A Canadian national civil liberties group has filed a lawsuit against the New Brunswick government in an attempt to force it to fund abortions at private abortion businesses.
The Canadian Civil Liberties Association filed a constitutional challenge in Court of Queen’s Bench in Fredericton, reported CBC. Leading the challenge is a private abortion business called Clinic 554, which is promoted as a family doctor, yet according to its own website, its focus is “on reproductive, trans, LGBT/Queer, and HIV Care.” The lawsuit asks the court to strike down a portion of New Brunswick’s Regulation 84-20, which lists certain services that will not be covered by medicare — including abortions committed in non-hospital settings such as Clinic 554. Abortion advocates want the regulation deemed unconstitutional.
Canada has had no restrictions on abortion since a 1988 Supreme Court ruling deemed that both requiring a therapeutic abortion committee to sign off on an abortion and requiring it to take place at an accredited hospital were unconstitutional. However, provinces have the freedom to regulate access. Abortion advocates consider New Brunswick’s refusal to pay for abortions outside of a hospital setting to be a violation of the Canadian Health Act. Pro-life advocates disagree, saying the provinces have jurisdiction over health matters.
READ: Canada pledges nearly $9M to fund international abortion industry
Abortion advocates say there are only two hospitals in New Brunswick that commit abortions, and therefore, in order to obtain an abortion, women must travel. They also argue that Clinic 554 must receive government funding in order to ensure it remains open, or Canadians in the region might lose access to abortion. However, New Brunswick Right to Life states that there is ample access to abortion in the province, and says there are four hospitals in the province that commit abortions — not two.
The group released the following infographic:
There were more than 1,100 abortions in New Brunswick in 2019, but only 99 were reported to have been carried out at Clinic 554. The real motive behind the push to allow government-funded abortions at Clinic 554 may be the facility’s desire to make more money from abortion by grabbing a bigger piece of the abortion industry market share. In fact, Clinic 554’s building was put up for sale in 2019 due to “financial instability.”
New Brunswick Right to Life states that both the number of women of child-bearing age in the province and the number of surgical abortions in Canada are declining. Therefore, there is no need to expand government-funded abortion. “Traveling for health care services is an expected part of living in New Brunswick,” said the pro-life group. “Why should abortion, an elective procedure that ends the life of a growing human, be treated differently than other medical services?”
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