Logie JanJAN LOGIE (Green): Thank you Mr Speaker and it's a real honour to speak tonight as a feminist who has been working towards abortion law reform for years and also as a member of the Green Party who committed to decriminalising abortion about six years ago—[Interjection from gallery]SPEAKER: Order! Order! The member will resume her seat. That man will be removed from the gallery.JAN LOGIE: This may point to the need for safe areas and the fact that actually there is opposition to those of us who support women's reproductive health rights. And that has resulted or at least been used as an argument in the assault against my co-leader.So I would in this speech like to acknowledge all the submitters and the very adept chairing of the Hon Ruth Dyson and the really constructive engagement from all of the members of the committee—that we were able I genuinely believe to listen to each other and hear our differences and accept them and find where there were points in the legislation that we could improve on—and also to acknowledge all of the advisers and officials and the really hard work that was put in on this and too to acknowledge all of those submitters and the really personal stories. It was tough for a lot of people to share those stories and part of the reason for that is that there is so much stigma surrounding abortion in this country which makes people feel really exposed. And that's part of the reason behind the Green Party's support for this legislation: that people will be healthier and their families will be better the more we can remove the stigma from this healthcare.It's obvious from the submissions that we don't have a consensus in this country on abortion and there is a very motivated group of people who are deeply opposed to abortion. That was one of the clearest messages that we heard in the submissions—that there is that group of people. We heard and understand those views and I absolutely support as others in this House have said tonight the right of these people to hold and live according to those views. But this legislation is not about limiting access to abortion in Aotearoa; that train left the station in the 1970s. This legislation is primarily about updating our law to better reflect the best medical practice and to meet our international obligations to respect women's bodily autonomy and sexual and reproductive health rights.This law as has been mentioned has been a really long time coming. To my knowledge the Green Party was the first political party to commit to decriminalisation and it took us until 2014. I think it took that long because some people remembered the intensity of the debate in the 1970s and were worried that if we opened it up again we would put at risk the existing framework that we have and also that there is so much silence around abortion in this country. Who would think that one in four women in this country has had an abortion? You would not think that because there is so much shame and stigma that we silence it and that is a problem for people in their real lives. And I think most people not affected thought that it was already decriminalised when we announced our policy. In the vox pop on the news most people were like What? Haven't we done that already?" And those others who weren't having to go through the system thought it was OK. They thought people were able to easily access the abortion here that they needed.But what we heard through the submissions and what we've been hearing before that was that that is not the truth and that the legislation we have the framework we have at the moment is not working well.The Abortion Supervisory Committee has said that best practice for abortion is that it happen prior to nine weeks. But in New Zealand only 41 percent of abortions are carried out before nine weeks and this is a lot less than in comparable countries where in Sweden for example 84 percent of abortion care happens prior to nine weeks because they have a liberalised system and people don't have to jump through all of those hoops that they do here.In this country our legislation means that in some areas pregnant people have to see as many as seven healthcare providers before they can access a termination and that the average time from going to the doctor for a referral is 25 days and in some areas it's two weeks before you can get that appointment. We heard from almost all submitters a real concern about abortions happening later; that was one of the key things that came through. I just want to say to people in this House who hold that concern: this legislation is your best answer to that concern this will enable people to access abortions when the pregnancy is at the embryonic stage before it even gets to being a fetus. That I think we have shared understanding of. Even when I ask people opposing the bill because they have a concern around the development of life about whether they would want abortions if they were going to be happening to happen earlier they said yes. This legislation is how we do that.Another point that was often raised that I think is really important for people to understand is that there's a concern that this liberalisation will lead to more people having to seek abortion care particularly later. There is no international evidence to back that up; in fact it is the reverse.Canada has no abortion legislation. It is purely a healthcare issue—that's been the way since 1988 and they don't have more. They haven't seen an increase in terminations happening after 20 weeks it's remained very stable. Similar to our patterns they have I understand a slightly lower rate than we do. In Queensland where they do have a threshold at 20 weeks they have a higher rate of terminations after that point than Canada does with none. The evidence is that the more restrictive the legislation counterintuitively the more people are accessing terminations and the more maternal fatalities there are.If you care about women's health if you want to see these women accessing abortion care accessing it earlier if it has to happen this is the legislation to do it. I do think we should get rid of the 20-week threshold altogether and that came through clearly from those very small numbers of people who are actually involved in providing this care in the country. When we heard previously from a speaker talking about a GP asking how they were to interpret wellbeing they wouldn't know what that would mean. It wouldn't matter if they didn't understand that because they wouldn't be providing them because there's only a very small handful of people who are qualified to provide those services. The thing is that it is according to very strict guidelines of care and medical ethics and it is my belief that the decisions should still remain with the pregnant person.As we heard from the Cavanaghs where they found out that—and from their perspective it was a baby at that point the heart was growing outside of its body and they knew that the longer the pregnancy continued the more pain that their child would experience and they made the decision to terminate. There are people in their Facebook group who have been through that; others made a different decision chose to continue the pregnancy because they wanted that birth and the funeral. That is not a decision that a health practitioner should make; that should be their decision on their morals and their conscience and it's certainly not a decision for this House to make. How can we insert ourselves into those times in anybody's life and think that we know better?"