s not providing safe and affordable services to all Canadian women.” Abortion is, in the vast majority of cases, fully government funded in Canada.

  The NDP complains, “In some provinces the access to doctors offering services is minimal. For example, there is no access to abortion services at all in Prince Edward Island. New Brunswick and Manitoba also have very few accessible abortion services available.”

  The provinces mentioned, however, are the three that have presented a perennial thorn in the abortion industry’s side for years. Tiny Prince Edward Island, while it does not list abortion among those procedures paid for at public expense, exports its abortion business to neighbouring Nova Scotia.

  New Brunswick, a maritime province with a shrinking and aging population, has been locked in a battle with abortion extremists who insist that, while abortion is always a “woman’s choice”, it is at the same time always a “medically necessary procedure” to be undertaken at public expense. Currently, in New Brunswick, women may have their children aborted at public expense after the abortion is certified as “medically necessary” by two doctors as long as it is committed in a hospital by a gynaecologist obstetrician.

  Manitoba has come under fire by abortionists because it continues to resist their demands that the province fund abortions at private facilities. Many abortions are done in Manitoba’s public hospitals.

  The NDP says, “All women in Canada have a right to abortion services under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and within the framework of the Canada Health Act.”

  The two MP’s decline to mention, however, that the Canada Health Act does not mention abortion or any particular medical procedure and the law leaves it to the provinces to decide which “medically necessary” procedures to fund.

  In 2002, Garry Breitkreuz, MP for Yorkton-Melville, revealed correspondence from the federal Health ministry showing that Health Canada had no evidence that abortion was medically necessary.

  To Contact Penny Priddy:
  (613) 992-2922
  Fax: (613) 992-0252
  EMail: [email protected]

  To Contact Irene Mathyssen 
  (613) 995-2901
  Fax: (613) 943-8717
  EMail: [email protected] 

  Abortion Funding for Privately Run Clinics? New Brunswick Says No Way
  https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/jan/05012702.html

  Canada’s Supreme Court Declines Manitoba Private Abortion Funding Case
  https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/feb/06022407.html