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<\/p>\nOne year after the New Brunswick government eliminated the last legal limit on access to surgical abortions, there\u2019s been no real change to where the service is available.<\/p>\n
Three hospitals in two cities are still offering the service, but no clinics outside hospitals have taken advantage of the Nov. 7, 2024, regulatory change.<\/p>\n
Doctors who were prepared a year ago to offer it in their practices in communities seem to be \u201cless interested\u201d than they were, according to Health Minister John Dornan.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s up to the individual practitioners,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey haven\u2019t stepped up to say \u2018We want to start to do this,\u2019 and so if they do, we are ready to be able to support that, but the community of physicians who would do this have not asked us for that, thus far.\u201d <\/p>\n
WATCH | \u2018We are ready to be able to support that\u2019: Minister says barriers remain:<\/p>\n
Access to surgical abortions still limited to 3 N.B. hospitals<\/p>\n
A year after policy change on funding surgical abortions, wider access remains a work in progress.<\/p>\n
Martha Paynter, a reproductive health researcher who is part of the New Brunswick Abortion Care Network, says it\u2019s not a surprise.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe didn\u2019t expect there to be a new clinic right away,\u201d she said. \u201cThe demand for procedural abortion is falling year over year, and the resources it would take to start a freestanding clinic would be quite significant.\u201d<\/p>\n
Just days after being sworn in last fall, Premier Susan Holt repealed a section of a provincial regulation that said Medicare could only fund surgical abortions in hospitals.<\/p>\n
It marked the end of a long political battle that centred on Clinic 554, a practice in Fredericton\u2019s downtown that lobbied for Medicare to fund abortions performed there.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe believe that abortion is health care and that everyone deserves access to the care that they need, when and where they need it,\u201d Holt said at last year\u2019s announcement, where she held up the cabinet order that repealed the restriction.<\/p>\n
But she also said that surgical abortions \u201cwill not become [more] accessible tomorrow\u201d as a result of the change.<\/p>\n
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Premier Susan Holt holds the cabinet order officially repealing the ban on Medicare funding for procedural abortions performed outside hospitals. (Jacques Poitras\/ CBC)<\/p>\n
Dornan and Paynter both said the main reason doctors have not added the service to their clinics is the growing use of medication abortions.<\/p>\n
The province funds Mifegymiso, a combination of two pills that any doctor or nurse practitioner can prescribe that terminates a pregnancy and is less intrusive than surgery.<\/p>\n
The province funded 724 claims for prescriptions in 2020-21, a number that rose to 1,224 last year.<\/p>\n
This year, the number is on pace to exceed 1,300.<\/p>\n
\u201cYear over year, we\u2019re seeing these scrips increase, increase, increase, and the abortion rate itself is not rising,\u201d Paynter said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know that from national data. So we can presume that more and more people are choosing medication abortion.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
That means the preoccupation with access in a physical facility is increasingly outdated, Paynter said, pointing to a primary care clinic in downtown Fredericton, where a number of doctors and nurse practitioners prescribe Mifegymiso.<\/p>\n
They can also prescribe it virtually.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe terrain has changed so much,\u201d Paynter said.Questions remain, however.<\/p>\n
Mifegymiso is not prescribed after the ninth week of a pregnancy, and patients who need surgical abortions must still travel to the only hospitals offering them, in Bathurst and Moncton, which Dornan says can represent a barrier.<\/p>\n
Paynter said there\u2019s a scarcity of data on how many patients have to make the trip and how long it takes, and on whether delays are being reduced.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u201cWe think we\u2019ve improved things but we really need that data \u2026 to be able to answer that in a really precise way.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Martha Paynter is a reproductive health researcher who is part of the New Brunswick Abortion Care Network. She said there’s a need for data on people travelling for abortions. (Mikael Mayer\/Radio-Canada)<\/p>\n
Some patients who are misinformed about the service, or who don\u2019t know how to access the service, may wait too long and be forced to travel outside the province late in their pregnancies.<\/p>\n
The minister said he\u2019s \u201cpretty confident\u201d many don\u2019t understand \u201cthe subtleties\u201d of the various options.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey might not know where to turn,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
A promised toll-free phone line will launch \u201cvery soon,\u201d dedicated to providing patients with more information about their options and how to navigate the system, Dornan said.<\/p>\n
He\u2019ll also look at whether more data on travel to Moncton and Bathurst can be made available.<\/p>\n
He said his \u201cgut feeling\u201d is that the travel remains a barrier for some patients, and he urged advocacy groups to let the department or doctors know about people they may not otherwise hear from.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Dornan also said universal contraception coverage, promised in the 2024 Liberal throne speech, will happen, whether a pharmacare agreement is signed with the federal government or not. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One year after the New Brunswick government eliminated the last legal limit on access to surgical abortions, there\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":267296,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[49,48,84,392],"class_list":{"0":"post-267295","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-healthcare"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=267295"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267295\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/267296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=267295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=267295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=267295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}