by admin | 14 Sep, 2016 | Event
In honour of International Safe Abortion Day, Wednesday, 28 September 2016, ALRANZ Abortion Rights Aotearoa is screening the award-winning documentary, TRAPPED.
TRAPPED tells the story of how clinics in the states are responding to new abortion restrictions that anti-choice legislators pretend are designed to protect patients from abortion providers, but in fact, exist to make abortion more expensive and harder for patients to access.
New Zealanders who have accessed abortion (that would be one in four people with uteri of childbearing age) are familiar with restrictions that lack any scientific or medical basis, but rather exist solely to make abortion more time-consuming and unpleasant. Restrictions like:
- requiring the approval of two certifying consultants
- requiring patients to allege grounds specified in 187A of the Crimes Act to access the procedure, usually that their mental health would be affected, even if they just don’t want to be pregnant
- requiring patients to get ultrasounds that are not medically indicated, and counselling above and beyond what the patient wants or needs
- requiring patients to spend weeks running around getting all the necessary bureaucratic approvals, while enduring the physical discomforts of early pregnancy like morning sickness
There is one difference between the situation in the USA and in New Zealand. In the USA these TRAP laws are a new phenomenon. But pregnant New Zealanders have been dealing with the same pointless restrictions, and getting the same pointless runaround, for almost 40 years.
Back when the Contraception, Sterilisation and Abortion Act was passed, Parliament was openly trying to discourage abortion, giving patients as little control and freedom as they could get away with while still providing an alternative to unsafe, illegal abortion. Now, most people have worked out that it is not the government’s place to force people to bear children they don’t want.
When will Parliament come to the same conclusion?
Join us at the Lighthouse Cinema in Wellington at 6pm for TRAPPED, and stay for an informal panel discussion afterwards. If you live outside Wellington and you are interested in seeing TRAPPED in your town, contact ALRANZ Abortion Rights Aotearoa at info@alranz.org.
by admin | 28 Sep, 2014 | Event, Media Release, Our Blog
By Morgan Healey, ALRANZ President
On the 28th of September 2014, ALRANZ celebrates the Global Day of Action for Access to Safe and Legal Abortion. This is a campaign that began two decades ago in Latin America and the Caribbean and has gone global, with activists around the world drawing attention to restrictive and dangerous abortion laws in their countries. This year’s focus is on stigma and challenging the shame and silence that so often accompanies abortion, even when it is legal.
As the organisers of the 28th of September, the Women’s Global Network for Reproductive Rights (WGNRR) in partnership with the International Campaign for Women’s Right to Safe Abortion and La Campaña 28 LAC, stated:
The stigma surrounding abortion is complex and pervasive, as well as produced, reproduced and reinforced at individual, community, institutional, cultural, and legal levels. Entire communities stereotype, ostracize and discriminate against individuals who need and seek abortions, as well as women human rights defenders attempting to help individuals to access this human right.
It is our job as reproductive rights and justice activists to join in the global chorus to eradicate stigma – not just today but every day. This is not necessarily an easy task. Pervasive is an apt word as stigma manifests itself in subtle and insidious ways.
One example is the act of conscientious objections, where medical professionals are allowed to refuse treatment or care as the result of their own moral objections to abortion. Too often the focus is on the medical professional and their ability to exercise their right to not perform a medical procedure that they disapprove of. But what happens to the pregnant person forced to find help and assistance elsewhere? Is their care delayed? Does it create further stress and anxiety? Does it leave them more vulnerable in an unsafe relationship or environment? And how does this reinforce stigma?
This is the crux of the stigma issue – it not only erects barriers to care but it leaves women feeling as if their choices are amoral, wrong and detrimental. They carry the weight not only of their own lived experiences and the consequence of their choices, but also the gendered expectations of societies that associate ‘womanhood’ with ‘motherhood’. Being defined by your anatomy, which is also harmful to people who do not associate their sexed body with a certain gender (i.e. those who operate outside of and challenge cisgender culture), allows for the constant surveillance and policing of their reproductive choices. Stigma happens at both the macro and micro levels, with the (re)production of discourses that shame women while ensuring they self-regulate their actions, mostly by silencing their abortion experiences.
