Letter From LifeCanada to PEI Health Minister

Natalie Hudson Sonnen, executive director of LifeCanada writes to Douglas Currie, PEI Minister of Health and Wellness, responding to the resent barrage of demands to bring abortion back to PEI:

Dear Minister Currie,

I am writing to you on behalf of our 84 member groups across Canada regarding the recent issue of abortion access on Prince Edward Island.

LifeCanada is a national educational organization that is dedicated to the promotion and protection of human dignity at all stages of human life. We firmly believe that elective abortion has nothing to do with health or wellness and that the wisdom of previous governments to keep it off the Island should be upheld and respected.

We are concerned by the erroneous assumption, as stated in a CBC News article on Nov. 24th by Dr. Richard Wedge, executive director of medical affairs for Health PEI that, "The Supreme Court has said that access to legal abortions is a medically necessary service.” This is not, in fact, true. The Supreme Court of Canada never made any such statement, because it is strictly under provincial jurisdiction to decide what is or isn’t medically necessary. Elective abortion is neither medically necessary, nor does it treat a disease. Rather, it is a personal choice that ends a healthy pregnancy.

The plethora of medical and scientific evidence show that abortion is a detrimental personal choice that increases the risk of physical and psychological harm to the mother and is obviously fatal to the child, who ought to be considered a second patient. (The research compiled in the DeVeber Institute's book Women's Health After Abortion is evidence of this fact. http://www.deveber.org/womens-health-after-abortion)

Let me remind you that LifeCanada’s annual Environics polls consistently show that the majority of Canadians (72%) do not support the current status quo in Canada whereby there is no legal protection for the unborn until birth. Our polling also indicates that a majority of Canadians (67%) do not want to pay for abortions either.

We urge you to continue to keep a procedure off the Island that is not only highly contentious due to its very nature (that it kills a new human being), but that it is egregiously harmful to the women who choose to undergo it.

We urge PEI and the other provinces of Canada to put tax dollars towards helping mothers and their babies who are in difficult situations through the funding of pregnancy care centres, housing and other programs.

Please honour the wishes of Canadians and keep abortion off the Island.

Sincerely,

Natalie Hudson Sonnen
Executive Director
LifeCanada/VieCanada