Stand up for health-care access

This is the moment. If you value our health-care system, it’s more important than ever to fight for our reproductive rights.

On July 4, just over three years since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, U.S. President Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” was signed into law. For the roughly 71 million Americans who use Medicaid, this means no access to Planned Parenthood’s mental health care, cancer screenings, contraception, annual checkups, and other life-saving, primary care services. By the time a judge had blocked the particular provision targeting Planned Parenthood on July 28, 11 clinics had already announced they will close.

It’s assumed that the Trump administration will appeal the injunction. Let’s call this attempt to “defund Planned Parenthood” for what it plainly is — a direct attack on reproductive and sexual health, an erosion of bodily autonomy, and the dismantling of essential health care systems. Specifically, systems that serve the most marginalized — women, racialized people, queer and trans people, disabled people, low-income people, and those who live at the intersections of those identities. And, quite frankly, as a racialized woman who is also the executive director of Women’s Health Clinic, reading this news feels a little too close to home. WHC is a community health clinic that provides many of these same services at our three locations in Winnipeg. It feels like a wake-up call: what starts as an attack on abortion often ends up coming for more.

It’s tempting to feel like our access to reproductive health care and other essential services could never be endangered in Canada. Abortion is a legal, regulated health-care procedure in Canada, classified as medically necessary. The Manitoba government has provided funding for us to perform 700 more abortion procedures and introduced Pharmacare coverage for prescription birth control and emergency contraception just last year. Rights rollbacks could never happen here, right?

It’s naïve to think that the U.S. — and the things that happen in the U.S. — don’t have a significant impact on the political and social climate in Canada. But the endangerment of our health-care system and gender equity is not hypothetical, it’s here. In late July, the federal government indicated they will not be signing any new Pharmacare deals under Mark Carney’s administration. This means Canadians who do not reside in the four provinces who have already secured these deals won’t have the same life-changing access to free contraception. The tabled budget also indicates an intention to reduce funding to the Women and Gender Equality department by 80 per cent over the next three years. Access to abortion in Canada remains a growing concern: despite is legality, the ability to access abortion care has always been uneven across the country and remains so.

Timely access is especially difficult for people living in rural and remote areas who often need to travel hundreds of kilometres to get an abortion. In June, Shared Health published their preliminary findings on a phenomenon that many Indigenous and Black folks already knew to be true — we face longer wait times in the ER. There are dire race-based inequities when it comes to accessing care. Broken trust must be rebuilt, systemic racism must be dismantled, and more culturally relevant services are needed without delay. Rising privatization and the creeping prevalence of for-profit clinics are creating a two-tier medical system across the country. When the number of patients seen in private clinics increases, the data are clear: costs climb, wait times rise, and patient outcomes worsen. At the most basic level, an estimated 5.4 million Canadians do not have a primary care physician. That lack of access to care is driving people online for their medical advice. A 2025 study by the Canadian Medical Association shows that 37 per cent of Canadians said their poor access to health care led to following medical advice they found online.

We cannot take the access that some Canadians have — and all Canadians should have — for granted. I’m here to tell you, this is the moment. It’s time to act, time to speak up — even if things feel “OK,” while you’re telling yourself “it could be worse.” Don’t wait until they take more from us. Support your local abortion provider. Volunteer, donate and attend events, ceremonies, and rallies. Stay informed and share information from trusted sources. Learn how to spot and refute misinformation when you hear it.

Talk to your elected officials. Let them know where you stand: remind them that abortion care is basic health care. Let them know we won’t allow the rights of First Nations and Indigenous People to be trampled on. Tell them loudly that upholding LGBTTQ+ rights is non-negotiable. Demand a stop to the insidious privatization of our health-care system. Public investment in health care is public investment in healthy people, healthy communities, and a healthy country. Now, more than ever, we must fight to ensure that our future is one where people on these lands are not only free to make decisions about our own bodies, but that we have the resources to act on them.

Kemlin Nembhard is the executive director of women’s health clinic.