4 September 2019

ALRANZ Abortion Rights Aotearoa condemned Internal Affairs’ funding of non-professional anti-abortion ‘counselling’, as reported on RNZ this morning.

“How does influencing a private person’s private medical decisions ‘benefit the community’? This is wrong on so many levels,” said Terry Bellamak, ALRANZ National president.

“If the rules say COGS grants should not be given for services that duplicate government services, why are these anti-abortion ‘counselling’ groups being funded?

“How many other groups have missed out on funding that would have actually helped people in their communities because the money went to extremist busybodies?

“Pre- and post-abortion counselling, provided by professional, unbiased counsellors, is already available through DHB’s. On that basis alone, these grants should not have been made. But the report says these grants are funding untrained, unprofessional, ‘counselling’ by people with an ax to grind.

“How can we trust them to provide unbiased counselling when the stated purpose of their organisation is to convince individuals not to access abortion care? The report makes quite clear just how ‘unbiased’ the counselling people receive from these groups is likely to be.

“COGS should not be funding this. They should put the money toward services that benefit the whole community, rather than just a narrow group of people who want to co-opt other people’s decisions about their pregnancies.”

ALRANZ wants to reform New Zealand’s laws around abortion. Under New Zealand’s abortion laws, two certifying consultants must approve every abortion under a narrow set of grounds set out in the Crimes Act. Those grounds do not include rape, nor the most common reasons cited overseas: contraception failure and the inability to support a child.

Poll results show a majority of New Zealanders support the right to access abortion on request.

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