by admin | 2 Oct, 2015 | Media Release, Our Blog
Good news! The early medication abortion service at Family Planning’s Tauranga clinic is to stay open, thanks to a ruling in the High Court yesterday (1 Oct.), which came four months after the anti-abortion group Right to Life made its case that the licence for the clinic was unlawful.
Here are some useful links:
• A .pdf of the High Court decision is here.
• Family Planning’s media release.
• Coverage in NZ Herald and Radio New Zealand.
• Some background on the case, including a post by ALRANZ president Terry Bellamak, Making Abortion Dearer, and Alison McCulloch, Abortion Access Goes Back to Court.
And here’s ALRANZ’s media release:
Abortion Law Reform Association of New Zealand
2 October 2015 Media Release
ALRANZ APPLAUDS COURT RULING ON TAURANGA CLINIC
The Abortion Law Reform Association of New Zealand today applauded the High Court decision allowing the Family Planning Clinic in Tauranga to continue providing medical abortions.
Yesterday’s judgment came four months after the challenge to Family Planning’s licence by the anti-abortion group Right to Life was heard in the court, and effectively ruled the licence is lawful. In its decision, the High Court found that the usual rules of statutory interpretation apply, meaning the law is taken to evolve to cover situations that may not have existed when it was written.
Early medical abortion did not exist when the Contraception, Sterilisation and Abortion Act 1977 was passed. The court’s decision allows the Abortion Supervisory Committee to take into account how safe early medical abortion is.
“We are delighted that the pioneering Tauranga Family Planning clinic will be able to continue its work, and would like to see this model expanded to other regions that have little or no access to services,” ALRANZ president Terry Bellamak said. “But pregnant people still have to jump through the usual paternalistic hoops to access the health care they need.”
“As long as Parliament continues to turn a blind eye to the Rube Goldberg abortion laws in New Zealand, groups like Right to Life that believe bodily autonomy and consent do not apply to pregnant people will continue to find ways of challenging in the old legal regime,” she said.
“The Government will continue to spend money defending an obsolete, dysfunctional legal regime, DHBs will continue to waste money administering unnecessary regulations and funding unnecessary consultations to prove the boxes have been ticked. And pregnant people will continue to waste time and money jumping through hoops,” Ms. Bellamak said.
ALRANZ calls upon Parliament to end the farce and finally bring New Zealand’s abortion law into the 21st century.
For more information, contact:
info@alranz.org
mob: 021 082-76474
ALRANZ (Abortion Law Reform Assoc NZ)
www.alranz.org
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by admin | 27 Jun, 2015 | Media Release, Our Blog
ALRANZ has a new president! Terry Bellamak took the reins from Dr. Morgan Healey at our AGM on 20 June 2015.
Terry is a former executive at Goldman Sachs. She owned and operated a consulting 
practice, providing technology services to financials on Wall Street and across the US. In 2005, she visited New Zealand and emigrated the following year, and has been a New Zealand citizen since 2011. She completed her LLB at Victoria University of Wellington in 2014.
Terry’s focus on feminism and reproductive rights began in her youth, when she studied history at Arizona State University and became involved with Women’s Studies. In 2014, she was instrumental in building the MyDecision website, which provides patients with information about health care workers who refused to provide reproductive health care on grounds of ‘conscientious objection’.
In her last president’s address to the AGM, Morgan told the meeting that she was stepping down with a heavy heart. “Some of you may be aware that my partner and I are looking to move to the US in a few months. While I plan to still be active in ALRANZ, you deserve a present and dedicated person at the helm. I will greatly miss the role, but I know the stewardship of ALRANZ will be in steady hands.”
Morgan thanked the executive for all their support and aroha during her four years at the helm, and gave a “big thank you” to the members who support the organisation. “I have enjoyed working with all of you over the last few of years. And while this isn’t goodbye, I do want to recognize your contribution and commitment to ALRANZ during my term as president.”
