New Zealand has passed legislation to have abortions treated as a health issue rather than in crime legislation, with the change passing on Wednesday by a vote of 68 to 51.
The legislation replaces abortion laws in place since 1977 and proposes that a woman should have access to abortion until 20 weeks of pregnancy, with advice from a doctor.
After 20 weeks, a pregnant woman would require a test and two doctors would have to agree that an abortion is the right decision.
Photo: AP
Under the old law, a woman could only legally get an abortion if two doctors certified that continuing the pregnancy would result in danger to her mental or physical health.
Statistics New Zealand data show that in 2018, 13,282 induced abortion were performed in the nation of about 4.7 million people.
New Zealand Minister of Justice Andrew Little said that the previous law meant that most women who received abortions lied about their mental health.
National Party lawmaker Simeon Brown, who opposed the change, said that fetuses have a heartbeat and feel pain, and should be considered a person who is treated with dignity and respect.
Jackie Edmond, chief executive of Family Planning, New Zealand’s largest referrer of women to abortion services, said she was thrilled with the vote.
“It’s fantastic that parliament has addressed something that they should have addressed 40 years ago,” Edmond said.
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern in 2017 promised on the campaign trail that the issue would be brought to a vote.
Margaret Sparrow was 21 years old when she drank a concoction to induce an abortion, now aged 84, she said she was delighted with the law change.
“It’s been a long time coming,” said Sparrow, a doctor who is an abortion advocate.
Sparrow said it was not so much her own experience of having an abortion that motivated her work over the decades, but more recognizing that there was an unfilled need for women.
She began her career helping students get access to contraception and for several years helped send people to Australia to get abortions before the first New Zealand clinic opened.
She said that Roe v Wade the 1973 US Supreme Court decision gave people hope for change in New Zealand.
Sparrow said that the new law was a step forward, but her work is not done yet.
“It will be safer for women and better for access,” she said. “The next stage is making sure it’s implemented.”
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