KEY POINTS:
There is major concern that the Electoral Finance Bill was pushed through Parliament in an undemocratic fashion. However, concern today over parliamentary process is nothing compared to what it was 30 years ago this month when Rob Muldoon rammed the Contraception, Sterilisation and Abortion Bill through Parliament.
Muldoon's bill was an attempt to resolve a heat-wave of debate over abortion that had been building through the 1970s. The outcome, however, was ongoing public fury. In the 1960s, the law allowed abortions for the preservation of the life of the mother. Strictly interpreted, legal abortions would remain scarce.
But in practice the number of sanctioned abortions in New Zealand was markedly on the rise. In 1966, the number of abortions in hospital conditions was 70. Ten years later the abortion figure for public and private hospitals had reached 4700, of which 3900 were performed by the Auckland Medical Aid Centre (Amac) at its controversial Epsom clinic.
Sensing increasing pressure for change, the Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child (Spuc) formed in 1970. An opposition Abortion Law Reform Association (Alranz) soon emerged, advocating that the state not be involved in abortion issues during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.
A strident women's liberation movement was on the rise and abortion rights were at the centre of its demands. This led to the radical Women's National Abortion Action Campaign, which asserted that the state should have no role in abortion matters at all. Amac opened for business, initially at Remuera, in 1974 and unsuccessful moves were made in Parliament to shut it down.
An election was looming in 1975. The Labour Government kicked the issue for touch by setting up a royal commission, which took 21 months to report. Surprisingly, from today's perspective, it produced a fairly conservative report, which became the basis for 1977 draft legislation.
After extensive debate, anti-abortion Prime Minister Muldoon appeared to stall the issue in October 1977. But on December 13, 1977, he placed the issue without warning at the top of the order paper. Over the next two days, he rammed through the legislation under urgency.
The legislation was a victory for Spuc, even if some abortions were permitted. Abortion liberals viewed it as a huge defeat for their cause.
Eight high-profile women, including current Speaker of Parliament Margaret Wilson, unsuccessfully petitioned the Governor-General not to sign the bill into law. Nine women disrupted a service at the Christchurch Catholic cathedral to lay a wreath in memory of New Zealand women who would die (by reversion to back-street abortion) as a result of the new law. Efforts resumed to fly pregnant women to Australia to have legal abortions there.
Then the heat gradually went out of the argument. Only minor legislative change was made. Yet sanctioned abortions shot back up to 5900 by 1980. Today the figure stands at 18,000 a year. That amounts to one abortion for three live births.
How did the change take place? Essentially, it was a matter of changing attitudes: much of the public wanted freer abortion. It highlights the point that legislation often won't work unless it has strong public support.
Anti-abortion politician Dr Sir Gerard Wall, who had a prominent role in the struggles, acknowledged this when he retired from Parliament in 1987.
One significant point in the debate is that Alranz supporters commonly did not view abortion in an altogether positive light. President Isabel Stanton, for example, agreed that abortion was the lesser of two evils and the fewer the better.
Thus abortion calls for reflection: given our extremely high abortion rate, why is society so silent on the matter today? Is it another inconvenient truth that we don't want to talk about because it may take us in directions that we don't want to go?
Absolutist anti-abortionists condemned abortion as the taking of life. Less absolutist people might rather talk of emerging life. Either way, abortion does terminate some form of unborn life, something much more than mere chemicals or tissue.
We need another heat-wave of ongoing abortion debate today; 18,000 terminations say so. The ethical issue, the question of what is right, remains. Legislation won't change, but hearts and minds should. For 18,000 abortions a year is a national scandal.
* Laurie Guy is a lecturer in church history at the University of Auckland School of Theology and at Carey Baptist College.
