How One Canadian Grassroots Organization Organizes for Abortion Support
By Shannon Hardy
The climate around essential abortion healthcare has been increasingly tumultuous in North America, and while abortion is legal in Canada as of this writing, there are many barriers folks face in trying to access abortion care. Grassroots organizations, mutual aid funds, and care workers have been and will continue to be at the center of abortion access. Abortion Support Services Atlantic (ASSA), is one of the key stakeholders showing up for abortion access across Canada, and we’d like to share more about the ways we organize.
Who We Are
Abortion Support Services Atlantic (ASSA) is a mutual aid, grassroots organization in eastern Canada. We support people who need to access abortion care in all four of our Atlantic provinces, Newfoundland & Labrador, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island.
We offer non-medical support which includes rides and funding for things like gas if people have their own car, childcare, accommodations, and information on how to access abortion in each province. We also offer peer support by trained volunteers, usually via text.
ASSA has five co-ordinators: Social Media, two Volunteer Coordinators, Out-of-Province Logistics, and Education (me). I am also the founder of Abortion Support Services Atlantic.
We run as a non-hierarchical, mutual aid organization, meaning we are all on the same level, and we make decisions together based on our shared values and shared sense of social responsibilities. We know that there are many barriers to accessing abortion care in Canada, and we exist to help mitigate those barriers.
The decision to not become a not-for-profit organization does mean that we work without a budget or government support; our work is solely funded by small, private donations.
ASSA is almost exclusively focused on getting people what they need to access their abortion, and while we will show up to rallies or counter-protests or give interviews, we generally leave advocacy and policy to the organizations already doing that work, like Action Canada or Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada (ARCC).
We are very grateful to have amazing partners, like Action Canada, Hope Air and the National Abortion Federation of Canada, We couldn’t do all of the work we do without them. We also have strong relationships with our hospital termination units and our one standalone clinic.
*In Atlantic Canada, most abortions are done in hospitals, as the procedure is covered under our universal healthcare. Newfoundland & Labrador does have a free-standing clinic, the Athena Clinic, but folks still don’t pay, the clinic bills the province.
What We Do
Our work is about connecting people to the abortion care they need by providing logistical supports. This includes rides to and from appointments, money for gas, babysitting and accommodations, and/or information such as the self-referral phone number, explaining what an appointment might look like, etc.
If a person needs transportation help, this usually means the volunteer driver will pick them up at their house in the morning, drop them at their appointment, and then a nurse will call the volunteer to come back and pick them up when they are ready to go. Whether a support person can stay with the patient depends on the hospital/clinic. For instance, at the Athena Clinic, support people can stay but at the Victoria General in Halifax they can’t.
Transportation is probably the biggest barrier people encounter because our provinces are so huge, and abortions aren’t offered at every hospital, so we often support people who must travel 3-5 hours for their healthcare. In Newfoundland & Labrador, people on the west side of the island can travel up to 9 hours and people in northern parts of Canada will often have to fly into urban centres to access abortion care. This travel leads to a need for accommodations and sometimes babysitting, which we help people cover as well.
We also offer support to people whose pregnancy has progressed farther than the gestational limit for abortion in their province which means they need to travel to another province for abortion care. We work with other organizations to provide hotel stays, taxi and meal funding, and we specifically work with Hope Air to arrange free flights for the patient and their support person. If the person who is accessing abortion care does not have a support person to travel with them, ASSA can match them with a travel companion.
A Note About Trauma-Informed Care
In 2017, I created the Trauma-Informed Abortion Support training course and have now trained over 300 people across Canada (and once in Baltimore). The training is trauma-informed, not because abortion is traumatic, but because we know the barriers and unnecessary hoops people must jump through to access healthcare can be a traumatic experience. We also know that many times, folks have lived through other traumatic circumstances, that can be triggered by new experiences, such as navigating abortion healthcare. Our training helps volunteers understand how to take a trauma-informed approach to peer support and patient/volunteer interactions, and we encourage all care providers to learn about trauma-informed care.
A wonderful after-effect of my training adventures has been the creation of new abortion support groups across Canada, including Ottawa, northern Manitoba, and Saskatchewan.
Join Us in Showing Up for Abortion Access
In Canada, abortion is currently considered essential healthcare and, as such, doesn’t have any legal restrictions. Abortion is covered under the same legislation as all medical procedures, the Canada Health Act. It is also financially covered under all provincial and territorial healthcare plans. However, from geography to continued cultural stigma (and with the climate across the border in the United States), barriers still exist. ASSA is here to mitigate those barriers and make accessing abortion care as easy as possible.
We invite folks to follow our work, donate, and sign up for training here. We are also big fans of BADT’s Prerecorded Abortion Doula CE Courses for both Canada and the US.
Finally, if you are interested in organizing for abortion care or contributing to aid groups that already exist in your own local area, we suggest getting in contact with abortion or full-spectrum doulas who may be able to point you in the direction of organizations that already exist. We sometimes feel alone in this work but there are people across the globe involved in abortion support. I encourage you to do a quick search for abortion support/abortion doulas in your area, you'll probably be surprised who is out there.
Shannon Hardy, MSW, RSW is a therapist and consultant in trauma-informed practices and approaches in Kjipuktuk (Halifax), Nova Scotia, the unceded land of Mi’kma’ki. Shannon has worked in the field of sexual and reproductive health for 17 years. She is the co-founder of the Nova Scotia Doula Association (2006) and the founder and co-cordinator of Abortion Support Services Atlantic (2012).
In 2017, Shannon realized that there were no Canadian-based abortion support trainings available and created a training using her social work background, her knowledge of trauma-informed practices and approaches, and her experiences training as a birth doula.
Since her first training in April 2017, Shannon has trained over 300 abortion support people across Canada.
Shannon facilitates both abortion and non-abortion related trainings across Canada and is a frequent guest lecturer on trauma, consent, and organizational change.