Lee MelissaMELISSA LEE (National): Thank you Mr Chair—good choice. It is the first time that I've had an opportunity to get up and speak on this particular bill. I'd like to state first of all my intention to vote against this bill once again and actually put on record how offended I was at the very thought that some members actually think that just because I am voting against this bill I am opposed to abortion purely because of my religious views and that I must be some sort of a religious zealot. I actually find that very offensive and I'd like to state that before I actually get going. I have a Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) which I will speak to in the second part of this bill—SOP 459. It is in Part 2 so I won't go into the detail of it right now but I have also flagged to members that I intend to split the bill so that there is a differentiation between the gender selection and the disability selection in terms of discrimination. One of the things that the Minister of Justice spoke about earlier when he was responding to some of the SOPs that were presented by different members and one of the things that he talked about in regard to Dr Parmjeet Parmar and the fact that he reflected on Mr David Seymour's response to that and on how that was going to be creating more confusion—I think he was actually confusing Dr Parmar's SOP with my SOP in relation to the gender selection issue and abortion for the sole purpose of sex selection and how that might actually create ethnic profiling. I think the only person who has so far done any kind of ethnic profiling is that Minister because there is nothing in my SOP that deals with anything that is actually ethnic. He has already decided that some ethnic communities are profiling the gender of the child in utero and are choosing to abort. What I wanted was purely to remove the discrimination because I know for a fact that there are parents of children who actually have three boys already and they don't want another boy; so they want to have a girl child. The reverse is also true which is that there are some families who have three girls for example and they don't want any other girls. They want a boy child. I want to remove that discrimination that exists. Sure we have ethnic communities in other countries—for example in China they've actually had a one-child policy where only the boy child was preferred. The boy child was preferred because in some ethnic cultures—not just China but including Korea—boy children are actually known as the superannuation guarantee for the parents because boy children are thought to be the ones who will look after their elderly parents when they are older. So that is the reason why they are wanted. But what happened in China for example was it was a Government policy and more than 30 million boy children who are all grown up now don't have wives because there they aborted girl children because that's what they wanted. That was a policy. But what my Supplementary Order Paper—and new section 20F in clause 7 of this particular bill dealing with abortion for the sole purpose of sex selection is something that I am really concerned about. If the select committee members and the Minister are concerned about that particular issue and saying that New Zealand doesn't actually agree with doing abortions on the basis of gender discrimination we should be doing something about it. Just to say that Oh it's going to cause ethnic profiling." I don't think is enough of an answer. We already know there's a problem. We need to actually deal with it. The other thing is I find it offensive when women in this House or any other people say that abortion is the sexual and reproductive right of every woman and that a child in utero—a baby in utero—is another part of a woman's body. A baby growing in a woman's uterus is not like an appendix. Cutting out an appendix and cutting out a child in utero is not the same and I particularly oppose this bill because of that post - 20 week to no-limit abortion. I think it is absolutely abhorrent and that is the reason why I oppose this bill. I will get to my SOP further down the track when we're discussing Part 2."