In her address, Morgan looked at reproductive rights progress – and setbacks – around the world over the past year, as well as the struggles here at home. What follows is an edited version of Morgan’s talk, please click to continue reading:
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by admin | 9 Apr, 2015 | Our Blog
By Alison M
(Cross-posted from The Hand Mirror)
What if you had a way of providing an essential medical service that was safer, cheaper, less traumatic for patients, and meant they didn’t have to travel more than an hour each way to access it? Well, if it was for anything other than abortion, you’d be its champion. But this is abortion, and now the pioneering Tauranga Family Planning clinic, which has been providing early medication abortions in the Bay of Plenty since 2013, is under threat by anti-abortion court action that could worsen New Zealand’s already poor record on abortion access.
The court action by the Catholic anti-choice group Right to Life is a direct result of our now 38-year-old abortion laws, which criminalise abortion and continue to block the use of newer and better ways of providing it. And it’s not the first time our backward laws have been recruited for the purpose of banning or restricting abortion access. A 7-year case by the same group seeking to wind back access went all the way to the Supreme Court, where in 2012 Right to Life lost by a frighteningly narrow 2-3 ruling. The fact that abortion access in New Zealand was one justice away from being severely restricted in 2012 should have been a wake-up call that our criminalised abortion laws need urgent change. But, again, this is abortion and if there’s one thing (almost) all politicians agree on, it’s that they’d rather do nothing than wade into a debate about reproductive justice.
So nothing happened, and so here we are again, with abortion access back in the dock. The implications of this case are significant (more on that below), and underscore the urgent need for supporters of reproductive choice and access to press politicians to take action to give our fragile abortion access a secure foundation.
MPs have been on notice for decades that our laws are barely able to function: the Abortion Supervisory Committee has said so, the courts have said so, even the United Nations has said so. And still there is silence. To quote Prime Minister John Key during the 2014 election campaign: “I’m opposed to changing the law … I think the law broadly works.” And that’s been the standard line from the abortion liberals in Parliament for decades now – apart, that is, from a few stand-outs in the Green Party, which became the first-ever major party to adopt a pro-choice platform in 2014, some impressive Young Labour activism and a bold stand in 2010 by former Labour MP Steve Chadwick.
Importing U.S.-Style TRAP Laws
The new case at hand was publicly announced on Sunday, when Right to Life said it was headed to the High Court to challenge the Abortion Supervisory Committee over granting a licence to Family Planning to provide early medication abortions at its Tauranga clinic. (Family Planning is only an “interested party” in this case, and it will be the Crown Law Office that plays defence.)
Though we haven’t yet seen Right to Life’s formal arguments, the media release and RTL’s previous posts about the Tauranga clinic indicate this effort is straight from the American TRAP law playbook (Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers). In this case, RTL plans to argue that our law requires any institution providing abortion have “adequate surgical and other facilities” for the performance of safe abortions. As even RTL acknowledges, when the 1977 Contraception Sterilisation and Abortion Act was enacted, there were no medical abortions. Since Family Planning’s Tauranga clinic isn’t a hospital or a surgical facility, I’m assuming RTL will claim it doesn’t have the “adequate surgical and other facilities” needed to hold an abortion licence under the law so the ASC shouldn’t have given it one. (A hearing will take place at the High Court in Wellington on 2 June starting at 10 a.m. According to the court, it should be open to the public.)
It’s important to explain a bit about what early medication abortion is. At the Tauranga clinic, medication abortions are available only up until 9 weeks of pregnancy (63 days), and involve bringing on a miscarriage using two medications usually taken 48 hours apart, Mifegyne or Mifepristone (formerly known as RU486) and Misoprostol (also known as Cytotec). You can read more here from Family Planning itself about what an early medication abortion entails. It’s also worth a reminder that people seeking abortions in the Bay of Plenty – as elsewhere – muststill meet the requirements of our criminal statutes: Before you can get an abortion, two doctors (certifying consultants) must agree that your case meets one of the half dozen criteria listed in the Crimes Act.
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