Seymour DavidDAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you Mr Speaker. I rise in support of this bill. I must say I hesitated to take a call because there are those who say that if you are a man you should not have an opinion on this issue. I respectfully reject that. I think we're all thinking and valuing individuals and we should focus more on the quality of the arguments people are making than their identity in this debate and in many others.Having said that what I'm about to say is the result of many conversations over the years with a great many people mostly women and particularly those in the Epsom electorate and those who support the ACT Party. I want to say to opponents of this bill that it is easy to make a major category error in having this debate. There are those who will stand up and wring their hands with great enthusiasm to say that it is they who have placed the greatest value on life they who love babies more and they who are somehow more morally fit to have a view on this issue but that is not the issue at hand. What is at hand is not whether or not people like abortion because I don't know anybody that does. The issue at hand is what laws this Parliament should make and should it support a legal prohibition on abortion?My answer to that is that like so many other prohibitions this Parliament should oppose it because it is a failure. Morally to prohibit abortion in law is tantamount to saying that women who are pregnant are untrustworthy chattels who must be forced to carry a pregnancy to term on pain of punishment by the State. It shouldn't take a great deal of thought and examination to see how morally bankrupt that position is. But if somebody does equivocate they only need to ask themselves about the practical reality of back-street atrocities that have plagued this and many other countries—wherever abortion has been prohibited. Yet I say to the opponents that actually even that's not what's at issue here because they have to decide—they can't lament that we already have abortion on demand then say that these changes are great and that these changes will give us abortion on demand. Logically those three things cannot be true. The real truth is that these changes are designed to remove the subterfuge under which people must currently labour to access abortion under the current law. That is something that all of us should welcome. To support the status quo and oppose this bill is to champion not only a subterfuge but one that creates great inequity—inequity between those New Zealanders who live in major metropolitan centres and those who live in rural and provincial centres where they have so much less choice.Morally and practically this bill is the right thing to do. There are a few areas where one might quibble—I think that there needs to be a proper examination of the interface between free expression on the one hand and the limitation proposed to be placed on it with anti-protest zones. I'm not saying one or the other is right but there is an obvious tension there that thinking people will want to think about. I think the Government may have made a mistake in rejecting option A. I'm not sure that it is right to have an arbitrary threshold at 20 weeks. I think if you believe in the principle that this is healthcare and a decision between a woman and her doctor then the right thing to do was to have that all the way through as option A proposed because arbitrary thresholds in politics and in policy are always difficult to promote and defend. Nevertheless it is a crucial step forward that this bill will take abortion out of the Crimes Act and for that alone it is deserving of our support. Thank you Mr Speaker.