KEY POINTS:
How much longer are we to allow the Abortion Supervisory Committee to con us into believing that just on 99 per cent of the women and girls given an induced abortion each year are in danger of going insane?
That's what the committee's 2007 report to Parliament, tabled last week, tells us happened - that of the 17,934 induced abortions performed in the year to June 30, 2006, 17,732, or 98.9 per cent, were done on "mental health" grounds.
It is interesting that only four abortions were granted because of a risk to life as well as to physical or mental health. Only 120-odd were granted on the grounds of foetal abnormality, and of those 77 were on the grounds of "foetal abnormality and mental risk".
How much longer are we as taxpayers to tolerate spending more than $5 million a year on the abortion industry's 205 "certifying consultants" (one earned $240,000 in the 2006 year) when 98.9 per cent of the time, after a brief "consultation", they sign off on an abortion to "preserve the mental health" of the woman or girl seeking it?
How much longer are we expected to accept that "sex education" promoting contraception, and the use of condoms, is effective when the committee's latest report reveals that more than a quarter of the year's abortions (4785 or 26.7 per cent) were performed on women who said they had been using condoms?
Another 2399 (13.4 per cent) blamed oral contraceptive failure; 350 (2 per cent) natural family planning failure; and 577 (3.2 per cent) on the failure of other contraceptive devices or actions, for a total of 8111, or 45 per cent.
By comparison, 9823 abortions (54.8 per cent) were granted to women who admitted to using no contraceptive device or action at all.
Not much in it, is there? So where does that leave those, such as the pro-abortion and contraception outfit that calls itself Family Planning, who preach "safe sex" through using condoms?
Granted, the "safe sex" message is aimed at venereal diseases as well as unwanted pregnancy, but if condoms have a failure rate of 26.7 per cent when it comes to unwanted pregnancy, they will have the same sort of failure rate in preventing sexually transmitted diseases.
Which, of course, means that the so-called "safe sex" message is, in fact, thoroughly unsafe, and leads one to the unpopular conclusion that the only way to ensure "safe sex" is for boys and men to keep their flies zipped up and girls and women their legs crossed.
But it is the emphasis on mental health grounds in granting abortions that really needs to be looked at since there is solid scientific evidence that it is women who have abortions, not women who don't, who develop mental problems.
A year ago, Professor David Fergusson, leader of the Canterbury University Health and Development Study, announced that the study had revealed that nearly half the women it studied who had had an abortion "had elevated rates of subsequent mental health problems, including depression, anxiety, suicidal behaviours and substance abuse disorders".
Dr Fergusson, a self-confessed rationalist and supporter of abortion rights, presented his findings to the Abortion Supervisory Committee and asked it to commission more research. The then committee declined.
Later, in speeches and interviews, Dr Fergusson talked about the problems of having credible research translated into public policy when the evidence conflicts with prevailing ideology.
"Policy is driven," he said, "by advocates who have passionate beliefs in what is going to work. They don't believe it can possibly fail. So we don't learn from our mistakes because we never ask if we've made a mistake."
Which explains why, for instance, the pro-life organisation Right to Life has involved itself in years-long High Court proceedings to try to force the Abortion Supervisory Committee to, among other things, "perform its statutory duty to review the procedure for the conduct of abortions and determine in any case whether the provisions of the [Contraception Sterilisation and Abortion] Act are being complied with".
Right to Life also claims in its action that the committee "has failed to inquire into the circumstances in which certifying consultants are authorising the performance of abortions on the mental health ground, having regard to the extent to which that ground is used".
The case, which has been fought every step of the way by the Abortion Supervisory Committee (at taxpayer expense), returns to the High Court in Wellington early in April.
Meanwhile, in the words of Bernard Moran, Auckland spokesman for another pro-life organisation, Voice for Life, I can only ask: "When no one wants to know, what do you do to bring about change?"
