OTTAWA, September 26, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) — Abortion activists are pushing all provinces to offer free “universal access” to the abortion pill.
Action Canada for Sexual Health and Rights has set the premiers’ conference in November as the deadline, CTV reported.
Mifegymiso, or RU-486, has been available in Canada since January 2017 and retails from $350 to $450, according to media reports.
The two-drug combination includes Mifepristone, which blocks progesterone and essentially starves the baby to death in utero, and Misoprostol, which is taken 24 to 48 hours later and induces labor to expel the dead baby.
New Brunswick, Ontario, and Alberta offer the abortion drug for free.
Quebec will do so this fall, and Nova Scotia in November.
Nova Scotia also announced Friday that it dropped its requirement for a doctor’s referral for surgical abortion at the Queen Elizabeth II Hospital in Halifax, and is setting up a provincial hotline where women can book abortion appointments.
This is the Liberal government’s response after it was hammered in August by the abortion lobby and media for allegedly having the worst abortion access in Canada.
Abortion activists are now targeting provinces that don’t provide “universal access” to the abortion pill, claiming it’s particularly needed for women in rural areas.
While British Columbia pays for the abortion pill under its Pharmacare program, the cost may vary, and that’s not good enough, Action Canada and three B.C. pro-abortion groups told B.C.’s NDP Premier John Horgan in a September 6 letter.
Manitoba’s Conservative government announced in July that it was adding the abortion pill to its drug plan, and will provide it for free at two Winnipeg and one Brandon abortion centers, reported the Winnipeg Free Press.
Doctors who take a six-hour training can also prescribe the abortion pill to women, who “may have to pay some or all of the cost, unless they are on social assistance,” it reported.
For this, Action Canada rated Manitoba as “one of the most difficult [provinces] in which to access abortion” in an August report.
Meanwhile, the Saskatchewan Party added the abortion pill to its drug plan on September 5.
Assistant deputy minister of health Mark Wyatt told the Regina Leader Post the abortion pill will be available to Saskatchewan women on social assistance at “virtually no cost.”
But Action Canada’s Frederique Chabot told CBC this won’t do, because women without private insurance or not on welfare may have to pay.
Saskatchewan also requires doctors, not pharmacists, to administer the abortion pill. Doctors can do so after they take a one-hour online training session with the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada, reported the Leader-Post.
“It’s appalling that rather than push back, each province has acquiesced, unquestioningly” to the demand to offer the abortion pill, says Johanne Brownrigg, Ottawa lobbyist for Campaign Life Coalition.
“It is an abdication of their duty to the women of their provinces, as well as to the unborn.”
Pro-life groups have long warned the abortion pill is not only deadly for the child in utero, but dangerous for the woman.
Indeed, when Health Canada approved RU-486 in August 2015 for abortions up to seven weeks, it stated the two-drug combination was a risk to women, noting: “Rare cases of fatalities were reported.”
Under lobbying from pharmacy groups, pro-abortion groups and doctors, Health Canada dropped its requirement a doctor supervise women who take the abortion pill because of the risk of internal bleeding, LifeSiteNews reported in March 2017.
Campaign Life “has been at the forefront of the battle to keep Mifegymiso out of Canada,” Brownrigg told LifeSiteNews in an email.
That includes the educational campaign #RU486RUCrazy documenting the dangers of the drug it launched in April 2017.
“Ordinary Canadian women are mostly unaware” of the lobby for the abortion pill, and “would probably prefer that their provincial health ministers spend tax dollars providing relief to sick children, or wounded veterans, or seniors, or the chronically ill,” Brownrigg observed.
“But no, in their name, lobbyists have staked out the brave new battleground, which is exactly like the same old battleground: abortion, that pillar of feminist dogma.”