The Women's National Abortion Action Campaign was formed in 1972 to campaign for the removal of all restrictions on a woman's right to control her reproductive life. We believe that the recognition of this right and the implementation of the means to exercise it are basic to the achievement of health, dignity and emancipation for women. This right is presently denied by restrictive laws and practices relating to sex education, contraception, sterlisation and abortion. All women suffer to some extent from this situation, but those with means suffer less than poorer women. The right to be free from the fear of unwanted pregnancy and childbirth must become a reality for all women.

The formation of WONAAC owes much to the resurgence of the struggle for women's rights. Feminist philosophy asserts the woman's right to control her own body which must include the right to terminate an unwanted pregnancy. This contrasts with the tendency of the earlier abortion law reform movements to stress the health, economic and social implications of unwanted pregnancy. We are sure that in the vast majority of cases where women seek to terminate pregnancy (legally or illegally) the honest reason is that it is unwanted. If this reason is not given legal recognition women will continue to seek relief by resorting to selfinduced or backstreet abortion. The question that should be asked is: 'How can we justify compulsory child-bearing?' not 'How can we justify abortion?'

General Historical Background: Theory and Practice

Our point of view on abortion and birth control is far from new. In practice abortion and infanticide have been the chief forms of fertility control for thousands of years, sometimes with social sanction but often despite religious teaching and laws. Infanticide has given way to abortion and contraception; it is to be hoped abortion will give way to contraception and sterilisation thanks to tremendous technical advances in these areas. Less reliable methods are readily discarded, and there is increasing demand for sterilisation despite its permanence. From the turn of this century there has been a tremendous upsurge in women's consciousness and expectations. They have demanded and fought for legalisation of abortion on basically the same grounds that we do: that women have a right to freedom of choice in a matter that concerns them so closely. The experience of Catholic countries (where contraception and abortion have been forbidden by law) is particularly instructive. Practice is shockingly different from theory. In France there has been approximately one abortion for one live birth (the law has just been liberalised). In Italy even the Vatican admits to 11,000 maternal deaths per annum from induced abortion. Sanctity of foetal life has never been any more than a metaphysical myth.

New Zealand's Experience

We distribute Miss Browne's excellent essay. We feel no complacency when we comment that we would not be making this submission forty years later if the Committee's recommen dations had not been so pious, simplistic, and worthless.

Today's Situation: Science and Social Policy

Medical science can now provide women with complete security against unwanted childbirth. The great advances in contraception in the past few decades mean that sexual relationships need no longer be fraught with anxiety about unwanted pregnancy, an anxiety which has been a blight on the lives of virtually all women. The new methods of early abortion can further dispel that anxiety by providing a simple, non-traumatic solution to contraceptive failure. Yet we are faced with the absurd contradiction that these advances are being denied to women.

Contraceptives are not legally available to all. They are costly, they are not readily accessible and they may simply be denied by doctors who refuse to prescribe them for their own personal reasons.

The right to choose, which was never guaranteed before conception is certainly not available afterwards. The only socially sanctioned course of action following accidental conception is compulsory continuation of pregnancy. The law relating to abortion has been very strictly interpreted, some recent changes in interpretation are the subject of legal proceedings.

Sterilisation operations are refused women until they have satisfied a breeding/age quota arbitrarily fixed by gynaecologists who do not consider women fit to make such a decision for themselves. Sex education is a farce. By the time young people receive it they are already aware of how to produce a pregnancy; what they want to know is how to prevent one.

