“I will not go home at night feeling that there has been another degradation to our society in New Brunswick.”

- Blaine Higgs, speaking to a motion in the House on Dec. 18, 2014 re: abortion access in NB

So, Higgs said increased abortion access would degrade our society.

I feel the loss of Clinic 554, which is a family practice with a focus on reproductive, trans*, LGBT/Queer, and HIV care, is a degradation of our society. Successive governments have refused to properly fund reproductive healthcare in NB, resulting in the closure of #Clinic554.

All @premierbhiggs needs to do is make a minor change to General Regulation - Medical Services Payment Act. Remove Schedule 2 (a.1) of Regulation 84-20 which prevents coverage for just one type of service.

This one necessary health care service that is not covered is surgical abortions outside of hospitals. This is a choice that previous governments (Liberal and Conservative) made and maintained to discriminate against those who need access to surgical abortion.

Contrary to what Higgs would have us believe, funding surgical abortions outside of hospitals is not the privatization of health care. What about the many other services that are offered at Clinic 554 and are covered by Medicare? We have fee-for-service agreements with doctors.

But the Premier knows this. He doesn’t actually think funding healthcare at Clinic 554 is equivalent to privatization. He supports other actual “slippery slopes” to privatizing healthcare like having Medavie run Extra-mural.

It’s misleading to say this is about privatization.

But we know that Higgs does not support abortion rights and that some MLAs in his previous and current governments don’t either (some will likely be sworn into Cabinet today).

They are anti-choice and have marched in rallies as recently as October 2019.

I want to know where all Cabinet Ministers stand on this issue. https://www.acadienouvelle.com/actualites/2019/10/10/trois-ministres-participent-a-une-marche-pro-vie/

Apparently, the Premier does not care about people’s rights to access reproductive healthcare.

If he does, after the Cabinet is sworn in today, he will have Regulation 84-20 changed to cover surgical abortions outside of hospitals. I am calling on Higgs to do this immediately.

My confidence in this government doing the right thing today is low.

When attacking another MLA for not being anti-choice enough, Higgs was quoted as saying: “I do not believe that the definition of pro-life is unrestricted and taxpayer-funded abortion”

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/blaine-higgs-abortion-clinic-554-1.5714186

“While it may not be convenient, it would seem that the objectives of both pro-life and pro-choice could be better served by assisting young mothers to complete the full term of their pregnancy.”

People need to be able to decide for themselves whether to be pregnant, not Higgs.

So here we are, with a Premier that keeps throwing out excuses, saying things that don’t make sense on this file to run out the clock on @SaveClinic554. It’s hard to see this as anything other than advancing an anti-choice agenda and reproductive rights/access backsliding in NB.