By Meg Cunningham
The uncertain future of family practice Clinic 554 affects thousands of New Brunswickers who rely on the clinic for medical care.
Lack of government funding for abortion procedures put the clinic in financial crisis, causing the building to be put up for sale in 2019.
Clinic 554 does not just provide abortions, they are also the only actively trans and queer inclusive medical providers in the province.
The clinic is also a leader in opioid replacement, which helps people with addictions in recovery.
Meg Cunningham chats with spokesperson for Reproductive Justice New Brunswick, Jessi Taylor, to discuss the impact of the clinic’s closure on New Brunswick’s marginalized peoples.
M: Could you describe what RJNB is for those who may not have heard of your organization?
J: Yeah, Reproductive Justice New Brunswick is an organization that came together initially in a crisis and we’re actually like, still dealing with the fallout of that crisis. When the Morgentaler Clinic first closed, and then what we are as we work towards reproductive health services, but unfortunately, like a lot of our work has had to be very much focused around abortion because the province continues to break the Canada Health Act in restricting services in the province. So a lot of the work that we’re known for ends up being about abortion but reproductive justice is a model that actually goes much more beyond abortion to something that’s holistic. Reproductive justice is actually a model that comes out of the work of Black women and Black activists in the States. And in Canada, this movement is really championed by Indigenous women. And what it is, is a more holistic approach to reproductive services where it’s not just about whether abortion is legal or not, but questions of access. And not just about abortion, but what it means to be able to have children to not have children and to raise those children and safe and healthy environments.
M: Thank you. What are some projects that you or RJNB have participated in and organized around reproductive justice?
J: So since our formation one of Our major projects has been ,and sort of what got us started, was with working with Fredericton youth feminists crowdfunding money to to start a clinic and not just a clinic, but that provides abortion services, but a clinic that provides like a whole scope of family medicine, and is particularly geared towards marginalized people in our community. So we raised $125,000 and that was actually the money that paid for the downpayment for Clinic 554.
M: Thank you. Can you explain for those who may not know, including myself, what family medicine means?
J: Yeah, so it’s actually basically everything that you know, a family doctor would provide or should provide. So we do a full range of anything that a family doctor would do, but we also have specialized knowledge and specialized training in sexual health and reproductive health and harm reduction. So like prenatal care, as well as like contraception. And then one of the things that we’re most known for is access to queer and trans health care. When I say we, but it’s Clinic 554.
M: Right.
J: So Clinic 554 is one of the only explicitly trans and queer inclusive spaces for practicing healthcare in the province, and provides services that just aren’t accessible to most people and they serve people across the Atlantic, actually, who are needing gender affirming care. And that can include things like queer-specific or trans-specific services. People are thinking often about hormones and referrals, but it also includes just being able to access health care in a place that someone respects your pronouns or someone you know, touches your body respectfully. You know, they take your gender seriously. They take your lived experience seriously, they take your trauma seriously. Another thing that Clinic 554 does is it works with opioid replacement programs and for folks who are using drugs or trying to stop using drugs. These are also really important services in our community that we don’t have enough of. And really like when people are excluded from health care, when people are excluded from accessing health care, it just makes everything worse. And there’s not often a way for people to to complain or to access those services when they’re already heavily marginalized.
M: Can you describe abortion access in the province of New Brunswick as it stands right now?
J: Insufficient. So right now, there have been some improvements and largely from the lobbying of Reproductive Justice New Brunswick and other folks in the community where we’ve had some changes in legislation and now people have, you know, theoretical access to Mifegymiso. But not necessarily like those services aren’t necessarily accessible, there’s often a lot of barriers. And they really prohibit people from accessing services. So right now in our province, you can actually only access surgical abortion services in two areas of the province. So in Bathurst and in Moncton. And if you don’t live in Bathurst, and in Moncton you either have to like to pay out of pocket at a place like Clinic 554 or out of province, or you have to travel a very long way. Usually you also have to spend time overnight. When you’re accessing services in hospital settings, hospitals versus clinics it’s long been shown we have so much evidence showing that clinics are actually better places to access services, better for the patient, better for the procedure. And this is largely because of things like confidentiality. We’re a small province. So it’s very difficult to access confidential services, especially for example, if you’re a health care provider. But also if you’re on shift at a hospital, if you work in a hospital and you’re sort of forced to participate in procedures that you’re not comfortable with, that usually gets taken out on the patient either consciously or unconsciously. And that’s not fair either. But also the way the hospitals are set up, they have arbitrary limits to the number of weeks that you can access services, and then a waitlist. And then also they have a policy where usually you need two appointments and their policy is also not to put those appointments very close together. And so usually you actually have to stay multiple days. If you have to travel, or you have to travel more than once. I think I calculated it at one time where depending on where you live in the province, it’s actually like 14 hours of driving to get the entire procedure.
