Athletic-looking for an 80-year-old, Orr, the president of anti-abortion group Right to Life New Zealand, has sat patiently in the far corner of the mahogany-decked courtroom since 9am, watching as lawyers labour the technical details of the case he has brought.
He's hard of hearing these days, but Orr knows what is at stake.
For more than 35 years he's been fighting to prevent what he calls, "the ultimate in child abuse".
Orr is one of six per cent of Kiwis who oppose abortion even when a woman's physical or mental health is at risk.
Auckland University researchers say 78 per cent of New Zealand's population now consider abortion acceptable in all circumstances.
Nevertheless, Right to Life claimed in June that the committee acted unlawfully in granting an abortion licence to Tauranga's Family Planning Clinic.
19 licenced hospitals and private medical centres around the country offer either surgically induced, or both surgical and medical (drug-induced) abortions.
As such, they comply with a 1977 law that stipulates providers must have facilities to administer a surgical abortion onsite.
The Tauranga clinic, however, only offers non-invasive medical abortions.
At the time the law was written, medical abortions did not exist.
Medical abortions administered in Tauranga are offered only to nine weeks into a pregnancy, a point at which most scientists agree the embryo cannot think or feel pain.
They can be performed sooner than surgical abortions, cost less to administer, and give women the option to miscarry at home rather than in a hospital environment.
Medical abortions also mean Bay of Plenty women avoid a three-hour round trip to Thames Hospital where a local Voice for Life chapter holds protest vigils outside the surgical abortion-only clinic.
Right to Life, Christchurch-based lobby group of around 800 members, tenaciously opposes abortion, contraception and same-sex marriage.30-09-2015 20:42:07
From 2005 to 2012 it beat a determined path to the Supreme Court, arguing the committee had failed to scrutinise decision-making by abortion consultants, the people who to this day authorise 99 per cent of abortions on the grounds of women's mental health.
Judges dismissed its appeal, three-to-two.
The president of Right to Life since its inception in 1999, Orr is confident the group can succeed in its current case, affecting future changes to abortion access in New Zealand.
"If we lose, then Family Planning has every opportunity to apply for licenses for all [its] other clinics," he says.
"If we stood back and said 'don't do anything about it because it's not going to cause any great harm', it could get worse."
The Right to Choose
Voluminous curls roaring up around her dark-rimmed glasses, Terry Bellamak exits the High Court wearing a violet T-shirt emblazoned in white: "Abortion on demand without apology".
She recently led a wind-battered demonstration across the road at Parliament House rallying against Right to Life's case.
The event drew protesters armed with raincoats, umbrellas and placards that read, "Forced pregnancy is torture".
Bellamak is the spokeswoman for My Decision, a reproductive rights activist group, and president-elect of Abortion Law Reform of New Zealand (Alranz).
"A decision in favour of Right to Life might not even be a bad thing because it could galvanise MPs to act," she says.
"Of course if they don't, it's women who will pay the freight for their inaction."
Bellamak says abortion is a net good for society, and that current abortion laws dehumanise and demean women who must "get a permission slip to make a decision about their own bodies".
"It's impossible for women to attain career independence and economic independence to fulfil their educational goals if they have to worry that at any moment they might be pregnant and have to carry that child.
"If this case goes the way we hope it does, that will open the door to all district health boards to provide medical abortions in non-surgical contexts."
A Patchwork of Loopholes
The 14,073 abortions performed in New Zealand in 2013 - the latest year for which data is available - were enabled through a patchwork of legislative loopholes.
Abortion remains in New Zealand's Crimes Act, and is legal only when authorised by two of the country's 167 specially certified consultants who must be satisfied the foetus is severely handicapped, a product of incest, or that its birth would endanger the physical or mental health of the mother-to-be.
Lacking the financial or social resources to raise a child is not considered grounds. Nor is rape, although many would qualify on mental health grounds.
In the last five years 1222 women were denied an abortion through this system, which Prime Minister John Key last year said, "broadly works".
The ruling on Right to Life's 2012 case has restricted scrutiny of the consultants' decisions, so the reasons for refusal are not recorded.
No-one can know for certain whether these women have kept the children they didn't want.
Alranz executive member Alison McCulloch indicates in her book Fighting to Choose: The Abortion Rights Struggle in New Zealand that they are more likely to have bought online drugs to self-terminate illegally, or travelled to Australia.
Family Planning chief executive Jackie Edmond says Right to Life's latest case, and the one preceding it, demonstrate that New Zealand's 38-year-old abortion laws are broken.
"We're spending a lot of time in court cases with varying parts of the law because [the law's] not good enough," she says.
Family Planning has sought abortion licences for all 30 of its clinics since 2009 but, to date, Tauranga is its sole provider.
