Wellness Within acknowledges Provincial Announcement of the End of Birth Alerts

Today, November 30, the Provincial Government of NS announced it will be ending the practice of birth alerts and replacing it with one position in the Department of Community Services dedicated to prevention and early intervention.

Wellness Within is a volunteer-based registered non-profit organization that serves women, transgender and nonbinary people who have experienced criminalization and are pregnant or have young children in Nova Scotia, part of the unceded and unsurrendered ancestral territory of the Mi'kmaq people. Wellness Within supports people through the full spectrum of reproductive health experience; facilitates workshops and education sessions; develops resource materials; and advocates for reproductive justice issues.

For years, WW has led calls in this province to end the practice of birth alerts.

We do not applaud the provincial announcement; it is overdue. We do not believe a single person in the family connections coordinator role is sufficient to address what we expect to be at minimum 100 clients a year. A single person cannot province the culturally-safe, harm reduction-oriented, feminist support that will be required to turn this situation around.

We call on the Province to properly resource this initiative. We call on the Province to keep and publicly release comprehensive disaggregated data about birth alerts and the alternative process so that the public can tell whether this initiative is making a meaningful difference in people’s lives.

Media contact: Martha Paynter, Chair of WW, 9022927082 martha.paynter@gmail.com