Government Cancels Biased Health Website

The Conservative Government has announced it will no longer fund a national health website that has been criticized for providing biased information on abortion. Managed by the Public Health Agency of Canada, the Canadian Health Network is scheduled to close down at the end of March 2008. The government cited budget cuts to the Public Health Agency as the reason for the program’s cancellation.

The $7-million-per-year CHN was billed as a user-friendly source of medical information on physical and psychological health for the Canadian public. The Planned Parenthood Federation of Canada (PPFC) acted as the Affiliate for the CHN on the topic of Sexuality and Reproductive Health, which includes abortion. Primarily an abortion rights group, the PPFC’s role as content specialist for the CHN raised serious questions about the network’s objectivity. Most of the CHN website links for resources on abortion led primarily to abortion-rights groups, including the provincial branches of the PPFC, Childbirth by Choice Trust and Canadian Abortion Rights Action League. No links to pro-life organizations were included.

LifeCanada News published an extensive exposé of the CHN’s links to Planned Parenthood in 2003. For an in-depth analysis of the concerns raised by the Canadian Health Network’s abortion advocacy, see LifeCanada News Vol.2 No5, at www.lifecanada.org.