Wall LouisaLOUISA WALL (Labour—Manurewa): Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare tēnā koutou katoa. In 1977 when the abortion law reform debate was happening in this House MP number 11 Whetu Tirikatene-Sullivan supported fewer restrictions for women seeking an abortion. And in particular the two doctors who were required for a woman to access abortion she said—and I quote—were demanding time-consuming obstacles for women." This bill tonight in the name of the Hon Andrew Little will rectify that situation.If we look at the abortions that are happening in New Zealand about 13000 per year of those it represents actually 40 percent of pregnancies in New Zealand being unplanned 37 percent of those pregnancies are because contraception has failed and it also represents 18 percent of the abortions that happen in New Zealand. So we are here today to rectify a situation that actually on average has stopped 200 women from accessing abortion. I have particularly looked at the Māori component to this debate and I want to acknowledge Dr Alison Green who works for Te Whāriki Takapou—it is a kaupapa Māori primary health organisation who specialise in sexual and reproductive health. They participated in this process by saying that from a Māori perspective abortion happens. Abortion from a Māori perspective is called "kuka" or "materoto" or "whakatahe". So through our language we know that as Māori we did have and practised abortions.I also want to highlight Te Atiawa kaumātua Sam Jackson who named the regional abortion services based here at Wellington Hospital. That service is called Te Māhoe. The māhoe tree drops seeds that release a chemical inhibitor. The inhibitor has the effect of only allowing the strongest māhoe seed to flourish. So in Dr Green's submissions she said this frames abortion from a Māori perspective that removing a pregnancy that has begun under suboptimal conditions in order to make way for another pregnancy to flourish in the future is a kaupapa Māori process.In contributing to this kōrero I want to talk about why women actually choose to have an abortion. Women choose to have an abortion for many reasons some of them being that they are in unstable relationships or they may not be in a relationship or they actually can't afford to have a child because of school work or other responsibilities so they are not financially secure to be able to bring a child into the world.Some of the conversation that we've had today has been about abortions post - 20 weeks. I just want to reiterate that we're talking about 56 abortions of the over 13000 abortions from 2018 data. Why were those fetuses aborted? Actually for 47 of them it was because they were lethal fetal abnormalities and because of women's health. So women would have died because of ruptured membranes; infections due to pre-eclampsia; placental abruptions which is blood loss; stroke; or septic shock. For nine of them actually it was because the young woman—22 abortions for those under 15 62 abortions for 15-year-olds because for 25 percent of those young people in that situation their father was the father of their baby. In 74 percent of those occasions the parents were involved in whether or not that child should have the abortion. So that's what we're talking about in terms of the post - 20 weeks.It's been incredibly sad to hear the scaremongering about people aborting children with Down's. We don't want to see children with Down syndrome aborted; nobody does. It's a parent's choice. So we have to get real about the testing regime and why parents choose it.But what I want to spend my last few seconds on is actually a plea to our church leaders. We need you to help reduce the need for abortions. Men do not own women. Women do not exist for men to satisfy their sexual needs. We need to stop rape. We need to stop sexual violation. We need education on sexual and reproductive health rights and we need access to family planning and contraception. I commend this bill to the House."