Pregnancy test ‘an affront’

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32425, 12 October 1970, Page 2

Pregnancy test ‘an affront’

(Special Correspondent N.Z.P.AJ APIA (Western Samoa), October 9. Pregnancy test requirements for Western Samoan single women entering New Zealand have been criticised by the Maori Organisation on Human Rights.

The organisation has written to the National Council of Women in Western Samoa giving support “in opposing such insulting discrimination.”

The Maori group wrote that it believed expensive pregnancy tests were not 100 per cent accurate, and could lead to needless injustice and mental suffering. "We are only too aware that other forms of discrimination still exist and are practised, both with regard to immigration and to living conditions in New Zealand. “We shall continue to do all we can to oppose them and put an end to them, and we believe that growing numbers of New Zealanders are uniting in this aim,” they said..

In Apia this week the first woman member of Parliament and Deputy Speaker of

the House (Mrs Taulapapa Faimaala) said that the indignity of the tests was unjustified, and she asked the New Zealand Minister of Immigration to supply figures supporting his contention that considerable numbers of single Samoan women emigrating to New Zealand were pregnant.

Any such immigrants could be sent back to Samoa before having their babies, but the dignity of Samoa’s womanhood, and indeed all its people, should not be afronted by the present requirement, she said at a meeting of 500 members of the National Council of Women.

the meeting resolved to continue representations to the Government for discussions between the Samoan and New Zealand Prime Ministers to end “the insulting and disgraceful requirement.”