https://themilitant.com/2020/04/04/women-win-right-to-choose-abortion-in-new-zealand/
Women win right to choose abortion in New Zealand
article
BY FELICITY COGGAN
Vol. 84/No. 14
April 13, 2020
MILITANT/MIKE TUCKER Holly Wakelin, left, and Lucy Mackenzie, right, two
young women who helped lead recent actions for women’s right to
abortion, hold
banner at Auckland Feb. 18 march. After decades of mobilizations, New
Zealand’s parliament adopted law legalizing abortion March 18. figure
Holly Wakelin, left, and Lucy Mackenzie, right, two young women who
helped lead recent actions for women’s right to abortion, hold banner at
Auckland Feb.
18 march. After decades of mobilizations, New Zealand’s parliament
adopted law legalizing abortion March 18.
MILITANT/MIKE TUCKER Holly Wakelin, left, and Lucy Mackenzie, right, two
young women who helped lead recent actions for women’s right to
abortion, hold
banner at Auckland Feb. 18 march. After decades of mobilizations, New
Zealand’s parliament adopted law legalizing abortion March 18. figure end
AUCKLAND, New Zealand — In a victory for the rights of women, a law
decriminalizing abortion passed the New Zealand Parliament March 18.
“It’s been a long time coming,” 84-year-old Margaret Sparrow, a doctor
and lifelong leader of the fight for reproductive rights for women, told
Time magazine
after hearing the news. “It will be safer for women and better for access.”
Decades earlier Sparrow started helping students get access to
contraception and for several years assisted women to go to Australia to
obtain an abortion
before the first clinic opened here. Having put more than half a century
into this fight, she said she still isn’t done.
“The next stage is making sure it is implemented,” she said.
The law establishes women’s right to choose to have an abortion until
the 20th week of pregnancy. After that she has to get a health
practitioner, in consultation
with at least one other colleague, to agree that the procedure is
“clinically appropriate.”
“It’s been such a long fight to get here,” Ella Shepherd, chair of the
Auckland University Campus Feminist Collective, told the Militant. “This
is an issue
that has mobilized and united generations.”
The 1977 law that the new bill amends said that abortion was a criminal
offense. Protests and shifting attitudes across society in decades since
forced
a loosening in its application, allowing abortions on the grounds of a
threat to a woman’s mental or physical health — if they could get the
approval of
two certifying medical consultants.
“It’s important that women can now get an abortion without lying about
it or having to cross their fingers the doctor will play along,” student
Barbora
Sharrock said. She participated in a nationwide day of action Feb. 18
that drew hundreds demanding legalization and pressing the Labour-led
government
to fulfill a campaign pledge to change the law.
“Young people have been waking up to how outrageous the situation is,
and really stepped up” in recent years, said Alison McCulloch, a
longtime member
of the Women’s National Abortion Action Campaign and author of Fighting
to Choose — The Abortion Rights Struggle in New Zealand. “My book is now
out of
date, I’m very happy about that.”
The fight continues
“But if enough facilities and health practitioners aren’t available,”
she said, “there will just be more restrictions.” Up until now many
public hospitals,
especially outside the big cities, have refused to provide abortions.
Opponents of women’s rights protested inside and outside Parliament
against the new law. Agnes Loheni, a National Party legislator, claimed
in a report
to Parliament that the law would lead to more abortions just for sex
selection, and that it “removes the human rights of the unborn child
completely.”
Young women have taken the lead in organizing actions in support of
their right to choose to have an abortion. Over the past few years there
have been
actions in Ireland, Argentina, South Korea and elsewhere, with some
mobilizations bringing hundreds of thousands into the streets. In
Ireland a sustained
campaign won a national referendum that pushed the government to
legalize abortion for the first time in 2019.
But capitalist politicians opposing abortion rights are using every
opening they find to attack and restrict women’s access to the
procedure. Their latest
moves include state governments in Ohio, Mississippi and Texas that are
using the coronavirus outbreak to justify banning abortions. Officials
claim they
aren’t “medically essential” and that the personal protective equipment
is needed for treating patients with COVID-19.
Women’s right to unrestricted access to family planning services,
including the right to safe, secure abortions, is a necessity for women.
It is also a
life-and-death question for advancing the unity of the working class.
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IN THIS ISSUE
Front Page Articles
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• Workers’ job actions lead fight for safety, more pay
• Women win right to choose abortion in New Zealand
• Join drive for more readers, Militant fund contributors!
• No to US economic war on Cuba! No sanctions on Iran, Venezuela, NKorea!
• Copper miners strike against Asarco union busting nears six-month mark
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• 1959 revolution opened door to Cuba’s int’l solidarity
• Las Vegas gov’t ‘houses’ homeless in parking lot
• Socialist Workers Party demands government action now against
capitalist economic and social crises
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Editorials
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• Go to work and join shop floor struggles!
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Books of the Month
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• The US Civil War was Second American Revolution
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