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Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Vol 36 No. 5. 29 March 1973

Back Street Abortions

Back Street Abortions

However, some doctors do interpret the law liberally and will authorise legal abortions. Women who find these doctors are fortunate. Those who don't and are determined to have an abortion at any cost must resort to illegal abortions. These are dangerous and often expensive. The alternative to abortion is carrying the pregnancy to term and having the baby adopted. But it is obvious that many women prefer to risk their lives with a back-street abortionist than to go through with an unwanted pregnancy.

Is there a demand for abortion in N.Z.? W.A.P. Facer in an article "Criminal Abortion in New Zealand" (Law Journal No. 15), estimates that on the basis of the annual average number of admissions between 1964 and 1968 of women requiring public hospital treatment for abortions that there may be about 3,000 criminal abortion cases a year. In the same article are the results of a nation-wide survey carried out in January 1972 by the National Research Bureau. In one section of the interview 1,200 women were asked to record any attempted and successful abortion. If, according to the results, the figures for successful abortions are projected on to the female population aged 15 and over then the estimated total figure is much larger. There would be about 6,500 successful illegal abortions annually in New Zealand, nearly three quarters of which are being sought and obtained by married women. The survey also showed 65.2% of women in favour of abortion where the mothers health was endangered by the pregnancy.

But do we need to quote surveys and statistics to fully justify the demand to repeal the abortion laws? They add weight to any argument but surely it is only right that a woman should be able to control her own reproductive life. The present abortion laws blatantly deny this.