Escort offer for abortion clinic visitors

Press, 18 January 1986, Page 9

Escort offer for abortion clinic visitors

Women going to Lyndhurst Hospital for abortions on Monday will be offered the services of an escort to help guide them through an anti-abortion picket. Anti-abortion groups in Christchurch have organised a protest for the opening of the termination-of-preg-nancy service at Lyndhurst Hospital, in Bealey Avenue. About 35 protesters are expected to congregate outside the hospital on Monday, dressed in white coats and carrying vacuum cleaners and buckets, as symbols of the “doctors and their instruments,” according to a spokesman for the Pro-life Action Group, Mr Bruce Joslen. The protesters are also expected to brandish placards bearing the names of the doctors performing the abortions, said Mr

Joslen. He said the protest would be peaceful. “There is not much we can do to show our disapproval ... we are not into yelling or screaming.” He hoped that the messages of the “doctors and their utensils” would say enough. Groups concerned about the possible anti-abortion protests have formed an alliance to support women entering the hospital and medical staff.

A member of the Health Alternatives for Women group (T.H.A.W.), Ms Christine Bird, said the alliance would offer an escort to any woman needing help to get to the hospital through the picket line. As well as physical assistance, the group would offer women and staff emotional

support. Ms Bird said people had called the T.H.A.W. office angry about the anti-abor-tionists’ intended protest. Anti-abortionists underestimated support for the doctors and nurses doing the abortions from the medical profession and the public, and also the anger at the tactics they (the anti-abor-tionists) resorted to, she said. However, delight at the completion of the new clinic was tempered by concern for women outside Christchurch without comparable facilities. “We are still getting calls from women with no facilities in their area or who are unable to get abortions because of extreme restrictions,” she said. The alliance had met with the Health Department’s

Abortion Supervisory Committee on Thursday, said Ms Bird. Concern about the paucity of abortion facilities in the South Island was shared.

Women from outside the Canterbury Hospital Board’s district are barred from using Christchurch’s abortion service because of funding problems. The medical superintend-ent-in-chief of the Canterbury Hospital Board, Dr Ross Fairgray, said prote: is seemed to be a part of modern life and provided they were peaceful he could accept them. However, if protesters outside Lyndhurst Hospital attempted to intimidate or restrict the entry of women or staff the police would be called.

The Hospital Board was

providing a service in accord with the law, and protest about the lawful actions of the board, medical staff and patients was inappropriate and unproductive, he said.

If protesters were really concerned, they should complain to Parliament, and seek a change of the law there.

Somd anti-abortion groups are angry about not being allowed to talk to members of the Abortion Supervisory ■Group when it visited Christchurch this week.

Dr Fairgray was not aware of the circumstances but said there was little

point in anti-abortionists taking their complaints to that committee, anyway. It had no executive authority, no control of finance and policy, and could only make recommendations to the Health Department. Doctors would have to decide if they wanted to take legal action about any allegation that might be written on protesters’ placards, said Dr Fairgray. About 750 abortions are expected to be performed at the hospital each year, three sessions a week, and five abortions a session. The number of abortions performed was expected to

meet the demand within the Canterbury Hospital Board area, said Dr Fairgray. The board had a budget and could perform a finite number of abortions a year. It could not provide abortion services for the whole of the South Island, although when possible it would extend its services.

Most hospital boards in the South Island provided their own abortion services, he said.

Lyndhurst Hospital will provide the service which until now has been provided at Christchurch Women’s Hospital. The opening of the hos-

pital has come after many years of lobbying by the board to get a free-standing abortion clinic.

In September, 1984, Lyndhurst Hospital, then an old people’s home, was chosen for the clinic.

Formal approval from the Health Department was gained in March last year and work began two months later, after the 22 elderly women residents were accommodated elsewhere.

The hospital has been the target of anti-abortion pickets, and some violence. In May, a Molotov cocktail was thrown at the building, causing minor damage.