PUBLICATION:
The Halifax Daily News
DATE:
2002.11.08
EDITION:
DAILY
SECTION:
NEWS
PAGE: 15
BYLINE:
Charles Moore
ILLUSTRATION:
Dr. Henry Morgentaler is suing Nova Scotia and New Brunswick for not fully
funding abortions at his clinics.
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Morgentaler's
grandstand: Poll suggests Canadians don't want taxpayer-funded abortions
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ABORTIONIST
HENRY MORGENTALER, grandstanding about his plan to sue the Nova Scotia and New
Brunswick governments to force them to fully fund abortions at his private
clinics, fulminated: ``It's almost like they willingly, deliberately want to
oppress and victimize women.''
However,
a new poll suggests that less than one quarter of Canadians agree with
Morgentaler's position, and that if democratic principles were applied to the
abortion issue, there would be no public funding for abortions at all, except in
a minuscule minority of cases.
Only
23 per cent of Canadians approve of all abortions being publicly funded, and
only 30 per cent would deny legal protection to unborn children according to the
poll, commissioned by LifeCanada, which represents 85 pro-life organizations
across the country. These numbers would seem to indicate that even a substantial
proportion of Canadians who support abortion choice don't believe their taxes
should pay for it.
In
Nova Scotia, the province pays the abortionist's fee, but patients must pay the
$400 to $650 facility fee at Morgentaler's McCully Street clinic, which performs
about 130 abortions a year. The federal government deducts about $50,000 a year
in transfer payments to Nova Scotia for not paying Morgentaler's facility fees.
During
the polling, conducted Oct. 1 to 6, and Oct. 15 to 20 by Leger Marketing of
Montreal, respondents were asked: ``When it comes to the use of public funds for
abortions, which of the following options best corresponds to your opinion?''
Twenty-three
per cent chose the statement: ``An abortion should always be paid for by the
health-funded tax system.''
Fifty-one
percent of 1,500 Canadians polled said that abortion should only be tax-funded
in medical emergencies such as a threat to the mother's life, or in the case of
rape or incest -- cases that are extremely rare. Another 15 per cent said that
paying for abortion should be a private responsibility. The poll results had a
1.8 per cent margin of error.
Peter
Ryan of LifeCanada commented: ``Henry Morgentaler may want all abortions
tax-funded, but Canadian taxpayers do not. Two-thirds are either completely
opposed, or opposed except for hard cases which account for less than one per
cent of the 110,000 abortions a year now performed.''
On
fetal rights, 56 per cent of respondents said human life should be legally
protected before birth. 37 per cent favoured protection from conception.
Thirteen per cent said after three months' gestation, and six per cent after six
months. Only 30 per cent said legal protection should be restricted until after
birth. Results for the fetal rights question had a 2.5 per cent margin of error.
``By
almost a two-to-one margin, Canadians oppose the status quo, which only
recognizes a human being at birth,'' Ryan commented. ``Contrary to what Prime
Minister (Jean) Chretien said during the last election, there is no `social
peace' on abortion. Most Canadians want to see greater respect and protection
for babies in the womb.''
Ryan
further notes that even the president of the Canadian Abortion Rights Action
League and Morgentaler ally, Marilyn Wilson, told a Commons finance committee
last year that most abortions are done ``for socio-economic reasons.''
As
for Morgentaler's contention that Nova Scotia's refusal to pay private abortion
clinic facility fees violates the Canada Health Act, on Oct. 25, Garry
Breitkreuz, Canadian Alliance MP for Yorkton-Melville, challenged federal Health
Minister Anne McLellan to produce evidence justifying her claims that all
abortions are ``medically necessary.'' Breitkreuz released a letter from the
minister's own department contradicting her public statements. ``The federal
government doesn't have any evidence that abortions are `medically necessary,'
and neither do the provinces,'' Breitkreuz maintains.
``In
order for a medical procedure to be publicly funded under the Canada Health Act,
it must be medically necessary and therapeutic. How can all these governments
continue to use public money to fund abortions when they don't know if abortions
are doing more damage than good?'' asked Breitkreuz.
In
short, abortion may be a legal right, but it's no more medically necessary than
cosmetic surgery except in the rarest of cases, and funding it, including
doctor's fees, should not be the taxpayers' responsibility.
``The
federal government is looking for ways to save health-care dollars and here we
have an individual wasting tax payer money on court cases to line his own
pockets,'' commented Karen Murawsky, director of the Campaign Life Canada Public
Affairs Office in Ottawa.
Here
in Nova Scotia, a particular irony is the deafening silence of leftist activists
who have their pink knickers in a knot over the private MRI clinic in Clayton
Park (which is entirely unfunded by the province), but utter not a peep of
protest over Morgentaler's private clinic, where procedures have long been
partially government funded.
Only
true-believer zealots can straight-facedly apply such a glaring double standard.