The law on abortion

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33541, 23 May 1974, Page 12

The law on abortion

The law relating to abortions in New Zealand is part of the Crimes Act of 1961, sections 182 to 187. Substantially, it remains unchanged since 1893. The maximum penalty for aborting a woman in the 1893 act was imprisonment for life with hard labour; the hard labour was removed in 1954; in 1961 the maximum sentence was reduced to 14 years imprisonment. The sole ground for abortion in 1893 and in 1961 was preservation of the life of the mother. In practice, a decision on abortion takes into account the physical and sometimes the mental health of the woman. If for no other reason than to make the law relevant to practice, the act should be revised.

Those who draft such a law and those who debate it should find guidance and evidence in the Lane report on abortion in Britain. A summary of the conclusions of the report is given on this page today. In New Zealand as elsewhere, change in public attitudes has brought about calls for changes in abortion laws. But there are two other important relevant factors which make 1974 different from 1893. One is advances in medical techniques, which make an abortion a far less hazardous operation than it once was; the other is the growing awareness of world population problems, which might seem to some justification for the view that children who are born should be wanted.

One common argument against changing the law is that doctors interpret the present law wisely, governed by their own codes. But no section of society should be beyond the law; and the protection of doctors and patients demands that the law should be changed. Some doctors, who look to the mental health of a woman in deciding whether she should have an abortion, create an unnecessary situation. A woman of sound mental health wanting an abortion now would have to pretend that she is of unsound mental health or will become of unsound mental health unless she does have an abortion.

A revision of the present law would consist of revising the grounds on which abortions could be legal. Legal abortions would not belong under the Crimes Act. A rewriting of the law is required, not a patching.