A lawsuit against the New Brunswick government over access to abortion is officially over.
The Canadian Civil Liberties Association has discontinued the legal action that was intended to force the province to fund procedural abortions in clinics outside hospitals.
The case was launched four years ago but became redundant on Nov. 7, when newly elected Premier Susan Holt announced her cabinet had repealed a section of a provincial regulation that prevented funding clinic abortions.
A consent order to discontinue the case, agreed to by the CCLA and the province, was filed with the Court of King’s Bench on Jan. 7 and approved by a judge on Jan. 9.
Before the change, Medicare could only fund procedural abortions in hospitals, and only three hospitals — two in Moncton and one in Bathurst — offered it.
Holt and Health Minister John Dornan said, when the ban was repealed, that the province would reclassify the procedure as minor surgery, revise the fee structure for doctors performing it and work with them to make it more widely available.
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.
The consent order ending the case awarded no legal costs to either side in the dispute.
It brings to a close a decades-long legal saga that began when the Liberal government of Frank McKenna adopted the regulation in an effort to block Dr. Henry Morgentaler from performing abortions in a Fredericton clinic he opened in 1994.
According to Martha Paynter, a reproductive health expert at the University of New Brunswick, 70 per cent of abortions in the province are now done via mifepristone, a prescribed medication, meaning a shrinking demand for procedural abortions.
