Woman denied service at abortion clinic, alleges being fat-shamed

A Montreal woman says she was discriminated against after she claims an abortion clinic fat-shamed and neglected her when she went to make an appointment.

“I cancelled my appointment myself because it was the second time I called. They said ‘we can’t help you, you’re going to have to go to a big surgeon for this because you’re overweight. We can’t assist you at this clinic. The medication we’re going to give you won’t work, it won’t complete the whole thing,” paraphrased Micailla Gladue.

“You can’t do that to somebody and say ‘look you’re too fat I can’t help you.'”

Experts say there’s no strict weight limit on abortion by medication, but there might be fewer issues for surgical abortion.

“It’s not so much the procedure but the sedation which some people in [the] clinic will but limits based on BMI, now body mass index is not a perfect proxy but there are some concerns that risks of sedation without in a non-hospital setting without an anesthesiologist may be a little too risky when the procedure could be done in a hospital,” explained Dr. Genevive Bois, abortion provider at Centre de Sante des Femmes de Montreal.

“We should have really clear protocols in place to make sure women are treated with dignity and respect.”

Gladue says accessing adequate healthcare as a larger-sized woman is difficult and she doesn’t want other women to go through the same.

“When a woman wants to access care and have to go through such a stressful and painful thing such as an abortion she should not be pushed away because of the way she is because of how much she weighs. It doesn’t matter,” she explained.

“It’s not a matter if you can have an abortion or not. Everybody can have an abortion. There’s never a time when an abortion is too risky continuing a pregnancy is always riskier no matter where your baseline risk is,” added Dr. Bois.

“If there are any limitations placed on the procedure, whether they should be for health issues for weight or whatever, it should be made very clear in advance whether it be to put it up on the website. I don’t think everybody does that, we provide abortions in a community clinic setting if you have X, Y, Z conditions we might not be able to call us so we can discuss if our setting is best for us.”

CityNews reached out to Clinique Médicale Fémina which provided the following statement:

“We are really sorry if the [patient] was compelled to think that our clinic staff was fat-shaming her. All our interventions are directed towards providing safe abortions. For a surgical abortion, obesity itself, but more obesity class three (Body Mass Index (BMI) of 40 and over) can make the procedure more risky,” said Dr. Claude Paquin, co-owner, Clinique Médicale Fémina in a statement.

“We are a free-standing clinic, not a hospital. We work without the presence of a respiratory therapist or an anesthetist. Communication is everything and here we probably failed to validate with her the understanding of the complete information. We respect the feelings of that specific patient and again we are sorry if she felt bad after her phone call at our clinic.”

Dr. Paquin also says that the clinic asks all patients their weight to calculate their body mass index, if this equals 40 or more, they will not immediately book a date for an abortion, a follow-up appointment with a doctor will be booked to evaluate the feasibility of the procedure.