New Brunswick’s new Liberal government has eliminated the legal restriction on public funding for procedural abortions outside hospitals.
The cabinet order swept away the decades-old rule — a single sentence in the provincial Regulation 84-20, first put in place to block a Fredericton clinic from offering the service.
Premier Susan Holt was applauded by members of her cabinet and caucus, and dozens of women who fought the restriction for years, as she brandished a copy of the order.
“Our team is proud to take this one small step,” she said.
“I want to acknowledge the people who have done the work over the last 40 years, pushing for this constantly, making sure it didn’t get forgotten [and] it was always on the radar.”
Premier Susan Holt announced Thursday that her government has approved changes to Regulation 84-20, which will allow Medicare to cover the cost of surgical abortions performed outside of hospitals.
Holt said health officials will now work with the New Brunswick Medical Society and the province’s two health authorities to work out how physicians to offer the service more widely across the province.
Currently, Medicare only funds procedural abortions in hospitals, and only three hospitals — two in Moncton and one in Bathurst — offer it.
The regulatory restriction was adopted by one of Holt’s Liberal predecessors as premier, Frank McKenna, in his attempts to block Dr. Henry Morgentaler from offering the service at a downtown clinic he opened in 1994.
“He’s going to get the fight of his life,” McKenna vowed at the time.
Former clinic manager Simone Leibovitch said Thursday she didn’t believe she’d ever see the regulation changed to eliminate the restriction.
“When you fight and fight and fight, you just get worn out,” said Leibovitch, who oversaw the shutdown of the clinic in 2014.
“It’s a great day,” she said. “My question is: where do we go from here? Let’s get it going.”
The Morgentaler clinic later reopened as Clinic 554 in 2015, when Dr. Adrian Edgar took it over.
But he closed the clinic in February, saying it was no longer sustainable financially without Medicare funding the abortions he provided there.
Edgar said Thursday that the change to the regulation allows him to look at providing the service again, though he said it may not happen in the same building.
Harini Sivalingam of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, which is suing the province over the regulation, was at Holt’s news conference and told reporters the organization will likely withdraw the lawsuit soon.