SpeechCONTRACEPTION STERILISATION AND ABORTION (SAFE AREAS) AMENDMENT BILLThird ReadingLOUISA WALL (Labour): Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. Tēnā koutou katoa. I move That the Contraception Sterilisation and Abortion (Safe Areas) Amendment Bill be now read a third time. To begin this contribution I want to acknowledge Dame Margaret Sparrow and Terry Bellamak and thank them for their years and years of advocacy and support for the right of women and people who are pregnant to access services. To you I extend my congratulations—we are almost there.I want to reinforce the kaupapa of this piece of legislation. It seeks to ensure firstly the safety and wellbeing and secondly the privacy and dignity of women accessing abortion facilities. For practitioners providing such abortion services it wants to ensure that they are protected including from information and opinions communicated in a way that will harm them hurt them and are not beneficial to them and therein I think lies the fine balance that the Hon David Parker in his role as Attorney-General has helped the committee to find.I do want to highlight the very very good practice and process in terms of the section 7 report—the original one. Under Standing Order 269(5) when a New Zealand Bill of Rights Act issue was alerted to the House and to the committee in February 2021 essentially the Attorney-General said that the use of word communicate" was overly broad. Therein then ensued a discourse a discussion an engagement initiated by Dr Liz Craig as the chair of the Health Committee and I want to commend Liz as the chair of the Health Committee for her focus and steadfast resolve that they as a group would find a solution to the section 7 issue that had been highlighted by the Attorney-General.They were able through making amendments to this legislation to get to a point whereby on 10 November 2021 before the second reading of this legislation the Attorney-General was able to write to the House and inform the House that because of those amendments to the bill he was satisfied that while there would still be a limit of freedom of expression within a safe area under section 14 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act it would do so in a way that is demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society under section 5.Section 14 obviously is a focus on freedom of expression and the rights of people who don't believe in abortion and the rights of people who think they have a right to tell women or people who are pregnant about whether or not they should have an abortion. He said that there was a good balance now between that right in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and section 5 which is about justified limitations.I guess my focus on him making that declaration was that it should satisfy this House that this legislation has now reached a very fine balance in upholding both those: the right to freedom of expression and the justifications on the limitation of that expression. From a medical perspective we have to ensure that people's actions do not harm other people and that they do not act in a way that will hurt someone and will not provide any benefit.In addition to Dr Craig can I also acknowledge Chris Bishop Dr Elizabeth Kerekere Dr Anae Neru Leavasa Dr Tracey McLellan Debbie Ngarewa-Packer Sarah Pallett Dr Gaurav Sharma Penny Simmonds Tangi Utikere Brooke van Velden and Simon Watts as members of the Health Committee. But I particularly want to acknowledge the work of Jan Logie. Jan has been an amazing advocate for abortion law reform and in the previous Parliament she was on the Abortion Legislation Committee chaired by the Hon Ruth Dyson. It also included the Hon Amy Adams the Hon Tracey Martin David Seymour and I want to acknowledge my colleague Anahila Kanongata'a-Suisuiki.This bill from my perspective also represents a commitment to freedom from discrimination for groups that have been historically discriminated against such as women and within this particular context vulnerable groups such as pregnant women. The UN has determined under Sustainable Development Goal No. 5 the empowerment of women and girls: empowerment over our bodies empowerment over the health services that we choose to use without feeling unsafe and with the State providing those services in a way that meets our needs. So specific and safe abortion services I believe is about our value as equal citizens within our democracies.I found a piece of—I'll call it research. It was actually a survey from the New York Times before their last election titled "Gender Equality the Status of Women and the 2020 Elections". The findings within the context of this abortion safe areas legislation are such that I really do want to highlight those who don't support abortion and also those who don't support safe areas. Anti-abortionists from this survey are hostile to gender equality and this movement fundamentally is misogynistic. What is misogyny? It is a dislike a contempt for an ingrained prejudice against women. It also highlights that some women can be anti-abortionist too because just like internalised homophobia they can experience internalised sexism. On every question that was asked: do men make better political leaders than women do you want there to be equal numbers of men and women in positions of powers if you are anti-abortionists half of you said yes but if you were pro-choice that is you believe in the power of women to decide for yourself 80 percent of you said yes.So anti-abortionists don't like the Me Too movement. They don't think access to birth control impacts women's equality. They don't believe sexism is a problem and they are hostile to women's rights.I also want to highlight the work of Dr Diana Foster who is the director of Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health at the University of California. So she is a professor and she provided an amicus brief to the US Supreme Court case on abortion in November 2021. She talked about a study the Turnaway Study a thousand women over five years who were forced to have children when they were denied access to abortion. What does it lead to? Serious physical health consequences from continued pregnancy and childbirth including death; greater economic and other hardship; more likely to continue to be exposed to intimate partner violence; less likely to have futures where they have intended pregnancies; and an inability to achieve their educational and other aspirations. So accessing abortion services safely based on the need identified by the pregnant woman matters.I would like to thank colleagues from across the House for supporting this legislative reform. Your vote with and for women is also a vote against sexism and misogyny. I commend this bill to the House."