New Zealand plans to decriminalize abortion and treat it is as a health issue, the government said yesterday, in the first major reform to abortion laws in more than four decades that some activists said fell short of expectations.
The legislation aims to modernize abortion laws in place since 1977 and proposes that a woman should have access to abortion until 20 weeks of pregnancy.
After 20 weeks, a pregnant woman would require one heath practitioner to reasonably believe the abortion is appropriate with regard to the woman’s physical and mental health and well-being, the government said in a statement.
“Abortion is the only medical procedure that is still a crime in New Zealand. It’s time for this to change,” Minister of Justice Andrew Little said in a statement.
“Safe abortion should be treated and regulated as a health issue; a woman has the right to choose what happens to her body,” he added.
Currently, abortion in New Zealand is an offense under the Crimes Act, and a woman can only legally get an abortion if two doctors certify that continuing the pregnancy would result in danger to her mental or physical health.
The grounds on which abortion can be approved by the doctors are narrow and do not include reasons such as rape or the inability to support a child, activists have said.
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern promised to change the laws after winning a 2017 election, but the plans were delayed as lawmakers argued over the bill.
The abortion rights group ALRANZ said the proposed bill was a “mixed bag.”
“It’s not as good as it could have been, but it’s so much better than the status quo. We have to give the government props for that,” said ALRANZ national president Terry Bellamak, who questioned the 20-week limit.
“There are scans that happen around 20 weeks and this gives people little time to consider those results,” he said.
The legislation would allow for the creation of safe areas around specific abortion facilities to protect women from intimidation or harassment from anti-abortion activists.
Medical practitioners who object to providing abortion services on the grounds of conscience must inform the pregnant woman so that she can obtain services elsewhere, the bill said.
New Zealand is the latest country to liberalize abortion laws. South Korea’s high court overturned a ban on abortion in April, while Ireland legalized abortion in a referendum last year.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘POINT OF NO RETURN’: The Caribbean nation needs increased international funding and support for a multinational force to help police tackle expanding gang violence The top UN official in Haiti on Monday sounded an alarm to the UN Security Council that escalating gang violence is liable to lead the Caribbean nation to “a point of no return.” Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Haiti Maria Isabel Salvador said that “Haiti could face total chaos” without increased funding and support for the operation of the Kenya-led multinational force helping Haiti’s police to tackle the gangs’ expanding violence into areas beyond the capital, Port-Au-Prince. Most recently, gangs seized the city of Mirebalais in central Haiti, and during the attack more than 500 prisoners were freed, she said.
RSS