M: Oh, wow. Okay.
J: If you didn’t want to stay overnight.
M: Right.
J: And so staying overnight or long hours of driving for something that actually… we should be able to access in communities, that would be very easy to make accessible in communities is unconscionable and it’s restrictive and especially in light of the pandemic that we’ve been living through. Traveling to other parts of the province is scary, and traveling to other parts of the province is also difficult if you have children or lack of transportation.
M: Can you talk about the significance of Clinic 554’s potential closure?
J: Clinic 554’s potential closure, and we’re getting closer and closer to that every day, it’s very scary, is actually going to be devastating on our community. Not just for people who use it for abortion services, which people around the province do… people around the province do choose to try and attempt to pay, you know, $750 out of pocket to access this procedure because it’s not accessible in hospitals or what’s happening in hospitals is… Yeah, for whatever reason they can’t access it in hospitals. And so that’s a huge resource that will be lost. But in addition to that, it’s a family doctor’s clinic, so many people are going to lose their family doctor. We’re in a province where most of us don’t have access to a family doctor. And so when we access health care, often we do so maybe through walk-in clinics, but often the ER. These services are already over swamped. And so having to add the many, many patients that access services at Clinic 554 back into walk-in clinics and ER services that are already over swamped, that’s something that’s going to impact everybody in the area. Also, when it comes to specialized care for trans and queer healthcare, that’s a really important service that’s going to be lost. They do a lot of really marginalized health care, really important health care. And that’s not just easily replaced. And we know that when people don’t have access to queer and trans appropriate care that has a body count. And right now we live in a province that is openly hostile. And not just under the Conservative government, but under the last government, as well, is openly hostile to queer and trans folks, and marginalized people who are trying to access abortion services, and supports doctors in their refusal to treat people.
M: What can New Brunswickers who are concerned about the future of abortion access, or trans healthcare or queer healthcare, do to take action?
J: I don’t know if this sounds like a very big thing, but it is actually a really important thing, which is constantly calling constituents or representatives. And so that would include, you know, Premier Higgs, and also the minister of health but also includes, you know, your MP and your MLA, as well as the Federal Minister for Health, Patty Hajdu one of the things that we had a couple months ago, which was one of our great successes in was that the federal government recognizing that New Brunswick is in violation of the Canada Health Act began to withhold transfer payments, so they withheld health monies from the province because they’re refusing to provide proper health care. And unfortunately with the COVID pandemic, rightfully, we put a pause on that program and we put a pause on those stop payments. Because we needed extra health services and we needed extra time to figure out what the pandemic was going to look like in our communities. Now that we have an understanding and better knowledge of the communities, but also because Clinic 554 provides health care during the pandemic, one of the things that we’d like to ask people to do is ask the minister to restart that withholding of health payments and actually give the money to Clinic 554 instead for providing the services. Because this is the money that’s being withheld from Clinic 554 from the province. So that’s one thing folks can do. But also if you’ve had a negative experience, if something like class action is interesting, you can actually get in touch with folks at Reproductive Justice New Brunswick and we’re looking for people who are willing to share their stories either privately or publicly.
M: How can they reach out to you?
J: So you can just get in touch with Reproductive Justice New Brunswick, we’re online on Twitter and our email, and Facebook. Those are some of the quickest ways to get in touch with us and we can sort of connect you to the right folks. Also, reaching out with us never never involves you having to start by telling your story or anything that can be a very private thing. And there’s lots of levels of sharing that you can do to participate in that process, that class action process.
Trans and queer people experiencing stress over the potential closure can reach Trans Lifeline toll-free at 1-877-330-6366 or the LGBTQ2+ Youth Line at 1-800-268-9688.
Reproductive Justice New Brunswick is an exclusively volunteer organization, and folks are welcome to contact them for volunteer opportunities.
To reach out, folks can reach them by email at reproductivejusticenb@gmail.com.
