EDMONTON, Alberta, April 24, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) — Alberta’s NDP government will give women the abortion pill for free.
Premier Rachel Notley’s decision follows the recommendation of a federal committee report released Thursday.
The Canadian Drug Expert Committee of the Common Drug Review gave the abortion drug Mifegymiso, previously known as RU-486, a glowing review, according to the Globe and Mail.
With the committee’s “positive listing recommendation, Alberta will be taking steps to make this drug available free of charge to all women in Alberta who may need it,” Tim Kulak, a spokesperson for Alberta Health, told the Globe.
Notley’s NDP government “strongly supports women’s reproductive health options,” he said.
Mifegymiso is a two-drug abortifacient in which one drug effectively starves the baby to death in utero and the second expels the corpse from the womb.
It has been available in Canada since January and costs about $300.
Alberta is the second province after New Brunswick to pay for the abortion drug, according to the Globe.
A number of provinces were waiting for the expert committee’s report before deciding whether or not to provide Mifegymiso for free, it reported.
“I am not surprised that the NDP in Alberta is willing to pay for an abortifacient,”says Johanne Brownrigg, director of federal government relations at Campaign Life’s Ottawa bureau.
“Normalizing Mifegymiso is the next front in the abortion battle,” she told LifeSiteNews. “It saddens me greatly because unsuspecting women will think this drug combo is an easy answer. Abortion is not an easy answer. The pill is not an easy answer.”
The committee endorsed Mifegymiso for “its safe and effective record, and its cost competitiveness with surgical abortions,” noted the Globe.
In its report, the committee “said that five studies of mifepristone and misoprostol – the two drugs that make up Mifegymiso – no patients died or withdrew because of adverse effects. Serious adverse events were reported in only one of the studies.”
But there is abundant evidence to the contrary.
Indeed, when Health Canada approved the abortion pill in August 2015, it acknowledged Mifegymiso presented a risk to women, noting in a regulation: “Rare cases of fatalities were reported.”
It confirmed that on September 4, 2001, a “death was reported in a clinical trial with mifepristone and misoprostol, the active ingredients in Mifegymiso (RU-486) in Canada,” LifeSiteNews reported then.
Health Canada required that abortion drug labelling warn women not to use it unless they had access to emergency medical care.
Moreover, it required Mifegymiso be taken “under the supervision” of a physician because of the risk of internal bleeding.
It cited “three pivotal studies” by Celopharma, the Canadian supplier of the abortion pill. These “revealed that the average bleeding time was 10.8 days, including 2 days of heavy bleeding. … The medication causes vaginal bleeding and commonly induced pain and cramping, which required pain medication in some women.”
But under lobbying from pharmacy groups, pro-abortion groups and doctors, Health Canada subsequently issued a “clarification” that a doctor need not be present when a woman takes the abortion pill, LifeSiteNews reported last month.
Campaign Life has been “mobilizing opposition to this drug for many years,” Brownrigg told LifeSiteNews.
With the #RU486RUCrazy campaign, “we are going directly to women in the hopes of challenging the narrative around how great this kill pill is.”
Campaign Life youth coordinator Marie-Claire Bissonnette initiated the #RU486RUCrazy campaign last month.
In a series of one-minute videos, she warns the abortion pill can be deadly for the mother, as well as for the child in the womb.
“As a young woman, I want to speak to other young women who might think Mifegymiso is a quick, easy fix in a difficult situation. It is not,” Bissonnette explained when the campaign was launched.
Bissonnette relates in one video that a U.S. Food and Drug Administration study reveals that among those tested with RU-486, 14 women died, 58 suffered ectopic pregnancies and 339 needed blood transfusions.
Brownrigg told the Globe that the committee’s recommendation to publicly fund the abortion pill was “dumbfounding.”
“All provincial budgets are burdened with heavy spending demands,” she told LifeSiteNews. “It will be up to all conservatives to question funding of elective procedures like abortion over true healthcare funding.”
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