SpeechHon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): Thank you Madam Chair. I'd like to follow on from Chris Penk and speak in support of my Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 483. But before I do I want to point out to Mr Penk some quite important facts that he omitted to bring into his reign of consideration and that is that this is not about an abortion service; this is about provision of emergency contraception which avoids a pregnancy and if it's an unwanted pregnancy it will avoid an abortion. That's what this SOP is about. So it's about reducing unwanted pregnancies so that the option of having an abortion is not necessary for the woman involved; so that's what this is about. When we were debating Part 1 members may recall a very similar in fact identical SOP that I put up to Part 1 which changed the contraception sterilisation and abortion legislation. This does exactly the same thing but in the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Act 2003.This matter wasn't raised at the select committee and I was quite surprised because we did spend a lot of time on details at the select committee. The reason that it wasn't obvious to us is because I guess we had our faith that the system would work until it was pointed out after we reported back that a woman could go to a doctor or a chemist in Kaitāia under the current bill and say I've got a prescription here for emergency contraception. I need to take it within the next 48 hours for it to be effective." and the chemist might say "No I'm not dispensing it. I'm a conscientious objector." Under the current bill as it's drafted they would just have to tell them the name of somebody who would and it could be in Invercargill. That woman would be pregnant by the time she got to Invercargill. So this is trying to avoid something that we don't want to happen and clearly the woman doesn't want to happen. That's why I support the change in this. It's to make the legislation that's outlined in Part 1 line up with the legislation that's outlined in Part 2.In the brief remaining time that I've got I just want to further recommend that members try and stick to facts in this debate. It's an important debate. It's a very sensitive one. It is very contentious. I think that it better suits this sort of debate if facts are presented rather than things that somebody might have read on the internet had emailed to them or just made it up. One of the examples I've heard during this debate and certainly in correspondence is the fact that this will almost require—it just puts such a lot of pressure on parents of a child with Down syndrome to end that pregnancy. We heard exactly the opposite from all the practitioners in this area. We heard from parents who had been through this situation about how supported they felt how well-informed they felt and how they had zero pressure to make a decision other than what was right for their families.I've heard in this debate that there are zero children born with Down syndrome in Iceland. That is just not true. There have been two years in the last 50 years when that has been true: 1989 and 2009. The total population of Iceland is 335000 people. It's a very small place. Their birth rate of children with Down syndrome is within a margin of error different than the birth rate of children with Down syndrome in the EU. There is no truth to the fact that their abortion laws mean that there are no children with Down syndrome born. Iceland is not New Zealand. We have a different culture. We have different value sets. We have different beliefs. And it is my view that this will not move parents to terminate a pregnancy when they wouldn't in the current situation.The time pressures that Melissa Lee's Supplementary Order Paper (SOP)—and I do admire the value behind it—puts on parents I think would make for very bad outcomes. They would be pressured into making a decision while it was still theirs before that decision is taken out of their hands and that could lead to bad decision-making. I want those parents to be well supported to be well-informed and to make the choice that's best for them."