THE ALRANZ BLOG

by Terry Bellamak When considering people requesting abortion care, I have always thought that, even as the women knew they were lying to the certifying consultants, the certifying consultants also knew they were lying and helpfully pretended to believe them. But that...

by Terry Bellamak “40 Days for Life” is the time of year when anti-abortion folks try to make life harder for people who need abortion care, and for people who provide it. This usually takes the form of increased harassment of people entering and leaving abortion...

It’s here again. I don’t know why, but I’m always surprised when Lent comes around, like it does every year. With Lent, comes the annual international annoyance known as 40 Days for Life. Because 40 Days for Slut Shaming wouldn’t nearly sound so high-minded. As usual,...

We have officially had 40 years of the Contraception, Sterilisation, and Abortion Act. How do you like it so far? That’s forty years going through the degrading process of getting the approval of two random certifying consultants in order to give effect to your own...

This week the Dominion Post came out in favour of abortion law reform. It correctly called out forty years of past governments willing to live with our sham of a system that requires pregnant people to pretend to be mentally fragile and doctors to pretend to believe...

New Zealand is about to have a national conversation about abortion. Kiwis will need to keep their critical thinking faculties sharp to deal with anti-choicers’ bad faith arguments and ridiculous narratives. The bad faith arguments usually take the form of trotting...

Harvey Weinstein and his vaunted career are foundering under the weight of one simple fact: people will talk. His disgusting behaviour was an open secret in Hollywood for years. It seems New Zealand’s abortion bureaucracy has come to a similar pass. For many years,...

In correspondence with Dr Helen Paterson, the Abortion Supervisory Committee did New Zealand a service by clarifying the meaning of ‘mental health’ in the context of determining eligibility for a termination of pregnancy under s 187A of the Crimes Act 1961. The Crimes...

The Abortion Supervisory Committee showed courage when it refused to sack Dr Helen Paterson for holding the view that abortion should be a matter between a pregnant person and their doctor. Our archaic abortion laws put the ASC between a rock and a hard place. The...

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