It can't happen here, not in Canada...

[sabotabby]

...except that in New Brunswick, the last hospital that performs provincially funded abortions is about to stop. It's already hard to get an abortion in New Brunswick—unlike in the rest of the country, you need the permission of two doctors. Abortions at the private Morgentaler clinic cost $750 in a province where the average yearly income is around $7000 less than than the national average.

Read this. (Hat-tip to the author. ;))

It's not a ban, of course; just market forces. We have several years still before we catch up to the wingnuttery levels of our ideological masters neighbours to the South, but it's nevertheless an attack on women's reproductive rights and universal health care. And it serves the wingnut agenda just fine—ensuring that poor women have no choices, while ensuring that if their own daughters should wind up in a delicate situation, they'll have access to discreet and private care.

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OMGsquee. I must read this stuff: Bengali science fiction from the 1880s.

Comments

[goodlookinout.livejournal.com]

it's so awful :(

[1in8.livejournal.com]

Ugh that makes me so sick. :(

[mistersmearcase.livejournal.com]

That userpic squicks me out. Talking fetus. Ick. Rather whiny talking fetus. p.s. to fetus: dude, you so don't have emotions. Oh wait. You can't understand me. You're a fetus.

[sabotabby]

Psst: It's an ovarian cyst.

[mistersmearcase.livejournal.com]

D'oh!

[dobrovolets.livejournal.com]

"Market forces" helped make abortion services similarly unavailable in wide swathes of the States during the Clinton years, when supposedly we still had executive and legal support for the right. The Democrats' dirty little secret is that you can gull enough voters by declaring, when convenient, that you defend womens' rights, while doing nothing to stop, or even actively partcipating in, a steady erosion of the ability to exercise the right.

[sabotabby]

I'm surprised that the Right doesn't use that strategy more often, although it might cost them votes in the States. Here, you couldn't really win on an anti-choice platform.

hello, i'm picky & you probably expected a response from me.

[threeliesforone.livejournal.com]

actually, it costs up to $750 for an abortion at the morgentaler clinic. 12wks & under is $500 [not much cheaper, but i'm pedantic] & most abortions are performed at 9wks & under.

i'm pretty disappointed that the article failed to mentioned the lawsuit that's being carried out by dr. morgentaler against the government of NB to fund his clinic through their healthcare system. there was also a press release that was entirly ignored from dr. morgentaler, calling on the province to take over his clinic & not only provide abortion services through it, but reproductive health & birth control services as well [i'm pretty sure he included vasectomies as well! vasectomies are my favourite form of contraception!]. in return, he'd stop the court case against the province [which they're bound to lost, as manitoba did & as quebec will].

oh & NB isn't the only province that refuses to fund abortion services in clinics: PEI doesn't have any abortion clinics or any hospitals that perform abortion services at all. also, it refuses to pay for services provided outside PEI.

oh. & it's not just NB's government's fault: the federal government hasn't done ANYTHING about NB's flagrant abuse of the canada health act & it's direct violation of the morgentaler decision in 1988. now that we have a conservative gov't, nothing's going to get done at all. although, the ARCC-CDRC is getting on their case, in the most polite way possible [bleh]: http://arcc-cdac.ca

Re: hello, i'm picky & you probably expected a response from me.

[sabotabby]

Thanks for pointing those out. He did mention the staffer of the Morgentaler clinic suggesting that the government could fund it, though.

It's a shite situation regardless, though. And I think that most people outside of Maritimes don't necessarily know, unless they follow this kind of thing closely.