Intimate Partner Violence and Defunding the Police

Wellness Within joins fellow advocacy organizations and community members in the heartbreak and grief felt after the marked increase in fatal incidents of intimate partner violence (IPV) in Nova Scotia. Over the course of only three months, 6 women have been killed in cases of IPV.

With discussions of another police budget increase, Wellness Within is emphasizing the need to divest from police forces and provide epidemic level funding to community organizations and resources dedicated to support and prevention of IPV.  Better solutions to address gender based, intimate partner violence exist outside of policing and courts. This is clear in the Mass Casualty Commission recommendations and chapter six of the Defund the Police Report.

We call on the government of Nova Scotia to take decisive action to support communities in addressing and preventing intimate partner violence.

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Wellness Within is a volunteer-based 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.  

Contact: Natasha Hines, Chair, (902)717-2956 or natasha_hines@outlook.com, and Dr. Martha Paynter, Director of Research, 902-292-7082 or martha.paynter@gmail.com