In July 2014, the Morgentaler Clinic in Fredericton, New Brunswick, in Canada closed after 20 years, leaving the area without a local abortion provider. Abortion in Canada has been legal since 1988, and procedures are paid for by the national health care system. But although the Canada Health Act has been interpreted to say that provinces must fully fund abortions whether they are in hospitals or clinics, New Brunswick had refused to cover the ones performed in clinics. The Morgentaler Clinic shuttered when it could no longer afford to provide abortions without government funding. (Dr. Henry Morgentaler had subsidized the clinic before his death in 2013.)

But the clinic didn't stay closed for long. Reproductive Justice New Brunswick, with the help of the Fredericton Youth Feminists, took action against the unequal access to abortion in their province. The collective began a crowd-sourcing campaign to fund a clinic in New Brunswick, and Clinic 554 opened in January 2015 and began treating patients. A doctor in the new practice purchased the building.

Cosmopolitan.com spoke with Jessi Taylor, spokesperson for Reproductive Justice New Brunswick (RJNB), about the project.

Can you talk about abortion law in Canada and in New Brunswick in particular?

Legally in Canada, you have a right to have an abortion. You can get an abortion in a clinic, but if the province doesn't fund the clinic, you have to pay out of pocket for it. It's hard to force provinces to follow the law. Dr. Morgentaler's clinic was unable to continue for financial reasons, because the government refused to run the clinic outside of a hospital setting.

What does anti-choice activity look like in Canada?

It's different depending on where you live. A lot of opposition [to the New Brunswick clinic] has been from folks outside of New Brunswick — from abroad and other parts of Canada, not part of the community. In general, though, we're not debating whether or not abortion should remain legal — it's already a law, and overturning it isn't on the agenda, so that changes the tone of the conversation around it. The issue is access — the fact that the law in some provinces, that abortion has to be funded, isn't being followed. RJNB is committed to ensuring access to abortion that's publicly funded, so it's available to everyone who needs it.

Why is it so important to have a clinic in New Brunswick?

Abortion is an expensive procedure if paid for out of pocket, $700 to $800, which you have to do if you aren't getting the procedure done in a hospital. It's a long wait for an abortion at the federally funded hospitals, and they could be up to seven hours away. You might be looking at 14 hours of driving for one procedure, and transportation is a big issue for a lot of people, especially in rural areas and in the winter. Abortions are safest if done during the first trimester, but if you're four weeks pregnant, the wait at a hospital might be eight weeks long, and then when you can finally access the abortion, you're 12 weeks along and it's no longer a first-trimester procedure.

It's better for patients to have access to a clinic, where people who are there want to be providing the service. People in hospitals are forced to be there; they have to perform the abortion, even if they're anti-choice, and that can be acted out in punitive ways upon the patient. New Brunswick is also a small province — if you work in the hospital, where are you supposed to go if you don't want everyone in the world to know you're having an abortion?

Clinic 554 is not a place just to go when you're desperate; it's a place to go for a full range of reproductive health care, not just abortion, which is what the Morgentaler Clinic was providing. It came out of the desires of the community — to have a clinic centered on reproductive justice.

Why did RJNB decide to raise money through crowdfunding?

There have been decades of activism around this issue. Things have been problematic for a long time. Talking and rallying and asking were not enough, so we decided to do it ourselves. We said, "Let's find a building and just do it." We'd never heard of anyone doing it, succeeding or failing; it was way out of left field, but people were game.

We raised $100,000 in less than a month, from people across Canada, people giving us whatever they had — $5, $10. That did something that a rally didn't. It proved how much we needed it. We showed our government that they can't push aside the needs of New Brunswickers anymore.

What are the next steps for achieving equal access to abortion in New Brunswick?

The money raised for Clinic 554 established its general family practice, care for the LGBTTQ community, and abortion care. Abortion care services still won't be covered by Medicare at the clinic — the province is refusing to cover them, so there's still a huge barrier to access. RJNB will continue to lobby for the government to do what it's supposed to be doing in terms of following the Canada Health Act.

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