Abortion debate revived

Press, 4 November 1989, Page 24

Abortion debate revived

A bill to amend the Contraception, Sterilisation and Abortion Act has been seized on by opponents of abortion as a chance to refight battles of a decade ago. PETER LUKE reports from Parliament on the difficulty the bill’s sponsors will have trying to restrict the debate to one of health and equity.

SPARE a thought for the over-worked conscience of your local member of Parliament. Few years have produced as many conscience issues in Parliament as 1989. With the exception of homosexual law reform, most of the other issues to occasion hot debates on morality and trigger talk of social decay have had a run this year.

Alcohol came first. Politicians wrestled mightily over this one, before deciding at what age liquor could be bought, and what sort of liquor, and where. Gambling seemed set to be the big moral issue of the second half of the year. Politicians must soon decide to what extent they will protect New Zealand from the effects of casinos.

Conscience issues, by their very nature, pose the rights of the individual against the demands of society. Abortion is easily the most complicated and controversial of these issues, because of the added dimension of the legal status of the foetus.

One year out from the next General Election, the abortion issue has re-emerged in Parliament. Oh October 19 an amendment to the Contraception, Sterilisation, and Abortion Act received its first reading. Its sponsor, the Minister of Health, Ms Clark, was at pains that evening to point out that her bill does not touch the grounds for abortion. But in making the procedures for obtaining abortions more accessible — as the bill aims to do — its passage through Parliament will revive memories of the titanic struggles of a decade ago.

The bill takes New Zealand’s abortion law in the opposite direction to recent moves made in the United States. Since the famous Roe v. Wade case in 1973, which said that the United States Constitution protected the right to an abortion, anti-abor-tion campaigners had battled furiously to overturn the decision.

It was no coincidence that “Operation Rescue” protests outside abortion clinics in targeted United States cities should have reached their peak just before the presidential election. Both George Bush and Michael Dukakis personally opposed abortion; but while Mr Dukakis indicated he would not overturn the Roe v. Wade principle, Mr Bush made it clear that he opposed abortion except in cases of rape or incest, or when the life of the mother was threatened.

In some regions of the United States, such as the southern Bible Belt, this firmly established Mr Bush’s credentials as the representative of “mainstream” America.

Earlier this year the United States Supreme Court did review Roe v. Wade. Although it stopped short of reversing the right to an abortion, the Supreme Court did uphold most of a restrictive Missouri law. This state law had banned the use of public funds or public hospitals for abortions, and said that doctors must first decide' whether a foetus was sufficiently developed to survive outside the womb. Other states were cleared to pass similar laws by the 5-4 Supreme Court decision, and President Bush is likely to seek a constitutional amendment to ban abortions with a few exceptions.

The effect would be to drastically reduce the number of United States abortions — about 1.5 million a year at present. The Operation Rescue activists in New Zealand have clearly been inspired by the United States and Australian examples.

Their tactics are similar to those used in Atlanta, Georgia, last year, where hundreds of protesters were arrested for blocking access to abortion clinics, amid allegations of police brutality. Ironically many of the Atlanta city officials who authorised the arrests had themselves been on the receiving end of police violence during the Civil Rights protests several decades earlier.

Anti-abortion protests are not new in New Zealand. When the Lyndhurst Clinic opened in Christchurch in 1986 it was picketed, and abortion was a divisive issue on the West Coast that year.

Anti-abortion protest in New Zealand is unlikely to reach the intensity it did last year in parts of the United States. This is due partly to the far greater strength of Protestant fundamentalism and Catholicism in the United States, and the ability of cultural issues to play a key part in politics there.

American anti-abortionists also have a bigger target to aim at. In spite of claims that the present New Zealand law amounts to abortion on demand, the United States abortion rate is triple that here.

