Other Restrictive Countries

Chile and Israel are in a similar situation to New Zealand as regards abortion. In Israel abortion is legal on the grounds of age, rape, incest or health. This is fairly liberal but new laws are proposed which will restrict abortion to those women only whose lives are endangered. In Chile a recent law has given human rights to the foetus: women prisoners raped by their guards are now refused abortions.

In Spain, Belgium, Ireland, Portugal, Switzerland, Holland and West Germany abortion is illegal. In Spain and Ireland contraception is also illegal and women must either make expensive trips to other countries or risk mutilation at the hands of a back street abortionist. Huge numbers of women die each year from having backstreet abortions when it is well known that abortion is a very safe operation when performed under good conditions.

In Switzerland, Holland, West Germany and Belgium abortion is still illegal, but tolerated in pracitce. Thus women are denied their right to control their reproduction, [unclear: whi] le such formal restrictions help to raise the price of the operation and keep it as a fearful and guilt-ridden experience. In Eastern Europe, it is now argued that a woman's right to choose should be secondary to the population and economic needs of the state Rumania and Hungary have made contraception difficult to obtain.

In other countries women are being denied their right to choose, with forced sterilisation. Population control programmes are used in parts of Latin America, Africa and amongst oppressed minority and poor women in the USA to force unwanted sterilisation and contraception on these women In Puerto Rico, for example, 35% of women at child-bearing age have been sterilised. Women are told the lie that poverty is due to 'over population' and economic aid from foreign countries carries with it a call for reduction in population. In many countries doctors are paid more to sterilise than to give information on contraception. Everywhere forced sterilisation is the sign of racist policies and imperialist domination.

Abortion services in Puerto Rico are legal but available only in private clinics at astronomical rates. However just in the San Juan metropolitan area alone there are nineteen free strerilisation clinics performing over 1000 sterilisations per month. In Queensland, Australia where both abortion and sterilisation are illegal except in extreme circumstances, abortions are almost impossible to obtain but sterilisation, particularly if you are black, is quite another story. Talking about this a Puerto Rican feminist said: "While traditionally our ability to have children has been used to create myths about our inferiority in other endevours, it is enlightening to see that when that ability is economically counter-productive it loses all mystique and becomes a function which must be disposed of."

As yet, there is little evidence of forced sterilisation in New Zealand but the first steps towards this have already been made. The Report of the Royal Commission on Contraception, Sterilisation and Abortion included recommendations that Maori and Pacific Islanders be encouraged to practice contraception but no mention was made of other groups which have large families, such as Roman Catholics. Our restrictive abortion legislation is a warning to guard against the same sort of reactionary measures being taken on sterilisation.

We must also be warned by the events across the world relating to the pro-choice campaign. There is no room for taking abortion rights for granted. The anti abortion forces are highly organised, efficient and backed by church and state. The pro-choice campaign has suffered a defeat in New Zealand but united we can win. And when we do, for as long as we have a society in which rights must be fought for, and are not freely given, we must remain united and active.