Restriction in abortion law worries ACT

Labour MP Louisa Wall’s bill to amend last year’s abortion law will likely pass its first reading this week.

It seeks to essentially overturn a change made to last year’s abortion legislation made by ACT leader David Seymour, which makes it impossible to establish ‘‘safe areas’’ where it is illegal to protest outside a place offering abortions.

Unusually, seeing as Wall’s bill is designed to overturn Seymour’s changes, ACT will be backing the bill at first reading.

However, their support of the bill at later stages is contingent on changes being made at select committee; changes that Wall and her supporters are unlikely to agree to.

Wall’s bill will allow the health minister, in consultation with the justice minister, to create a safe area of no more than 150 metres around a place offering abortions. It would be illegal to intimidate, obstruct, or more generally protest in those areas.

The bill will go to a conscience vote. Debate will probably begin tonight, but it is unlikely to come up for a vote until the next sitting block.

Seymour said that both he and ACT would be supporting the bill at first reading.

He said that the party objected to the word ‘‘communicate’’ in the bill’s drafting, which referred to making it illegal to communicate with a person in a safe zone ‘‘in a manner that an ordinary reasonable person would know would cause emotional distress to a protected person’’.

‘‘We don’t have a problem with safe zones against intimidation and obstruction and all of the odious things that people try to do to women sometimes outside of abortion clinics.’’

Seymour said banning communication in safe zones would lead the country down a dark path. ‘‘Once you give a minister the ability to put restrictions on communication, you’re going down a very dark route.’’

Safe areas were one of a suite of recommendations made by the Law Commission which looked at ways to reform New Zealand’s abortion law in 2018.

The ability to create safe zones was included in the Government’s bill, but Seymour’s proposed amendment removed safe zones from the final bill after an administrative mistake in the House. MPs who supported safe zones did not call for a personal vote on the second part of Seymour’s amendment, allowing it to pass.