Canadian Minister Wants to Offer Free Abortion Drugs

26.07.2017

Sarah Hoffman, the health minister for the province of Alberta in Canada wants to offer every Canadian woman and refugee free abortion drugs. She said the provincial government is working on a plan to cover the cost of abortion drugs “very soon.”

“Any women who live in Alberta — I don’t care where you live, I don’t actually care whether you’re yet a citizen — they have the right to access this,” Hoffman said.

The abortion drug mifegymiso only became available on the market in Canada this year. Mifegymiso is name used in Canada for a two-drug abortion method using the drugs mifepristone and misoprostol. It was approved by Health Canada in July 2015, nearly 30 years after it was introduced in some European countries.

After a manufacturing delay, it reached the Canadian market in January 2017, and is intended to replace one of the drugs currently used for medical abortions. It can be used up to seven weeks’ gestation.

Alberta is one of several Canadian governments that announced plans this year to begin offering the drugs for free, paid for by taxpayers. The others are New Brunswick, Ontario and Quebec.

Refugees, university students covered by other provincial health plans, and other women should all have free access in the province, Hoffman said.

Stephanie Fennelly, executive director of the pro-life Wilberforce Project, said one woman from Quebec died from the drug in 2001 when it was being tested. She said it is “reckless” to promote the abortion drugs to rural women who may not have easy access to a hospital if they experience complications.

In 2012, a US Food and Drug Administration report indicated that 14 women in the United States alone died from using the mifepristone abortion drug and 2,207 women were injured by it.

LifeNews. July 19.