Abortions must be approved by two doctor]s (referred to as “certifying consultants” thin the legislation) ; one of whom must be a gynecologist representational. Counseling Is optional if the woman desires it, but Is not mandatory within current abortion law. There Is no statutory definition of fetus or embryos as an “unborn child” within New Zealand abortion law. History Abortion was criminals in New Zealand by the UK Offences against the Person Act 1861, adopted in New Zealand In 1866.
Laws enacted around this time acknowledged the danger to women of undergoing an Illegal abortion. The 1893 Criminal Code Act made the punishments for Illegal abortion a maximum of seven years Imprisonment or the women and life for the doctor. Illegal abortions continued to occur, however, and it was generally understood that abortions performed in good faith to protect the life of the woman or her mental or physical health would not lead to prosecution. Abortions were illegal until the late sass. [1] The 1936 Committee of Enquiry headed by D.
G. McMillan reported that one in five pregnancies in New Zealand resulted In abused by practitioners of illegal abortion. In the sass, the discovery of antibiotics made infection less likely, which also meant some doctors were more likely to assist. Historically, the death rate was high. Statistics of women who went to hospital after an abortion went wrong show that in 1934 at least 42 women died. Public debate increased following the legalization of abortion in Britain in 1967 and in South Australia in 1969.
The legalization of abortion in Australia enabled New Zealand women who could afford to travel to have abortions in Australia. After a Royal Commission on New Zealand abortion law, Parliament passed the Contraception, Sterilization, and Abortion Act 1977. The law caused much confusion over the demarcation of certain restrictions as to when an abortion would e legal, and led to a series of amendments that were passed in the following year to clarify the Parliament’s intentions. Status of the Unborn Child Bill 1983 and pro-life schism In 1983, pro-lifers lobbied Parliament to try to pass a pro-life private members bill, the Status of the Unborn Child Bill. It was defeated 48-30. The Status of the Unborn Child Bill caused a schism within the New Zealand pro-life movement. Christopher SPUD (now Right to Life New Zealand) was expelled from SPUD (now Voice for Life) for continuing to advocate passage of the Status of the Unborn Child Bill, when National SPUD had decided that there was insufficient support to do so within Parliament, and had decided on incremental anti-abortionist tactics.
Profile Action and Operation Rescue: 1989-1994 In the eighties, New Zealand pro-lifers frequently followed the lead of their United States counterparts. For example, Chicago-based conservative pro-life activist Joseph Scheduled visited New Zealand in the mid-eighties, prompting the formation of namesake “Pro-Life Action Groups” in Christopher and Wellington. In the late eighties, conservative pro-life activist Mary O’Neill was largely responsible for importing Randall Terry’s direct action “Operation Rescue” pro-life tactic to New Zealand, but it faced resistance.
In Christopher and Wellington, pro-choice activists mobiles against Operation Rescue New Zealand, and ultimately, family stresses, heavy fines and lack of more conservative pro-life support ended the existence of Operation Rescue (its parent organization is now known as Operation Save America). Contemporary status of abortion debate Thereafter, Parliament served as an occasional venue for debates about the composition of the Abortion Supervisory Committee, when appointments and expiry attest for its membership have come and gone.
Unlike the United States, abortion access has steadily expanded, and both pro-choice and pro-life groups have demolished. While abortion has not been wholly discriminative as LORAN (deportation Law Reform Association of New Zealand) wishes, nor is abortion access Current Parliamentary status of abortion debate In the most recent (49th New Zealand Parliament, 2008-2011) New Zealand parliamentary vote on the composition of the Abortion Supervisory Committee (7 April 2011), anti-abortion Maori Party co-leader Tirana Atria moved that an anti- abortion Pacific Island doctor, Dry Ate Mall, be appointed to the ACS.
The resultant vote was 70-30 against Ms Atria’s motion, with twenty absences or abstentions. Altogether, twenty six National Party MSP and four Maori Party MSP voted for the addition of Dry Mall, while all Labor and ACT MSP and several National Party MSP as well as Independents Chris Carter and Hone Haywire, and United Future MM Peter Dunne voted against the motion, which was lost In 1999 the late Garage White was found guilty and Jailed for tunneling into an abortion clinic in a failed attempt to blow it up. White later drowned.
Omnipresent/Minifying and introduction of medical abortion: 2003- In April 2003 Justice Durries clarified parts of the Contraception, Sterilization and Abortion Act 1977 relating to “performing” medical abortions so women who wish to have medical abortions must take medications in a licensed facility but don’t need to remain there between taking the two sets of tablets which are taken 48 hours apart. Women also don’t need to stay in the facility until the expulsion of the fetus completes the abortion ; ; The Contraception, Sterilization and Abortion Act 1977
The core legislation pertaining to abortion is the Contraception, Sterilization, and Abortion Act 1977, and it enacted parallel specifications through amendment of the Guardianship Act 1968 (retained in the Care of Children Act 2004) and Section AAA of the Crimes Act 1961. These provisions enable women to undergo confidential medical consultation after they have seen two certifying consultant medical practitioners.
Current New Zealand law allows for abortions to be performed for the following reasons, providing the abortion is approved by two certifying consultants ND the pregnancy is less than 20 weeks old: * to save the life of the woman (even if after 20 weeks) * to preserve the physical health of the woman * to preserve the mental health of the woman * fetal impairment * in cases of incest Other factors which may be considered, but are not in themselves grounds for abortion, are: * cases of rape * certain social factors (e. G. , the girl’s age in a teenage pregnancy).
