The Morgentaler Clinic in Fredericton, N.B., which closed last July, is reopening under a new name and new management, as a “family practice” that offers a “full-scope of reproductive care, including abortions.”
Clinic 554’s new director is Adrian Edgar, a “transguy” who specializes not only in abortion but providing “primary care services” to people who self- identify as LGBTQ . He received his medical degree from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ont., in 2010 and practiced briefly in Vancouver’s inner city before returning to New Brunswick with “his partner and three dogs.” The facility manager is Valerie Edelman, a social worker.
The facility will kill preborn children up to 16 weeks and will charge between $700 and $850 per surgical abortion.
On top of abortion and offering a full range of contraceptive services, the Clinic 554 announced it is “excited” to offer “transgender, gender variant, and gender non-conforming children, youth and adults” with “hormone initiations and injections.”
Peter Ryan, New Brunswick Right to Life Association’s executive director, called the news “nothing short of a disaster for women’s health, and worse for the babies of our province.” Ryan said the facility erroneously bills itself providing “reproductive services” because most of what it does prevents or puts an end to reproduction. “Certainly when dead babies up to 16 weeks gestation are part of your menu of services, that’s as anti-reproductive as you can get,” he said.
The media downplayed the fact the facility will do abortions. The Global News headline was “Former Morgentaler Clinic in Fredericton to reopen as health centre.” CBC headlined their story, “New health centre opening in former Morgentaler clinic.” Ryan said “an abortion clinic is still an abortion clinic.”
Clinic 554 is the result of an online fundraising campaign led by Reproductive Justice New Brunswick and the Fredericton Youth Feminist which collected more than $125,000 to help launch the facility.
Jesse Taylor, spokesman for the Reproductive Justice NB, said the group wants to meet with Health Minister Victor Boudreau to discuss funding abortion in private facilities such as Clinic 554. Last year, the new Liberal government of New Brunswick rescinded funding restrictions on abortions carried out in hospitals.