"Women have to go through a very complicated process to access an abortion. As it stands today, women don't have the right to choose."
No one expected to wait more than a few weeks for a judgment on Right to Life's latest case, but four months on, they're still waiting.
The future of Tauranga Family Planning remains uncertain. If Right to Life's case is upheld, the clinic may be forced to upgrade its facilities. It could lose its abortion licence.
"We're going to wait for the decision and decide the best way to proceed," Edmond says.
"We remain firmly committed to doing whatever we can to provide an abortion service in Tauranga."
Decriminalising abortion would remove the certification process, she says.
"It would [then] be a woman who is seeking information talking to her health practitioner and following the usual health service process."
McCulloch believes the law should be clarified by politicians, not judges, but pro-choicers worry that reopening the debate in Parliament could threaten the status quo and further expose abortion laws to attack.
"The media focus detrimentally on later-term abortions where public opinion is really squishy," McCulloch says.
"You would possibly have a relatively easy ride for making earlier term abortions accessible, but a law has to accommodate later-term abortions."
Edmond says the government gets distracted by a small, but vocal minority of anti-abortion activists, but to Orr, who wants a law restricting all abortions, pro-choice rhetoric is a symptom of New Zealand's moral decay.
"We shouldn't have thousands of women in this country every year pregnant out of wedlock. We have the velocity of Family Planning teaching our kids now that you can have sex with whoever you like, whenever you like.
"You can't say the mother has a right to decide if her child is going to live," Orr says.
"She has absolutely no right."
In a seemingly irreconcilable debate there's one thing both sides can agree on.
The 1977 law that regulates abortions in New Zealand - the same law the Abortion Supervisory Committee said was "not a viable option" 15 years ago - has politicians running scared.
"Most politicians, I think, believe that they would need a cross-party coalition to make [change] happen," McCulloch says.
"It either needs a strong political leader to champion it, or a crisis."
In the week Right to Life's case was heard, a Texas court upheld the strictest provisions of a law which closed half the state's abortion clinics in 2013.
The US Supreme Court has postponed further clinic closures while it determines whether requiring clinics to possess the same facilities as surgical hospitals places an unconstitutional burden on abortion access.
McCulloch calls Right to Life's case a tactic to chip away at abortion access drawn straight from the US anti-abortion playbook, but Orr says the goal is to protect women's health and uphold the law.
While a win for Right to Life wouldn't gut abortion access nationally, Edmond says the case highlights how tenuous that access is.
With no decision on the Tauranga case, New Zealand's abortion system remains in limbo.
Bellamak likens the system to kabuki, a Japanese theatre form characterised by exaggerated mime.
"It's unnecessary and expensive. Abortion is not a problem to be solved," she says.
"A woman with a wanted child is a mother-to-be. A woman with an unwanted pregnancy has a treatable medical condition."
Edmond says most New Zealanders are pragmatic.
"They appreciate the need for an abortion service, and have confidence in women to manage that with their health practitioner."
EARLY MEDICAL ABORTION
Medical abortion is offered by 12 providers around New Zealand.
In accordance with World Health Organisation guidelines, the service is available only up to 12 weeks into a pregnancy in most circumstances.
In a medical abortion, two pills of prostaglandin, a medication to induce labour, are taken 24 to 48 hours apart.
Under the Contraception, Sterilisation and Abortion Act (1977), the pills must both be taken at a licenced facility, but the abortion can occur at home.
Certified abortion consultant Dr Simon Snook says medical abortions are safe, effective and indistinguishable from a spontaneous miscarriage.
"Medical abortion is no less safe than having a surgical abortion.
"There are small complication rates with both, but then equally there are small complication rates with anything that is done medically, and they are very small indeed."
Surgical abortions are most often administered through a procedure known as suction curettage or vacuum aspiration where a woman's cervix is dilated and the contents of the uterus are pumped out.
COST OF THE CASE
Ten years of legal action hasn't come cheap. Funded through donations and membership subscriptions, Right to Life has spent about $145,000.
In July it missed a deadline to pay $72,500 in outstanding court costs from its 2012 case.
"It has always been our intention to pay the costs," says Orr, who appealed against the Court of Appeal's ruling that the costs "should lie where they fall".
"We've always had the money set aside specifically for the purpose of paying the costs because we knew we had to be prepared to pay the costs whether we agreed with it or not."
Right to Life's solicitor Peter McKenzie QC has offered his services at about one third of the usual rate.
"We've never really had a problem with money. It has just flowed in," Orr says.
The repayment period, to the confusion of pro-choice advocates, was extended until August 21 when Right to Life paid in full.
Bellamak says it would be immoral to shut the courthouse door on those unable to afford justice, but concedes the system helps litigants with "less legitimate" claims.
