Parker DavidHon DAVID PARKER (Attorney-General): Thank you Mr Speaker. When I listen to the arguments of those who are objecting to this legislation on the basis of the right to life it seems to me that they're not arguing against this bill; they're actually arguing against abortion. They assert human rights to an unborn foetus and I disagree with that. I was born in 1960. In the 1970s I was a member of a church youth group. My mother was at the same time active in the Abortion Law Reform Association movement in New Zealand. I had these issues fiercely debated at home and through those church groups that I was active in. At the end of that debate I came to a view that I still hold: that it is a woman's right to choose. That it is a woman's right to choose not to have an abortion and it is a woman's right to choose to have an abortion—that it is not the right of other women or other men to choose for that woman not to have an abortion. But that's not the debate we're having today either. We're not having a debate about the woman's right to choose or whether the right to life view—which is anti all abortion—should prevail; we're actually having a debate as to whether the regulation of abortions in New Zealand should have this criminal overlay. That's the debate we're having today. It's not the right to life debate compared with abortion; it's actually this question as to whether the criminal code should create this presumption of criminality in respect of a woman who is exercising what in my view is her right to choose.I thought that the Hon Andrew Little made a fair point which I think I would like to repeat: I don't like fiction in law. At the moment women have to pretend in order to get an abortion; they should not have to. I don't like a law that forces that pretence upon women. I don't like them to have to maintain a fiction as to their mental health. That is not to say that the decision—the difficult decision—that a woman takes as to whether or not to have an abortion is not a traumatic decision but it's a different thing to say that they should have to prove that this will cause injury to her physical or mental health. In the 1970s when teenage pregnancy rates were so much higher when these debates were going on the law also prevented me and every other child in a State school from getting advice or education about contraception. It happened for a period when I was at school. Also I recall that in those days—as today—if there were any impediments that affected poor people or people in rural communities they sure as hell didn't back then affect rich people because they could just go to Australia and they did. I've heard reference to the question of 22 or 20 weeks. The date for that period is to some people arbitrary; I would caution against reopening that for partly political reasons but I also ask people to think forward as medical technology changes: do you really want to tie the abortion period to viability of a foetus? I'm not sure that we do. I believe that we've got it about right at the moment: that it should be a woman's right to choose which is essentially what it is subject to this criminal overlay at the moment.I think we should do away with this fiction as to mental health—traumatic though the decision is. I think we should keep it at 20 weeks. I also agree with comments that have been made by Anne Tolley: that we need to have a look at this exclusion zone. I think what we're trying to do is stop people being bullied as they go into a medical clinic to have an abortion which is their right to do. I want to protect women from being bullied in that way because I don't think other people's freedom of expression extends to the right to what are very close to assaults of people—they're verbal assaults anyway—as people go in to have an abortion. But I'm sure the select committee is willing to have a look at it.So the final point I would make is that not only have abortion rates decreased in absolute terms they've decreased at a far greater rate as the portion of the growing population.