Nova Scotia is now the first Canadian province to offer a tax rebate for infertility treatments and surrogacy-related expenses. The Nova Scotia Fertility and Surrogacy Rebate, part of the Progressive Conservatives’ budget, was announced on March 30, 2022, and allows the government to take part in the exploitation of women and the destruction of innocent human lives.
The tax credit will equal up to 40% of the cost of fertility treatments provided by a Nova Scotia-licensed medical practitioner or infertility treatment clinic. If the desired services are not available in Nova Scotia, patients can be referred elsewhere by a licensed professional. Those seeking these fertility treatments are not limited to a specific number of treatments but can claim up to $20,000 in a year for a maximum annual tax credit of $8,000.
The amendment of the Income Tax Act is designed to help Nova Scotians who want to grow their families through infertility treatments and surrogacy. According to the Government of Canada’s website, “Roughly 16% (or 1 in 6) couples in Canada experience infertility. This number has doubled since the 1980s.” A survey conducted by The Coast discovered that the average cost for fertility treatments is approximately $24,750.
Michelle Thompson, Nova Scotia’s Minister of Health and Wellness said, “Not only are infertility challenges extraordinarily stressful, but the cost of fertility treatments and surrogacy-related medical expenses are significant barriers. We’re so happy to help Nova Scotians realize their dreams of becoming parents by reducing the financial burden of fertility treatments and surrogacy-related medical expenses.”
Many, though not all, fertility treatments treat embryos as expendable, with millions being destroyed through the process of in vitro fertilization. In addition, a 2019 report by CBS found that tens of thousands of embryos are perpetually frozen — stuck in limbo at fertility clinics throughout Canada. Many have been abandoned by the parents who created them but then no longer wanted them. Furthermore, when a parent doesn’t get the exact number of children or the child they expected, abortion is often used to kill the now unwanted baby or babies. The children who survive to be born via IVF and surrogacy sometimes grow up to speak out against these fertility practices.
READ: Adoption, IVF, and surrogacy: What pro-lifers need to know
One woman told the child advocacy group Them Before Us, “Somehow, somewhere, my parents developed the idea that they deserved to have a baby, and it didn’t matter how much it cost, how many times it took, or how many died in the process. They deserved a child. And with an attitude like that, by the time I was born they thought they deserved to have the perfect child… as Dad defined a perfect child. And since they deserved a child, I was their property to be controlled, not a person or a gift to be treasured.”
There are currently 30,000 children eligible for adoption in Canada’s foster care system. Adoption is a path toward healing a child’s trauma by putting the child’s needs first and finding the family that is right for him or her. The fertility industry, however, is a billion-dollar business that puts the desires of adults first, creating trauma for the babies who are taken from the one person they know — the woman who carried them — and the babies who never know the biological parents who sold their parental rights.
In addition, surrogacy exploits women. The majority of the women who sign up to be paid surrogates do so because they are low-income and attracted to the thought of earning money for something society sees as positive: carrying a child for someone else. But all too often, those who rent these women’s wombs see them as little more than property. The very notion of a wealthy person buying a poor person’s body for the purpose of creating a child is something in which Nova Scotia is now willing to participate.
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