Effects of Restrictive Policies

Women continue to have abortions. A few may succeed in having themselves certified as on the verge of mental collapse and obtain a legal abortion. Increasing numbers with cash and connections are flying to Australia. Others resort to self-induced abortion or find a 'backstreet' page 2 abortionist. It is extremely difficult to get an accurate picture of how many women suffer through lack of access to safe legal abortion. The facts are buried under a heap of secrecy and hypocrisy. The only serious study we know of is the National Research Bureau Survey made in early 1972, which was commissioned by the Abortion Law Reform Association. That survey estimated that about 6,500 illegal abortions took place annually and that attempts at abortion totalled about 11,000 per annum. The total population in 1972 was just under 3 million. Per capita this means there were less illegal abortions than in 1936 and is in the ratio of one abortion to ten live births. Medical advances have substantially reduced maternal mortality resulting from septic and induced abortion. However morbidity figures indicated that about 3,000 women per annum required public hospital treatment as a result of criminal abortion over the period 1964-68.⁵

Other figures have a bearing on the question of compulsory pregnancy. There is the continuing high rate of extra-nuptial births, the numbers of women under sixteen who give birth, and the proportion of brides who are pregnant (widely claimed to be one in three). It is ridiculous to pretend that all the births involved in these cases are voluntary. It is very difficult to assess the effect of the abortion laws on married women: they have little recourse to adoption and must resign themselves to an addition to their family if they have an unwanted pregnancy. According to the above-mentioned survey, married women accounted for well over half of those seeking abortion.

It is clear to us that the timid attitudes of the medical profession and successive Ministers of Health towards birth control, sterilisation and the continued incidence of illegal abortion have, along with the restrictive laws, been responsible for bringing a great deal of strain and misery into the lives of many thousands of women over the years.

Wider Implications of Restrictive Policies

Women's susceptibility to the unplanned birth of a child is used to discriminate against them in employment and throughout public life. Employers refuse to promote women on accept them for positions of responsibility on the grounds that they might get pregnant and have to leave. Only a few years ago, a large national bank had a policy of sacking women upon marriage, in anticipation of their becoming pregnant! Mortgage finance is refused on the • same grounds. Whenever women try to make any kind of long-term committment, they come up against this barrier of being considered a poor risk.

We wish to state here that there should be no handicaps placed on women simply because they have children. We stress the need for more supportive services, maternity leave, readily available child care, more money and housing for solo parents etc so that the choice made following accidental conception is a real one and less likely to be influenced by social and economic circumstances.

The Current Controversy Over Abortion

We will discuss some of the main arguments raised against our case for a woman's right to choose.

a) 'Abortion is Murder'

This argument is based on the claim that a foetus is a 'human being' from the moment of conception. Faith and scientific theory are cited in support of the argument, but there is no consensus about either aspect. Articles of faith have for a long time been regarded as matters of conscience and left to the individual, not the law, to resolve. We support the scientific theory that life is a continuum, with the process of conception merely a stage along the way. We feel that if opponents of abortion were consistent they would oppose all contraception - but only some of them do.

'Human life' is different from 'human being'. Embryonic human life has only the potential to become a human being. The prevailing attitude, which is perfectly sensible and rational, is that at birth we begin life as social entities, and it is at birth society regards us as human beings, counting our age from that point.

Society gives meaning to the term 'human being'. It also gives meaning to the concepts of 'sanctity of life', 'murder' etc. Pacificists and vegetarians can forcibly argue that there is no such thing as 'sanctity of life' in our society. 'Abortion' is clearly defined by the law as a different crime from 'murder', but this law is not enforced. This may seem like a problem of semantics, but the point is that in practice and theory there is one certainty - consensus will never be reached about the 'sanctity of foetal life'. It is a matter of conscience; women will always have abortions.

b) The Present Law is Satisfactory'

Many of our opponents want the existing laws to remain. They do not propose a total ban on abortion, although the law allows abortion on wider grounds than for the preservation of the physiological life of the pregnant woman - which is presumably the only allowable ground for those to whom abortion is murder. Anti-abortionists are prepared to make exceptions to their own 'rules' as they see fit. There has been some panic, however, since the establishment of the Auckland Medical Aid Centre because it is possible that referring doctors are interpreting the law more liberally than they see fit. Obviously their main concern is to keep the decision out of the reach of women and sympathetic doctors, and to contain abortion within limits acceptable to themselves.

c) 'Abortion is Dangerous'

Claims and counter-claims abound on this question. We are convinced there is no doubt that early abortions performed on healthy women under proper medical conditions are even safer than childbirth. To ensure an early abortion women must not be kept waiting while someone else decides their fate.

