B.C. abortion providers sound alarm over access, minister responds ‘fiercely’

Advocacy groups say government funding that helps ensure access to abortion is dwindling.

While abortion access has been the law of the land for decades, providers warn British Columbians have more challenges than ever accessing that health care, and funding challenges facing support agencies are likely to make access even harder.

Front-line providers and advocates describe patients travelling hours by car or plane to attend specialty clinics in Metro Vancouver, or struggling to find specially trained family doctors in their home communities to help manage their high-risk ectopic pregnancies, miscarriages and life circumstances leading them to seek termination of their pregnancy.

“Some people are traveling from Prince George, from all over the province, in order to come down to Vancouver for some of their care,” said Dr. Renee Hall, medical director of the Willow Reproductive Health Centre.

Travel expenses were often covered for those patients and others across the country by Abortion Care Canada, but this week supporters and affiliated care providers learned the group’s application for federal funding was denied, with Health Canada claiming there were too many applicants for the designated money.

“Without the funding, at the very least, we won’t be able to continue the vast majority of our services, and there is a very high likelihood that we will close,” said executive director TK Pritchard. “Our system is just already very, very precarious and I think not a lot of folks realize how often people are travelling to access care and how far they’re going,”

B.C. support network also on the brink

Abortion Care Canada facilitated training for family doctors to prescribe medication to terminate pregnancies, as well as in-office surgical abortions. Though the organization trains hundreds of physicians across the country, in B.C., compensation hasn’t kept pace with the soaring costs faced by general practitioners who provide the majority of abortion care in the province.

Organizations like Options for Sexual Health – that help patients access birth control and STI testing and connect them with abortionists – are facing the prospect of closing some of their clinics in smaller communities because provincial funding has essentially remained static while their costs have soared.

“We’re already seeing situations where people are not being able to choose what they want to do with their pregnancies,” said medical director Dr. Emma Herrington. “As a society, we talk about pregnancy as this sort of happy, healthy time, but pregnancy comes with many risks and people should have a right to choose those risks.”

New health minister makes clear promise

British Columbia has been described as a leader in reproductive health, becoming the first province to provide high-tech home HPV screening for cervical cancer as well as free birth control, years after making the HPV vaccine free to young people. Dwindling access to abortion care was described to CTV News as a blind spot for the provincial government.

On Wednesday, the province’s recently appointed health minister disclosed that talks with Options for Sexual Health were ongoing, and that while she didn’t have a dollar figure attached to the talks, “they will have sustained funding” to keep their doors open.

Josie Osborne went on to make a full-throated commitment to abortion access in British Columbia.

“Government supports the rights of people to make the decisions about their bodies that they want to and I will defend that fiercely,” she said in a one-on-one interview with CTV News. “Abortion is a fundamental part of health care in the province of B.C., and we will make sure that it stays that way.”

Hall pointed out that one in three Canadian women will require abortion care in their lifetime for various reasons, and is urging the public to consider access to qualified providers as a basic aspect of reproductive health care.

“Unfortunately, there’s so much stigma placed on unintended pregnancy in our society that people don’t realize just how common it is,” she said. “We have four clinics in Vancouver and we’re full-time, busy every single day.”