Birth control teaching urged

Press, 14 January 1982, Page 4

Birth control teaching urged

Facilities for contraception education should be provided at the proposed free standing abortion clinic in Christchurch, according to a North' Canterbury Hospital Board member.

Mrs Judy Waters told the board's health services com-’ mittee yesterday that having an abortion was "closing the stable door after the horse has gone."

She said the board should push for more education on contraception because “many young girls have misconceptions about contraception.” The board’s medical super-intendent-in-chief, Dr R. A. Fairgray, said he agreed with Mrs W’aters if funding was available..

"We cannot provide staff

for counselling or education, let alone terminations, if there is no funding,” he said. Three possible sites for the clinic have been chosen. Priority would be given to using ’ part of the Christchurch Dental Nurses’ Training Unit in Colombo Street. The board will also consider using the Lyndhurst Nurses’ Hostel in’ Bealey Avenue, but this would need town-planning approval.

The third site is 42 Gracefield Avenue, which houses medical staff. This would need a lot of structural alterations, as well as townplanning approval.

A search for further alternatives would be made if the dental clinic and

nurses’ hostel were unavailable.

The board is preparing a request to the Health Department for interim funding for extra staff needed to meet the extra abortions the board is performing. A report by the board's chairman, Mr T. C. Grigg, on a meeting with representatives of the Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child said that the society wanted improved counselling at the clinic. The society also asserted that the provision of a free standing unit was seen as promoting abortions and would be interpreted by the public as tacit support for abortion on demand.

The society presented

three petitions, with a total of 6384 signatures, to the board.

Mrs Waters said that by providing the unit the board hoped to improve facilities for abortions not increase their number.

“Why should one portion of the board's patients have worse facilities than the other? People are going to have abortions anyway. We should provide safe facilities for them,'' she said. The committee’s chairman, Mrs L. C. Gardiner, said that a free standing clinic would improve the existing service, ease pressure on the staff, and allow more room at Christchurch Women’s Hospital “for the purpose for which it was built."