We concede there are dangers in the abortion procedure, just as there are dangers in any operation. But how can these be compared to the dangers of illegal abortion performed by unqualified people; and often late in pregnancy because a woman has failed to induce an abortion or find an illegal abortionist in the early stages.

The psychological effects of abortion on healthy, well-adjusted women are small. About 10% may suffer some remorse, only 2% suffer real depression. The incidence of depression following childbirth ranges from 10-15%; it can be incapacitating and lead to family stress and marital breakdown, and has until recently often been ignored or dismissed by doctors.

d) 'Abortion Lets the Man and Society off the Hook'

This appears to be a strong argument because often women with unplanned pregnancies do not receive the supportive services they need, as we have already mentioned. However the argument ignores the fact that women are capable of independent rational thought; that many men may be extremely supportive; that frequent pregnancy is debilitating, and that child-rearing is a demanding occupation, etc. It assumes that women are always 'conned' into abortion; we suspect that they are more often 'conned' into sexual relations which they will come to regret bitterly afterwards if they become pregnant, because of society's punitive attitude. Finally this argument is very cruel. It overlooks individual suffering and insists we wait for utopia, which, considering the laws restricting abortion have been in force for a century and a half, is a long time coming.

e) 'Adoption Solves the Problem of Unwanted Pregnancy'

We believe it is inhuman to force a woman to bear a child she does not want. Childless couples must be helped by other means which do not depend on the sacrifice of a woman's dignity. The plight of the infertile couple and the woman with an unwanted pregnancy is much the same; neither have any choice in a matter which concerns them so deeply. Society has been very ready to promote scientific research to assist the infertile escape their biological ill-fortune: should it now show the same compassion to women with unwanted pregnancies?

This woman was the victim of a criminal abortion. Her body was photographed exactly as it was found by police in a bloody and barren motel room; exactly as it had been abandoned there by an unskilled, profiteering' abortionist. Becoming frightened when 'something went wrong' he left her to die alone.

It must also be a relief to women who would prefer to choose adoption as a solution to unwanted pregnancy to know that there is now a pool of adoptive parents available, which was certainly not the situation a few years ago.

We do not think enough research has been done into the effects of adoption on the mother. We have heard of a number of cases where women find parting with the baby so traumatic that they often deliberately become pregnant again in much the same circumstances.

f) Legalised Abortion will mean Overcrowded Hospitals'

Women should not be penalised for the failure of successive governments to provide adequate health services. Whether they want their pregnancies ended or carried to term they should have access to proper medical care. It should, moreover, be possible to train paramedical staff to carry out early abortions and give birth-control advice so the burden on doctors is not increased.

We have always found this a peculiar argument because the end result of uninterrupted pregnancy is birth and confinements take a lot more time and space than straight-forward abortions, and leave two people to care for. However, we do not consider women should bear this in mind when deciding about pregnancy.

g) 'Legal Abortion Will Lead to Permissiveness'

We suspect the desire to enforce one morality (their own) for all, accounts for some of the motivation and zeal of the opponents of abortion. These self-appointed guardians of public morality try to discourage extra-marital sex with punishment on the assumption that all unwanted pregnancies occur outside marriage. The idea of sex as being sinful, particularly for women, unless it is purified by forced motherhood, still bubbles beneath the surface. Oddly enough the same people assure us that permissiveness and moral decay are already upon us, although the abortion laws have not been changed.

There are many reasons why women become pregnant unintentionally, not the least of them being ignorance of, or lack of access to, contraception - for which we may have these very moralists to blame.

It is barbaric to punish women by insisting on unwanted birth. And what effect does this attitude have on children who are bom to punishment?

h) 'Legal Abortion Will Lead to Euthanasia'

We are seeking recognition of the individual woman's right to control her body. We are opposed to the idea that the state, or its appointed agents, should enter into the decision at all. We find it hard to see how people can associate this with the killing of the aged or infirm.

