Appointment of doctors challenged

Press, 17 April 1980, Page 23

Appointment of doctors challenged

The Abortion Law Reform Association in Christchurch expressed deep concern yesterday that doctors known to have anti-abortion views have been reappointed as certifying consultants. Miss Sandra Legge, secretary of the association said that the doctors mentioned had publicly acknowledged thCir membership or association, with the Society for the .Protection of the Unborn :thild.

' “in Canterbury alone, three .doctors, namely Messrs K. D. Drayton, P. vZ Cotter, and J, A. K. Cunningham, who is vociferously anti-abortion, .signed a highly emotive letter in ‘The Press’ of October -12, 1977, upholding the aims pf S.R.U.CZ to ‘protect our unborn children ?fom. death in the guise of

social reform’,” Miss Legge said.

Three other certifying consultants were also known to have S.P.U.C. affiliation, she said.

The association had expressed its concern to Mrs Vivian Boyd, the chairman of the Abortion Supervisory Committee.

“We dreW Mrs Boyd’s attention to section 30, subsection five of the Contraception, Sterilisation, and Abortion Act, and suggested that the doctors’ appointments were in breach of the tenor of the act.”

“What criteria apply to those at the other extreme who have openly declared their anti-abortion views and have been reappointed? This situation appears most in-l equitable and requires clari-i fication,” she said. I