Things have to change: New Brunswick can no longer ignore its responsibility with regards to abortion access

Regroupement féministe du Nouveau-Brunswick (RFNB) is devastated to learn of the definitive closure of Fredericton’s Clinic 554. Yesterday, outside the New Brunswick Legislature, Dr. Adrian Edgar announced that, due to the doubling of the clinic’s rent and the lack of public funding, his team would no longer be able to provide abortion services, effective immediately. In addition to an entire region being denied access to essential health care, this event highlights the current government’s misogynistic and classist legislation.

We call on all New Brunswick politicians to take responsibility for guaranteeing universal, free, safe and bilingual access to abortion care for all pregnant people! Things have to change.

A catastrophic closure

Make no mistake: the closure of Clinic 554(formerly Morgentaler Clinic) after 30 years of activity and activism in the Fredericton area is a catastrophe. Pregnant people came there to obtain abortions from the south and centre of the province. The data from the New Brunswick Access to Reproductive Justice Project’s (NBARJP) Clinic 554 and Abortion Access in New

Brunswick – Final Report makes this clear: Clinic 554 served patients from outside zone 3 (Fredericton/River Valley region) in 37 per cent of cases between 2015 and 2022. This means that pregnant people who could have obtained a surgical abortion in one of the three hospitals in Moncton or Bathurst chose to go to Clinic 554 and pay out-of-pocket for an abortion ($700-$850, depending on gestational age). And, when you read the account of a woman who had a surgical abortion in Moncton earlier this year in L’Acadie Nouvelle, it’s not very surprising (L’avortement de Sophie, Jan. 12, 2024).

As pointed out by Reproductive Justice New Brunswick and the UNB/STU University Women’s Centre, Clinic 554 offered fast, empathetic and non-judgmental services where the province of New Brunswick did not provide them. For non-binary, transgender and immigrant patients without a Medicare card, or simply people for whom the abortion services provided by the Moncton or Bathurst hospitals were inaccessible, Clinic 554 was a valuable resource. And, if patients couldn’t afford to pay for the procedure, clinic staff would help them apply for subsidies, or even provide pro bono services. Thus, for 30 years, the province of New Brunswick has shirked its constitutional obligation to provide universal abortion services to its population.

A misogynistic, stubborn government

Since its creation, RFNB has been campaigning for the revoking of the section that prevents the reimbursement of abortion care outside approved hospital settings. Until 2014, this section also required the approval of two doctors and the availability of a specialist to perform the procedure. Brian Gallant’s Liberal government amended this part of the section, but the provincial Conservatives, led by an openly anti-choice premier, refuse to repeal it entirely. The section is included in Schedule 2 of Regulation 84-20, and is the subject of a lawsuit brought by the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA), which believes it violates the Canada Health Act and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Regulation 84-20 is also the cause of other delays and red tape, notably because it restricts other types of care, such as certain blood tests, biological analyses, drugs and surgical equipment, to approved hospitals. Last Thursday, during the State of the Province address, Blaine Higgs denounced the competition between the Horizon and Vitalité health networks for medical tests, and deplored the delays in certain analyses… By repealing the section and allowing clinics to perform these tests, the health networks would be relieved of much of this burden and delays would be reduced.

New Brunswick is the only province in Canada to impose so many legal restrictions on access to abortion, yet it boasts that it was the first to authorise reimbursement of the abortion pill in 2015, as if the abortion pill were accessible and effective for all pregnant people.

Medical abortion and the statistics

There’s no denying that Mifegymiso, the abortion pill, has had a positive impact on access to abortion. Pregnant people take two drugs at home to end their pregnancy, which means less money is lost in terms of time off work, childcare, travel and accommodation costs. But Mifegymiso is only permitted up to 9 weeks and 6 days gestation and is contraindicated with certain medical conditions. In addition, the medical profession must be trained to prescribe it, and there is no list of practitioners able to do so available in New Brunswick.

The New Brunswick government, which bases almost all of its communications on the number of prescriptions for Mifegymiso, estimates that 2/3 of people who have abortions use this method. In doing so, it is hiding behind incomplete statistics that do not give a complete picture of the situation. As stated in the NBARJP report, statistics on Mifegymiso have only been collected since 2021, and do not distinguish whether the drug was taken to voluntarily terminate a pregnancy or to evacuate a non-viable pregnancy (abortion for medical reasons). It is also not known how many beneficiaries who had a prescription for Mifegymiso used it and what the effectiveness rate of the abortions was. In addition, the government does not count surgical abortions performed outside its hospitals, so it does not have complete statistics for all abortions performed in the province.

Link between abortion and poverty

All these fights for universal and free access to abortion also reveal the classist and misogynist contempt of the political class in New Brunswick. Single mothers with young children, non-binary and transgender people are those most at risk of living in poverty. According to Statistics Canada, 67 per cent of people living on an annual income of less than $20,000 in New Brunswick in 2021 were women. The government has refused to restrict rent increases in 2023, as it had in 2022, putting marginalized people in increasingly precarious situations. The government is stubbornly neglecting its vulnerable populations, and now an essential clinic is closing its doors.

Geneviève L. Latour, President of the RFNB, said she urged “the government and the health authorities to remedy the accessibility barriers to abortion. It is unacceptable that New Brunswickers have to travel up to 3 hours, or 6 hours return, for basic healthcare.” MLAs, Ministers, you must commit to repealing the repressive sections of Regulation 84-20, and put in place a real strategy to guarantee free, safe, certain, inclusive and local access to abortion care for all pregnant people throughout New Brunswick. It’s time to put aside religious ideologies and anti-choice propaganda.

Things have to change, and we can’t wait.

RFNB is an inclusive feminist organization that works for a radical overhaul of society by supporting struggles against all forms of oppression. It engages in political action, informs the general public and mobilises its members around feminist issues. The RFNB defends and promotes the rights and interests of all francophone women and gender minorities in New Brunswick.