Reference is frequently made to Nazi Germany as an example of what can happen when the 'sanctity of human life' is violated. We remind the Commission that Hitler was a staunch guardian of prenatal (aryan) life, ruthlessly suppressed abortion, and executed women convicted of the offence.

i) The Population Will Decline - The Labour Force will be Depleted'

This argument is prepared to subordinate women's rights to what is claimed to be 'the interests of the nation'. With precisely such philosophy did Hitler found his repressive regime. There are more rational and humane ways to ensure a productive society than arbitrarily raising or lowering the population level.

The ideal of claiming population considerations to refuse a woman the right not to have a child is as obnoxious as the idea of using the excuse to refuse her the right to have a child. We would protest just as strongly if the tables were turned and women were forced to have abortions. We firmly support the idea that people should have the size of family they want because freedom of choice is our major concern, not which of these choices is made.

(j) Abortion on Request will Deny Men's Rights'

A right-to-decide for the father-to-be cannot page 3 be legislated for without condemning some women to compulsory motherhood. In any healthy relationship mutual agreement would easily be reached without resort to law. We oppose any measures which bolster the tradition of regarding women as breeding machines, and their children as property.

(k) 'Women Will Abuse the Freedom and Have Abortions at Will'

This is like saying that people will get sick to take advantage of free medical care. The first line of defence against unwanted pregnancy is knowledge of and access to effective, safe contraception. Since we do not believe abortion itself to be wrong, we have no objection to the number of times women resort to it. There may be a problem of motivation regarding the use of contraception and we discuss this more fully later in the submission.

Abortion is a Conscience Issue

We recognise that some people sincerely believe abortion to be morally wrong. We are aware that there are Catholic and other women whose beliefs would never allow them to consider abortion for themselves. We respect their point of view and do not ask for a moment that they act any differently from the way their consciences guide them. We would appreciate a similarly generous outlook towards those who want legal abortion. No-one should have the right to coerce another into acting against their will, especially when it is a matter concerning their own body.

New Zealand is a plural society. We believe that in a parliamentary democracy it is the duty of parliament to protect the rights of different cultural, religious, racial, social groups, particularly with regard to issues of conscience, and to protect the individual's privacy from the intrusion of the state. Yet successive governments have been guilty of coercing women into motherhood by refusing to remove the restrictions on abortion. We have seen both sides of the House assure Members that they will be able to vote according to their consciences whenever the issue of abortion arises. It is the height of injustice and hypocrisy to propose the exercise of this right in parliament while continuing to deny it to the individual citizen. Can the law abrogate a person's conscience? We say it cannot; any attempt to do so produces social unrest.

Repeal or Reform?

We believe that the right to control one's body is absolute, and those women who seek abortions because of circumstances involving physical or mental health, rape, economic and family difficulties, or risk of foetal deformity have a double claim to this relief.

Being a women with an unwanted pregnancy is sufficient qualification by itself. In fact this is the only qualification the vast majority of women have. If the law lays down restrictive criteria and keeps the decision out of her hands, the woman will lie to satisfy the criteria or continue to resort to self-induced and back-street abortion. There is no other solution to unwanted pregnancy than abortion. She cannot turn the clock back.

Restrictive laws, establishing objective criteria that have to be complied with, will produce delay while a decision is being made. This applies especially where the law (or practice) requires the approval of several 'experts'. Delay substantially increases the risk of morbidity.

We believe total repeal is more likely to help those women who are being pressured into abortion against their own wishes. Obviously the backstreet abortionist has neither the inclination nor the time to discuss the issue fully. On the other hand a doctor, concerned primarily to establish whether his patient's case satisfies the medical and legal requirements, may not detect her real wishes.

Mr Barrie Littlewood's article, "Abortion in Perspective"⁷, puts an excellent case for repeal of the law. (He refers only to ss 183-186 but we assume he would probably include s 182 following the submission made to the Commission by the Solicitor-General.)

We will discuss some of the restrictions most frequently incorporated into reformed laws:

a) 'The final decision should be medical'

This is paternalistic thinking; it imposes a shocking burden on the doctor and releases the woman from responsibility for her actions which may have adverse effects on her whole self-realisation. We all make mistakes that we have to live with; legislation that protects one person from making a mistake may restrict the right of another person to make the correct decision.

