Canada funds abortion research in province where it is withholding healthcare funding

Just days after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that he is withholding much-needed healthcare funding from New Brunswick until it funds private abortion facilities, the Canadian government has declared that it is giving the University of New Brunswick $366,000 to “research challenges women face accessing surgical abortions in the province.”

According to the CBC, Federal Health Minister Patty Hajdu and Fredericton MP Jenica Atwin announced the allocation of the funds on Wednesday while standing outside Clinic 554, the province’s only privately-funded abortion facility. The duo lauded the funding, saying it would be used to identify so-called “barriers” to abortion between 2015 and 2020, naming things like transportation, costs, and discrimination. Researchers will compile data and make a case for more abortion facilities with the hope that they will “make it impossible for New Brunswickers and voters to ignore those stories.”

The federal government has been working hard to fight for public funding of abortions at Clinic 554, despite regulations that make such funding a provincial issue, not a federal one. The CBC reports that New Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs has previously said that the province’s three in-hospital abortion facilities were enough to satisfy the requirements under the Canada Health Act, but the federal government appears determined to push its abortion agenda on New Brunswick citizens. Global News Canada reports that New Brunswick is currently the only province in the country that does not fund surgical abortions outside of hospitals.

“Many times this province, [Progressive] Conservative provincial politicians have declared that there doesn’t need to be increased access, that the services are providing care that meets everybody’s needs. But we know that’s not true,” said Hajdu. “We can’t tolerate that even one woman in this province doesn’t have access to the kind of care that she needs, doesn’t have access to the full reproductive choice that allows her to control her own body.”

READ: These 10 images may change your mind about abortion

Dr. Adrian Edgar, director of Clinic 554, praised the research funding as he hopes it will convince New Brunswick officials to send tax dollars his way. “Right now, we are just experiencing a complete disconnect from government in the health region, between the reality on the ground and the services that are needed. I don’t know how many more times we can bang on the door before the government acknowledges that we have a serious deficiency of healthcare in New Brunswick,” he said. “We are just trying from every different angle to let government know this is really preposterous.”

The Canadian government is withholding federal funds from a province simply because it does not give money to private abortion facilities, while spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to try and convince provincial leaders that they need to facilitate the deaths of more preborn children — which is what abortion is. Killing is not health care.

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