QUEEN’S PARK –Oshawa MPP Jennifer French released the following statement calling on Kathleen Wynne to apologize for playing politics with women’s choice:
“Today, Ontario’s three political parties had an opportunity to create legal and mandatory Safe Zones around clinics and hospitals that offer women’s health care including medical abortions, keeping women safe from harassment, intimidation or coercion. It didn’t happen because the Wynne Liberals and Patrick Brown Conservatives chose, instead, to play politics with women’s rights.
Wynne and the Liberals tabled this bill, only to pull back their support and stall the bill when the house offered to pass it today. Wynne’s team seems to have decided that if she can’t score political points against her opponents, she’s not interested in protecting women’s safe access to medical care. Women are tired of this government letting them down.
Accessing medical care without being subjected to intimidation, protest or harassment is the right of women, and it’s critically important. The NDP support passing this bill today, creating a new law to prevent protests at abortion clinics. Patrick Brown, for his own reasons, agreed to do that. Wynne refused.
Wynne owes an apology to the staff who work at clinics and hospitals, and to any woman who has or will feel intimidated or harassed when making health care decisions, including her right to choose.”