(Editor's Note: The article below was written in August 2014. On Jan 1, 2015, the NB government repealed Reg 84-20, and access is improving. However, another regulation still stands in the way: Section 2.01, Chapter M-7 of the Medical Services Payment Act, limits funded abortions to hospitals, even though this is against the Canada Health Act. See bottom of this other page for more info.)

 

Having access to abortion is only part of the picture; access without affordability is meaningless. The closure of the Morgentaler Clinic for largely financial reasons illustrates the importance of funding in supporting reproductive rights in New Brunswick.

 

New Brunswick is the only province where abortions are covered by Medicare only if they take place in hospitals. In order to attain an abortion, a woman must find two doctors (a GP and an OB/GYN) to declare the procedure to be “medically necessary” (there is no definition for what this means). Not only is there a severe shortage of family doctors in New Brunswick, women must risk unpleasant and unhelpful interactions with doctors who allow their personal anti-choice beliefs to influence their professional decisions. In addition, the time required to locate the two physicians in undisclosed NB hospitals is costly in terms of time off work, child care, and – if the woman is unable to rely on her partner or family for support – risky.

 

New Brunswick is the only province in Canada where abortions are covered by Medicare only if they take place in hospitals. 

 

To make matters worse, Regulation 84-20 makes it impossible for the majority of New Brunswick women to access an abortion in one of the two hospitals providing this service. Here’s why:

 

Until it closed in July 2014, the Morgentaler Clinic in Fredericton was able to provide abortions up till the 16th week for a cost of $700-850, which women were required to pay out of pocket. While this effectively restricted access to women who could afford the procedure, it was the only viable option for many NB women, as well as women from PEI where no clinics currently exist. 

 

Many women are not able to access a publicly funded hospital abortion in New Brunswick. Hospital abortions are not only unnecessarily difficult to obtain, they are also limited to terminations that occur before 12 weeks. Further, women seeking the procedure may be unable to make an appointment in time, with many placed on a waitlist. 

 

The Morgentaler clinic was able to provide abortions up to 16 weeks at the clinic. In addition, the clinic helped women over 16 weeks access services in other provinces where later abortions are performed. New Brunswick women have now lost this assistance and their ability to obtain information on their options is also severly limited with the closure of the clinic. 

 

If women cannot navigate themselves through the bottleneck of the two-doctor approval process as well as endure the hospital waiting time, the only other option is to travel out of province to clinics in Quebec, Ontario, or Maine.

 

If they cannot afford the $700 it would have cost at the Fredericton clinic, it is unlikely they will be able to find the money to travel out of province, pay for the abortion, and cover the costs of a hotel, meals, and childcare. Because New Brunswick excludes abortion from interprovincial reciprocal billing, any woman in Canada who goes out of province for an abortion must pay out of pocket until they establish permanent residency in the other province. 

 

Denying Canadian women access to abortion is not only illegal, it is also very dangerous. Studies have shown that restricting access results in women attempting their own procedures, by ordering abortion-inducing drugs online, looking for underground providers, or engaging in self-harm. Around the world each year, 47,000 women die as a result of unsafe abortion, accounting for 13% of all maternal deaths worldwide.