Paul Tuns:
On Oct. 21, voters in New Brunswick replaced the government of Progressive Conservative Blaine Higgs with a Liberal one led by Susan Holt who wasted no time changing policies lauded by pro-life and pro-family voters and leaders.
On Nov. 7, Holt’s office announced that it would reverse the ban on funding abortions at private facilities – a ban that has been in place under every Liberal and Progressive Conservative government since the 1990s.
In a statement, the Premier’s Office said that Regulation 84-20 which prevents taxpayer money from being used to pay for abortions outside the province’s hospital system would be repealed. Holt said, “Our government is committed to moving quickly on several files, including removing barriers to accessing abortion services.” She added, “While we recognize that this alone cannot immediately create more access to abortion, it is an important first step.”
Surgical abortions were only committed at three hospitals: Chaleur Regional Hospital, Moncton Hospital and the Dr. Georges-L.-Dumont University Hospital Centre, although the abortion pill was widely distributed by doctors and pharmacies in the province.
Last year, Clinic 554, formerly the Morgentaler abortion mill in Fredericton, closed after a lengthy battle with the Higgs government over medicare funding of surgical abortion. Campaign Life Coalition said the abortion mill, which also provided so-called gender-affirming medicine, was closed due to the pressure of the 40 Days for Life witness. The CBC reported that local abortion advocates are hoping to reopen the province’s only private abortion mill. Adrian Edgar, who ran Clinic 554, said he would consider reopening his business in a new location.
The Liberal government said it will work with special interest groups, the New Brunswick Medical Society and regional health authorities to promote abortion.
Andrée-Anne LeBlanc, executive director of the pro-abortion Regroupement féministe du Nouveau-Brunswick thanked Holt for the government’s “important gesture,” calling it “a first step to make surgical abortion more accessible throughout our province.’’
Health Minister John Dornan said, “Everyone deserves access to the health care they need, and, with this change, we are making it easier for everyone who needs this service to access it, regardless of where they live.”
Campaign Life Coalition director of political operations Jack Fonseca told LifeSiteNews that abortion can never be considered ‘health care’ by thinking persons because pregnancy is not an illness, injury or disease.” Fonseca said, “The repeal of regulation 84-20 means that New Brunswick taxpayers will now be expected to send their hard-earned tax dollars to for-profit abortion businesses.”
In another policy change, the Premier said that schools will be allowed to hide gender changes from parents.
Under Higgs’s Policy 713, schools were not allowed to use a student’s preferred name or pronouns in a gender-affirming way unless it had the permission of parents, if the child was under the age of 16.
Under the new provincial policy, recommended by Kelly Lamrock, New Brunswick’s child and youth advocate, an opponent of Higgs’s policy, school staff will heed chosen names and pronouns for all students in Grade 6 or higher, and that for younger students, requests would be evaluated on a case-by-case basis to determine if the child had the capacity to make the decision to go by another gender.
Lamrock said she recommended the policy based on the assumption that children in Grade 6 – about the age of 11 – have the maturity and capacity to make decisions about gender on their own.
It is unclear whether name changes on official school documents will be affected by the new policy.
CLC’s Fonseca criticized the move, saying it will cause “psycho-sexual confusion in the minds of countless children.”
In August, CLC launched a postcard campaign in New Brunswick warning voters that Holt would reverse the province’s common-sense parental rights policy.