Turning back to conscientious objection, a false dichotomy is created whereby the virtuous doctor, governed by their ‘moral’ principles is juxtaposed with the errant pregnant person. This power imbalance is important in the perpetuation of stigma and the associate of abortion with shame and silence – it allows those in professions that are often revered and looked up the ability to define the line between good and bad. It provides a legal basis for discrimination and, as Joyce Arthur and Christian Fialla have argued for dishonourable disobedience.
This is one of the reasons the My Decision project is so important and why ALRANZ has chosen to focus on it for the 2014 global day of action – it names and allows for self-identification of those who would refuse care. It is shifting the discourse from a focus on women traversing the public health sphere to search for care and instead calling on medical professionals to provide information in relation to the reproductive health care they provide. It seeks to break down the barriers pregnant people face when they look to access these services and puts the onus back onto those who would object to be open and transparent about their beliefs.
My Decision alone will not end stigma, but it is a vital tool in the attempt to counter the impact. Please join us today in trying to dismantle abortion stigma.
If you would like to be involved in or want more information on My Decision go to http://mydecision.org.nz
For information on the 28th of September campaign go to http://www.september28.org/
Check out this media release quoting Family Planning and ALRANZ’s Morgan Healey: NZ Abortion Legislation Restrictive.
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by admin | 18 Sep, 2014 | Event, Media Release, Our Blog
by admin | 24 Sep, 2013 | Event
This Saturday is the 28th of September, which is also known as the Global Day of Action for Access to Safe and Legal Abortion.
This annual world-wide event is a great opportunity to get together with pro-choice folks. Share some food, get creative, raise awareness about why our laws need changing!
Email us info@alranz.org if you’re planning something else in New Zealand!
And if you’re on Twitter, use the hashtags #28sept and #prochoiceNZ to show your solidarity.
by admin | 10 Oct, 2012 | Event, Fundraiser
If you are in Wellington, you should definitely come along to our movie fundraiser next month. Watch a documentary about a fascinating woman and support abortion law reform at the same time. What else would you rather be doing instead, really?
DETAILS
What’s the film? Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has To Travel, the well-reviewed documentary about Diana Vreeland, self-made titan of the fashion world. (See links below for more info.)
When? Sunday 11 November from 5 p.m. (movie starts at 5:30)
Where? Penthouse Cinema, 205 Ohiro Road, Brooklyn, Wellington
How much? $25 waged, $15 unwaged
You can secure your tickets by making a deposit to ALRANZ account 02-0534-0128842-00 with the reference MOVIE.
Email rebecca.matthews427@gmail.com for more information.
Links:
Facebook Event
Official movie site
NYT review
Movie trailer
Review snippet:
While you’re watching the dizzily enjoyable documentary “Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel” you may find yourself thinking with an increasing fervor that, yes, wearing violet velvet mittens with everything is a fantastic idea, and that you’re just mad about rouge. Vreeland, a doyenne of 20th-century fashion and a paradigmatic self-made woman, had a genius for the inspirational, the gnomic and the divinely quotable. Atwitter before Twitter, she was a fabulous wit who brings to mind Wilde and Warhol even while being inimitably Vreelandesque: “The best thing about London is Paris.” “Fashion is not the same thing as style.” “I loathe narcissism, but I approve of vanity.” — Manohla Dargis, New York Times
by admin | 1 Oct, 2012 | Event
A few quick links from Friday’s Global Day of Action for Access to Safe and Legal Abortion. I’ll add more links later today. Let me know of any events, articles, posts, videos etc., produced for the day.
Nikki shared a powerful letter she wrote to the Labour Women’s caucus.
Family Planning urged the government to take abortion out of the Crimes Act, and, together with ALRANZ and Women’s Health Action, published a fact sheet asking the hard questions about abortion law in New Zealand about abortion law in New Zealand.
There were some great protests and demonstrations across the globe, including a large march in Dublin and yesterday there was a flash mob in Melbourne (I’m not sure if that was connected to the Sept 28 campaign but it was this weekend and it was awesome, so I’m including it here).
And to wrap things up, this video produced by IPAS Brazil a few years ago seems very appropriate.
