The Medical Director for Clinic 554 welcomes research planned to look at abortion access challenges in New Brunswick.
The federal government announced $366,000 on Tuesday yesterday for a University of New Brunswick led study.
Dr. Adrian Edgar hopes this research will help fill gaps and force the government to listen to the stories of those affected, “I just applaud this research because I really hope it will do something to force the politicians of New Brunswick to wakeup.”
Dr. Edgar is excited for the project, “New Brunswick is the only place in the country that prohibits outpatient abortion access, despite the fact that we know as scientists, that it is safer in the community setting. It leads to less hospital admissions.”
The focus of the research will be mainly on work done at the Clinic between 2015 and 2020.
Clinic 554 announced in 2019 that it would be closing as the province refuses to fund abortion procedures outside of three public hospitals.
“I am hoping that with a legitimate study, this is a tri-University collaboration with the grassroots community organization from the province, led by the University of New Brunswick. I feel how can you listen to the stories that you are documenting in that format, and still pretend that the stories don’t exist. Right now, we are just experiencing a complete disconnect from government in the health region, between the reality on the ground and the services that are needed. I don’t know how many more times we can bang on the door before the government acknowledges that we have a serious deficiency of healthcare in New Brunswick. The barriers that exist here are unique and unacceptable, and unconstitutional. We are just trying from every different angle to let government know this is really preposterous. Maybe once we finally see the picture, government will not be able to ignore the rights of New Brunswickers,” Dr. Edgar says.
