Housing lack ‘may be link to abortions’

A lack of housing may be contributing to a rise in the number of abortions in Greater Auckland for women of an age to normally have children, says the chair of the Abortion Supervisory Committee.

Members of the committee appeared before the justice select committee yesterday in Parliament and told MPs there had been a rise in the number of abortions in Auckland across all age groups for the first time in 12 years.

ASC chair Dame Linda Holloway told media after the meeting that the reasons for the increase would be worthy of proper research, given that other areas of New Zealand did not have an increase despite population growth.

Latest numbers show that there were 2156 abortions in the Auckland region for the 25 to 34 age group in 2015. This rose to 2204 in 2016, and 2379 in 2017.

The age range was typically when women had families, Holloway said. “It’s wrong to speculate, but I suspect that housing, or lack of it, is one factor that impinges on the health of women in the reproductive age group.

“There may be social and environmental factors in Auckland and Greater Auckland that have an impact on the health of women in this reproductive age group.”

There was, overall, a slight rise in the number of abortions in 2017 compared to 2016, but abortion rates were continuing to fall among young people — a 70 per cent fall in the past 10 years for those aged 15 to 19.

Parliament, meanwhile, is considering a Law Commission report into reforming abortion law, and Holloway told the justice committee that the ASC supported taking abortion out of the Crimes Act.