FREDERICTON — A private abortion clinic in Fredericton says it has finally shut its doors, citing a steep rent increase and a lack of funding from the provincial government.
A notice on Clinic 554's website says abortion care ended as of Wednesday. Its medical director, Dr. Adrian Edgar, said he could no longer afford the rent because the province does not fund abortions performed outside the hospital. The final straw was a doubling of the clinic's rent set to take effect Thursday, he said in an interview.
"We don't get any public funding. And without public funding, you can't operate health care, and especially you can't operate health care if the expenses are going up as they are," Edgar said.
Edgar has said several times before that the clinic was closing, and in 2019 the clinic's fate became an issue on the federal campaign trail. This time Edgar said the doors are closing for good and he has no intention of reopening elsewhere.
The clinic provided abortions to those who don't have a medicare card, such as migrant workers, homeless people and international students in the Maritime provinces, he said. It charged much less than the fees hospitals bill the uninsured, he said.
Surgical abortion services are now only available in New Brunswick in Moncton — at the Moncton Hospital and the Dr. Georges-L.-Dumont University Hospital Centre — and in Bathurst, at the Chaleur Regional Hospital.
Edgar said the province has the strictest abortion laws in the country. "New Brunswick has been undermining, illegally, access to abortion in Canada since the '80s," he said.
After Fredericton’s Morgentaler clinic closed in 2014, citing a lack of provincial funding, the Liberal government of the day removed a regulation requiring women seeking hospital abortions to have two doctors certify the procedure as medically necessary. But the regulation limiting funding to abortions performed in hospitals remained.
Sean Hatchard, a spokesman for Health Minister Bruce Fitch, said New Brunswick is fully committed to the principles of the Canada Health Act. Abortions are publicly funded in New Brunswick by way of surgical abortion in hospitals or medical abortion with the pill Mifegymiso, he said by email.
"The introduction of Mifegymiso as an alternative means of abortion has reduced demand for surgical abortions in New Brunswick. It is now the predominant form of abortion in our province and accounts for two-thirds of all abortions in New Brunswick," he said.
Responding to questions about the Fredericton clinic's closing, Federal Health Minister Mark Holland told reporters in Ottawa it's essential that abortion services remain available. He called it a "fundamental right" for women everywhere in the country.
"So it's not acceptable, not at all, to close a clinic, or to have a situation like that. It threatens women's health," he said. Holland said he needs to "take a little time to evaluate the situation" and plans to talk to Fitch.
Edgar said the province needs to change its policy to ensure everyone who needs it has access to abortion.
It is not just those who fall through the cracks, such as homeless people, migrant workers and international students, who are affected but others too because of a shortage of doctors, he noted. The shortage of doctors means there are women who don't have immediate access to birth control pills, he said.
"I think that Canada should be paying attention to what's happening in New Brunswick because I don't want us to follow what's happening in the States," he said.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 31, 2024.
Hina Alam, The Canadian Press
Note to readers: This is a corrected story. A previous version said surgical abortions are performed at two hospitals in New Brunswick, but they are in fact performed at three hospitals.
