BC NDP Leader David Eby tried to use the looming shadow of the U.S. presidential debate Tuesday to link Donald Trump and BC Conservative Leader John Rustad as threats to women’s reproductive rights. But it didn’t quite land with the impact New Democrats had hoped.

Eby made the move at a campaign event in Victoria, where he contrasted his government’s decision to fund in vitro fertilization for couples, with social media posts from Conservative candidates opposed to abortion and free birth control.

“It’s safe to say that if he is at best ambivalent about reproductive freedom, and at worst hostile to it, that women’s access to abortion, women’s access to free birth control, is on the ballot this election just like it is in the United States,” he said, just hours before the American political event.

“And we can’t have that happen.”

Rustad had on Saturday tried to address the issue of abortion when asked by a member of the audience at a town hall in Cobble Hill.

“When it comes to the issue of abortion, this issue is settled in terms of........

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