New Zealand has no parental notification restrictions on under-sixteen access for abortion. In 2003, anti-abortionists attempted to introduce such restrictions into the Care of Children Act 2004, but their move was heavily defeated in New Sealant’s Parliament. As the annual statistics for the Abortion Supervisory Committee have repeatedly noted, New Zealand. The high numbers of abortions in New Zealand for mental health grounds have led pro-lifers to express concerns that the mental health exception is being used to allow abortion on demand.
By contrast, LORAN notes that successive abortion-related case law has preserved the status quo of partial disintermediation and liberal terms of abortion access for most New Zealand women who need an abortion. In 2010 Steve Chadwick, a former MM in the Labor Party, proposed an Abortion Reform Bill to take abortion out of the Crimes Act. The anti-abortion organization Voice for Life opposes the Bill, which LORAN supports. After Chadwick was unable to return to Parliament after the New Zealand general election 2011, LORAN and its parliamentary supporters are trying to find a new sponsor for the proposed bill.
Abortion Supervisory Committee The Abortion Supervisory Committee collects statistics on the numbers of terminations performed each year, and for what reason under the terms of the Contraception, Sterilization, and Abortion Act 1977. It reported that there was 8,511 abortions performed in New Zealand in 2003. According to 2003 figures by Statistics New Zealand, there were 21. 0 abortions per 1000 women. This equates to roughly 247 per 1000 known pregnancies.
Split amongst ethnicity in 2002 the highest rates were amongst Asian women (374), followed by MГROR (245),Pacific Island women (243) and European women (209). New Sealant’s abortion rate (number of abortions per 1000 women aged 15-44 years) is slightly below Australia’s (22. 2), and the United States (21. 3), but above Japan’s (13. 8), Finland and Scotland (both 10. 9) and many European countries. Since 2003 abortion clinics have been able to administer medical abortions. (Taking minifying/omnipresent to cause the embryo to dislodge from the uterine wall, and a prostaglandin supplement to expel the remains. Abortion debate today In New Zealand today, abortion is not a major political issue. The main pro- choice lobby group is Abortion Law Reform Association of New Zealand (LORAN), which favors the complete disintermediation of abortion in New Zealand, but if that does not occur wants to have socio-economic reasons made a reason for obtaining a legal abortion. The Women’s National Abortion Action Campaign, Action for Abortion Rights and Mothers for Choice are other, younger pro-choice organizations.
The main pro-life lobby groups are Right to Life, Family Life International, and Voice for Life, which favors reforming New Collaboration law to make it more restrictive. In recent years, it has lobbied for a “parental consent” law, which would require a girl under 16 years of age to obtain the consent of her parents before having an abortion. Voice for Life has also tried to lobby parliament to alter the composition of the Abortion Supervisory Committee in the hope of limiting the number of abortions performed on mental health grounds.
In 2004, Parliament debated legislation related to amendments to the Care of Children Act 2004, which would have required anyone under 16 years of age to notify their parents before having an abortion. No parental notification or consent laws are in place for women seeking abortions. National MM for Cleveland Judith Collins was the primary mover of this amendment, supported by by LORAN, the New Zealand Medical Association and New Zealand College of General Practitioners.
A NZ Herald Digital showed that 71% of New Slanderer believed parents should be informed about whether or not their child was to have an abortion, with 60% believing this should be legally mandatory. This “parental notification” legislation was heavily defeated, as the New Zealand Medical Association and New Zealand College of General Practitioners objected that the abrogation of medical confidentiality would endanger pregnant incest survivors, and/or those within similar dysfunctional families and abusive parents. Another pro-life amendment was also defeated.
It required the Abortion Supervisory Committee to collect statistics on how many abortions come from pregnancies caused by incest, and what happened to those young women after their abortion. Again, Parliament rejected this on the basis of abrogation of medical confidentiality for no evidence- based purpose. Voice for Life cited material from the US National Right to Life Committee and other US pro-life groups, while the Abortion Law Reform Association of New Zealand similarly used material from the National Abortion Rights Action League and other US pro-choice organizations.
During the recent 48th New Zealand Parliament, former Kiwi Party list MM Gordon Copeland had a private members bill, the Contraception, Sterilization and Abortion (Informed Consent) Amendment Bill, ran from the ballot. It was based on an Australian Capital Territory ‘informed consent’ piece of legislation, since repealed, and was defeated on a voice vote in Parliament.
Copeland has since been voted out of Parliament, as he did not secure a constituency seat at the New Zealand general election held in 2008 and his Kiwi Party polled well under the five percent threshold under the AMP framework in the Electoral Act 1993. The Kiwi Party has ceased to exist and Copeland is now a member of the Conservative Party of New Zealand, a religious social conservative party that is to represented in the New Zealand Parliament. It supports “parental notification” for adolescent abortions. Ђ” Right to Life New Zealand and court cases against the Abortion Supervisory committee: 2005-2011 A roadside sign in the South Island advocating pro-life. Right to Life launched a court case against the Abortion Supervisory Committee, accusing it of not sufficiently regulating abortion by allowing broad interpretation of the mental health exception. However, the Abortion Supervisory Committee appealed this to the New Zealand Court of Appeal after a High Court decision supported some f Right to Life New Sealant’s points, which led the Abortion Supervisory Committee to appeal those findings.