Doctors, with a few courageous exceptions, have shown themselves to be unsympathetic and hostile. The medical profession has zealously guarded its expertise from the encroachment of other groups who claim skill in some medical fields and yet has callously left the delicate surgical procedure of abortion in the hands of unqualified back-street abortionists, fully aware of the high incidence of illegal abortion and the risk of death and sepsis. Women admitted to hospital with complications following illegal abortion have been vilified and bullied. Women who in later life seek specialist help because of difficulty in conceiving and admit to an illegal abortion are told, 'serve you right'. No doctor should be made to act against his conscience and clinical judgement and women certainly don't want unsympathetic doctors treating them.

b) 'Abortions may only be performed by licensed physicians'

Most doctors have neither the time nor the inclination (see above comments) to do abortions. Many probably never had any more experience of abortion than a cursory study at medical school. If we train people in the special field of midwifery, why not train paramedical staff to do abortions?

Women who cannot get an appointment with a willing doctor, quickly, will always turn to the illegal racket for relief.

c) 'Abortions may only be performed in hospitals'

Abortions can be safely carried out in a clinic or doctor's surgery. We would like the situation to exist where women could obtain free abortions without delay between the decision and the operation. However hospital boards are notoriously conservative. Fewer abortions and sterilisation operations are allowed at present in public hospitals compared to the number estimated to be done in private hospitals where fees play a persuasive role. Restricting abortions to hospitals would help those who could afford to pay large sums of money at the expense of those who could not. Overseas figures from countries where the law has been liberalised show a much greater morbidity rate for the public hospital than for the private clinic, attributable to delay and failure to use staff sufficiently skilled in the abortion procedure.

d) 'Abortions may not be performed beyond a certain point in pregnancy, unless the woman's life is at stake'

This type of restriction assumes that we are lacking in the ability to judge a situation for ourselves and assume responsibility for our own decisions.

We already allow abortion for medical reasons regardless of the possibility of foetal viability. And who can say with any certainty exactly when the moment of viability is reached? Or that it will not change from today's estimate with ever-increasing advances in technology.

"Women's right to abort cannot hinge on the state of technology, and we are left with the inescapable conclusion that the only event in the sequence of pregnancy that can be assigned a specific time is birth itself, at the time that it occurs. All else is mystique and conjecture."⁹

Late abortions are usually very distressing page 4 and the risk to health is substantially increased. Women know. After all they have been having them for a long time; usually they have been trying for months to end an unwanted pregnancy. Despite their experience they are adamant that the laws be totally repealed so that other women will get an abortion when they want it, and not suffer as they did.

In order to protect the public sensibilities (as much as to protect the woman's health and sensibilities) there is a tendency when liberalising the law to reach a messy aesthetic compromise. Arbitrary time limits establish different criteria for different stages of pregnancy. This will not stop late abortions; it is guaranteed to make them later than ever.

e) Abortions may only be performed when the married woman's husband or the young single woman's parents give their consent'

We have already indicated our point of view on the rights of the 'father-to-be'. Investing a veto power in any one but the pregnant woman herself violates everything that the right to abortion should give her: the freedom to decide for herself what happens to her own body.

Contraception and Sterilisation

We have already stated that we believe the same arguments apply to contraception as do to abortion, yet the state has not seen fit to ban non-medical uses of contraceptives. Use of the intra-uterine device which is commonly thought to work as an abortifacient seems to be accepted; and the morning-after pill is available - but, as yet, not a satisfactory form of 'contra(?)-ception'. The state holds a positive policy of birth control (it's not very old and seems little more than theory - see the submission made by the Department of Health). This has not been our main field of research but we do have a few comments.

Functional contraceptives don't aesthetically suit either image. Hopefully the Commission will have read some of the 'feminist' literature that examines the 'role' of women - e.g. Simone de Beauvoir, Betty Friedan, Evelyn Reed, Kate Millett, Germaine Greer, etc.

Summary: Our Submissions