Collins JudithHon JUDITH COLLINS (National—Papakura): Thank you Mr Speaker. These conscience votes are incredibly hard on us—really hard—but it does bring out the best in our very personal debates that we have on it. I'd like to acknowledge all the contributions today. To single out anybody would be unfair to everybody. I will be supporting this bill and I will be supporting it not because I am pro-abortion but because I understand the reality of life for many women. I also understand that if I was an 18-year-old kid going off to university and became pregnant then I would be exactly thinking about that. I think that that is something that I should—when I approach conscience votes I try to say like many of us do How would I behave?" And I think that I would want to know that I had options in life. I was never placed in that position—I was never in that position—and so I do speak from a position of privilege when it comes to this debate. My mother though obviously like Ginny Andersen's mother like me had pre-eclampsia and was you know almost dead from my sister before me and when she was pregnant with me at the age of 39 and I was her sixth child the doctors recommended an abortion. Many years later people have thought that they should have gone with that option. But I am still here and they're not going to get me yet. But she had an incredibly different situation from many people. Although she was in extremely difficult and precarious health she had tremendous support from the medical profession and she had great support from my father and her sisters and her children. I think one of the things that—she was able to make a decision partly because of that and also because one of my sisters had died at the age of six days old and my mother wasn't going to let anyone else go and that was me. So I do owe my life very much to my mother and my sister who had died.This is the reality: abortion has been around for ever. Abortion's been around since whenever women have been pregnant with either unwanted pregnancies or pregnancies that were going to kill them. It is not a new phenomenon. What is more of a new phenomenon is that we speak about it. I grew up in the country many people know: not Morrinsville like the Prime Minister but Matamata—lovely town Matamata. So is Morrinsville of course but anyway my sister is buried in Morrinsville cemetery which is why Matamata became our town; it had too many nasty thoughts for my parents. So I grew up there. There were girls who got pregnant. There were girls who were sent away to have adoptions—have their babies and have adoptions. I can think of some who were much older than me because I'm really quite young—well they were my sister's generation; they were older than me lots older than me—who were sent away had babies adopted out and then they came back and married the boy who was the father of the child. What in God's name was anyone thinking? What they were thinking was "We have to have our daughter dressed up in a white dress so everyone has their family pride and there's no shame." How can there be shame in a child? And yet that happened. It also happened for girls that they were sent away for an abortion—they went to Australia—or else there was somebody that people talked about who performed abortions in the town and I heard the Hon Gerry Brownlee mentioning something like that before. So this is not a pro-abortion move in my opinion. This is about a reality check. I would personally rather that abortions if they must occur occur very early on in a pregnancy. I would much rather have that happen. Like the Hon Louise Upston my first pregnancy—well my first pregnancy was a miscarriage. I miscarried during a court case. Can you imagine what that was like? I had to go back the next day to finish the court case—and people think this place is tough. These things happen. We women have dealt with it for generations for hundreds of years. It is not a nice place for anyone to be with any pregnancy that is unwanted. But I do think we have to understand the reality. We have to support women when they're going through this and we have to have abortions if they must be early—as early as possible—and with less trauma as possible. Thank you Mr Speaker."