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ICYMI: @BlaineHiggs2020 is explicitly anti-abortion and totally out of touch when it comes to the Canada Health Act. https://twitter.com/cbcjones/status/1303277737289945094
1/ Higgs claims funding for Clinic 554 is a legal, not a political issue. This is factually incorrect. Schedule 2 (a.1) of Reg 24-20 was introduced and passed under Premier Frank McKenna. It can be repealed with the stroke of a pen.
2/ Like the Premiers before him, Higgs is *making* this a legal issue by refusing to repeal this section of the Act. This is a political choice, informed by anti-abortion ideology.
3/ Another factual misrepresentation: Higgs is wringing his hands of the issue by claiming that the CHA doesn't fund private clinics. Clinic 554 is *not* a private clinic. It is a family practice that offers full spectrum reproductive healthcare.
4/ New Brunswick is the only province that does not fund abortion services provided in clinics. The government is literally forcing #Clinic554 patients to pay out of pocket to access abortion care. That's not privatization. It's state-sanctioned violence.
5/ The idea that @BlaineHiggs2020 is able to separate his personal views from his political decision-making is absurd. If this were true, he'd listen to what experts are saying. He'd uphold the Canada Health Act. He'd fund abortions at #Clinic554
6/ Higgs' assumption that people choose abortion because they find pregnancy an "inconvenience" is a harmful and dismissive generalization. People choose abortion for any number of reasons, none of which should be used to justify political decisions.
7/ Higgs' brilliant alternative to funding medically necessary healthcare? "Assisting young mothers to complete the full term of their pregnancy." There is so much wrong with this statement.
8/ Here Higgs is assuming that young women are the only people who get abortions (again, factually incorrect). He's also positioning abortion *in opposition to* prenatal care, rather than part of a full spectrum of reproductive healthcare.
9/ There's tons more we could say but this thread is getting long and tbh we're tired of tweeting out content that should be published in major news stories. @cbcjones, reach out to us for a quote next time! Been doing this work for years.
