Grassroots organization got free prescription contraception in B.C. — now pulling for national PharmaCare plan
Photo courtesy of AccessBC Campaign.
On April 1, 2023, British Columbia became the first Canadian province to offer free prescription contraception, thanks in no small part to AccessBC, a grassroots campaign co-founded by Teale Phelps Bondaroff and Devon Black in January 2017.
The pair founded the campaign to petition the BC government for free prescription contraception. Now that B.C. has implemented free prescription contraception, the campaign is still far from over. To support universal access to free prescription contraception across Canada, AccessBC is currently organizing a letter-writing campaign to have the Canadian Senate adopt the national PharmaCare Act (Bill C-64).
Bill C-64 was introduced in February 2024 by the Honourable Mark Holland, Minister of Health, and aims to implement the foundational principles for the initial phase of universal pharmacare in Canada, and “describes the Government of Canada’s intent to work with provinces and territories (PTs) to provide universal, single-payer coverage for a number of contraception and diabetes medications.”
AccessBC’s briefing paper lists the benefits associated with access to free universal prescription contraception, including empowering people, promoting equality, promoting health outcomes, creating a good education policy by normalizing conversations about sexual and reproductive health, and saving money.
According to Phelps Bondaroff, AccessBC grew out of a conversation about access to contraception among friends at his kitchen table.
“That conversation evolved from a frustrated conversation between friends at a kitchen table to a province-wide campaign that successfully advocated for free contraception,” Phelps Bondaroff said in an interview with the Martlet.
What began as a Twitter account developed, over the course of seven years, into a full-scale grassroots campaign with 80 volunteers across Canada.
Sara Eftekhar, a Nurse Practitioner, got involved with AccessBC while working at a clinic providing medical abortions to young women who had preventable pregnancies but were unable to afford prescription contraception.
“I thought that I was working in a backwards healthcare system where I was providing treatment rather than actually preventing pregnancy, and so I looked online to see what I could do about it,” Eftekhar said in an interview with the Martlet.
Free prescription contraception also offers the opportunity for patients to try different methods of birth control without concern about which contraceptives are covered by their insurance, Eftekhar explained.
Syd Grischow, a master’s student at UVic, told the Martlet that although the province has free prescription contraception, many people are unaware of how or where to access it, and there is also a lack of resources providing the information.
“What we need is a flowchart, like a ‘choose your own adventure’ type of situation,” Grischow said.
Grischow added that although pharmacists can prescribe contraception, many people may feel uncomfortable discussing it with a pharmacist in such an open setting, creating another barrier to its easy access.
Beyond preventing pregnancy, prescription contraception has a variety of other uses, including treating hormonal acne, menstrual regulation, treating chronic gynecological conditions such as polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) and endometriosis, or as part of gender-affirming care.
In a statement to the Martlet, the Ministry of Health stated that in the first year of the free prescription contraception program, 226 000 people accessed contraceptives, and approximately 252 000 people in the first 15 months.
The Ministry of Health also provided a breakdown by type of contraceptives for the first 15 months of the program, during which 152 200 patients accessed hormonal pills, 48 200 accessed hormonal IUDs, 9 500 patients had hormonal injections, 7 500 received a copper IUD, 7 400 had an implant, and 2 000 received a vaginal ring.
Phelps Bondaroff told the Martlet that it is important that Bill C-64 passes without any amendments, as changes could result in further delays in implementing the policy.
“We need the bill to be adopted by Parliament quickly so provinces have time to implement the policy,” Phelps Bondaroff said. “What we’ve heard is that some parties — particularly the Conservative party — are not interested in this policy and they would actually unwind it if elected, and so there’s a fair bit of chance that if there’s a change of government in the next federal election, that we could see all this amazing national work completely undone by a party that doesn’t seemingly care about reproductive justice or access to important life-saving medicine.”
Eftekhar echoed this concern. “My biggest fear is that after all this hard work that AccessBC and other organizations and researchers have done on bringing the free prescription contraception policy forward, that it doesn’t go nationally, and that it actually gets completely stopped,” she said.
The Canadian Senate is set to return in the fall, but AccessBC’s letter-writing campaign will continue to run until the senate adopts Bill C-64, said Phelps Bondaroff.