Parliament has already shown caution dealing with one conscience issue this year, by refusing to lower the legal drinking age to 18. Politicians’ responses to the C.S.A. Amendment Bill will de-

pend partly on how effectively anti-abortion and moral campaigners lobby, but even more on how convincingly the bill is presented as an issue of health and equity and not an issue of abortion.

The bill does two things. First, it sets up a new procedure for gaining approval for an abortion. Instead of a system of certifying consultants, two doctors could authorise an abortion as long as one was an obstetrician or gynaecologist. Second, it removes the present restriction on supplying contraceptive advice and contraceptives to ' those under 16 years of age.

Both changes flow from the reports of the Abortion Supervisory Committee, which is the Parliamentary watchdog on the C.S.A. Act.

In 1986, for example, the committee argued that a reduction in the number of unwanted pregnancies could occur only “by a change in public opinion regarding sexual behaviour, commencing with education of the young to inculcate realistic attitudes and knowledge of their own sexuality.”

The Minister of Women’s Affairs, Mrs Shields, made it clear that, in addition to unwanted pregnancy, this clause of the bill

was prompted by A.I.D.S. and other sexually-transmitted diseases. “This is a matter of life and death,” she told Parliament, signalling the intention to “sell” this part of the bill as a vital public health issue.

The abortion clauses in the bill were prompted by long-standing complaints that the system of certifying consultants made it difficult for some women — especially rural women — to gain access to legal abortions. “It is important to ensure that women in areas outside the metropolitan centres have equitable access to the services available under the law and within the terms of the law,” said Ms Clark.

An Opposition supporter of the bill put this argument succinctly.“It is not an abortion debate. It is a debate about equity,” said Mrs Jenny Shipley (Ashburton).

“I have been ashamed to watch the women of the West Coast of the South Island have to beg and scrape for the rights that they are entitled to under this legislation.” Opponents argue that this will take New Zealand to the brink of abortion on demand, as the twodoctor requirement would permit women to shop around until they

found a malleable doctor.

A long-time anti-abortion campaigner, Mrs Marilyn Pryor, argued that the “rhetoric about suffering and trauma is going a bit far,” and that the 171 certifying consultants did cover the country.

Arguments of. health and equity will not convince politicians such as Mr Graeme Lee (Nat., Coromandel) who views the bill as a moral anti-family issue.

“The amendment bill also restarts an abortion debate that is not wanted by thinking members of Parliament or the public,” he argues. The suddenness with which the bill was introduced was an acknowledgement of the sensitivity of the issues. Fully two years ago, the Labour Party’s women’s policy had promised to review the certifying consultant system. That document also promised to review the grounds for abortion, which the bill does not do. For this reason the bill, while alienating Mr Lee and his moral constituency, will not satisfy the pro-abortion lobby.

The Women’s National Abortion Action Campaign was caught on the hop by the bill. Hours before its introduction it issued a statement calling for Mrs Shields to be sacked because she had not moved on the issue. It claimed later that the bill simply tinkered with the present cumbersome system, meaning that well-heeled, articulate, urban women would still have greater access to abortion.

The bill passed its first reading by the surprisingly easy-margin of 52 votes to 16, with the opponents coming from both sides of the House.

This vote provides little indication of the bill’s chance of success, as a number of politicians will support the contraceptive changes, but not the abortion clauses.

The original C.S.A. Bill was an unhappy experience for those who played a key role. The National member of Parliament for North Shore, Mr George Gair, was a strong liberal on the issue. He then proposed that two doctors should be able to authorise abortions, similar to the provisions of the present bill. Mr Gair’s liberal views, however, soured his relationship with the Prime Minister, Sir Robert Muldoon. The debate in 1977 focused ultimately on the issue of abortion itself. Members of Parliament opposed to abortion will attack the present bill on the same grounds. For it to survive even largely unscathed, the bill’s backers must persuade their uncommitted colleagues that, in spite of the fact that it is called the Contraception, Sterilisation and Abortion Amendment Bill, the argument is one of health and equity and not a revival of moral arguments about abortion.