MEDIA RELEASE
16 June 2009 Abortion Law Reform Association of NZ

Abortion Law Needs to Match Abortion Practice

“The annual abortion figures just issued by Statistics New Zealand show a levelling off in abortion numbers since the peak in 2003 although the reasons for this are not fully understood” Dr. Margaret Sparrow, the president of the Abortion Law Reform Association said today. “Possible explanations are the greater use of contraception including emergency contraception, and responsible sex education although the decrease is across all age groups so it may be reflecting the economic pressures on families. We simply do not know.”

“We should be grateful that New Zealand women have safe reproductive choices,” she said. “And we should enshrine such choice in the law.”

“We must also be thankful women are not dying from backstreet abortions or having to travel to Australia by their thousands – as they did in the 1970s.”

Critics of current abortion practice like to say the numbers are too high, Dr. Sparrow said. But rather than try to lower them by seeking better access to contraception and sex education, they want more women to be denied access to abortion.

“If application of the law is tightened, or abortions are banned, as the group Right to Life is seeking in its ongoing court case, these numbers might well drop even further, but not because fewer women would be getting abortions.”

Dr Sparrow said that in the months after the current law was passed in 1977 (and before it was amended), the number of legal abortions performed in New Zealand were roughly halved, but the numbers of women travelling to Australia for the procedure skyrocketed.

As the Royal Commission on Contraception, Sterilisation and Abortion wrote in its 1977 report: “It would seem that a woman who is determined to obtain an abortion will pursue her purpose.”

For more information about NZ’s abortion laws, visit: www.alranz.org

ENDS

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