No Going Back: Trans-Tasman trade

The Bad Old Days

In the months after the Contraception, Sterilisation and Abortion Act was passed, in December 1977, it became very difficult to get a legal abortion in New Zealand. In February 1978 alone, more than 400 New Zealand women flew to Australia for abortions. The CS&A Act was amended later in 1978 and slowly abortions became available here, under the so-called liberal interpretation of the law currently being challenged in court by the anti-abortion group Right to Life. If the group’s action succeeds in rolling back New Zealand women’s access to abortion, the trans-Tasman trade will surely be quickly revived – at least for those who can afford it. What follows is a quick trip back in time, courtesy of an article from The Auckland Star.

“When abortion is a day off school … “
From: The Auckland Star. 28 Feb. 1978

She was a 17-year-old New Zealand schoolgirl in a sunfrock.
She arrived with 16 other New Zealand schoolgirls clutching overnight bags to spend the afternoon in a Sydney abortion clinic.
And one night in a Kings Cross hotel.
An Auckland doctor's wife was escorting her on the trip. All but one of the others – aged from 14 to 17 – took a day off school and made the trip alone. “They were fairly scared,” said the doctor's wife. “They stuck together even on the plane. I came back rather horrified by it. They were nice schoolgirls and they were being sent off into the wide blue yonder.”
She offered to make the trip as a friend of the pregnant girl and her family.  The girl's family could not have explained away a sudden overseas trip. And they didn't want their daughter to go to Sydney alone.
The doctor's wife was unwilling to reveal her name for publication, for their protection.
She returned from Sydney “furious” and “horrified.” “There seemed to be so many of them. And they were all pretty much alike,” she said.
Twenty women were booked in at the Potts Pt clinic that afternoon. All but one were from New Zealand. Seventeen were schoolgirls with scrubbed faces who arrived wearing sunfrocks, jandals, blouses and skirts. Only two were accompanied by older women.
“They were not the sort that people think are going across the Tasman for abortions,” said the doctor’s wife.
She made the arrangements through Sisters Overseas Service. “And I can’t speak highly enough of them,” she said. A trip to the doctor, then SOS, the bank and the airline – and they were all set to go.
“I got all sorts of funny looks – even from my bank manager when I told him I was going overseas for one night. I now know what these girls go through.”
She could have joined a special queue at the Air New Zealand counters.
“But I felt that was too much of an advertisement. They were all young women in that queue.”
None of them were permitted to eat on the plane – another tell-tale sign of the purpose of their trip to Australia.
The plane was half an hour late, touching down. Though they had been told to expect someone to meet them at the airport, no one turned up.
The group arrived in dribs and drabs at the clinic in the early afternoon – 20 women to be checked medically, counselled and operated on before 6 p.m.
“You could feel the rush and the tension,” she said. “I felt as if the girls were being treated like sheep.”
A doctor did a “very flimsy” case study and examination and tests. Then the patients were whisked upstairs for counselling. The counselling was “so brief it was a waste of time. They just made sure she knew what the operation was and told her what was to happen in the theatre.”
They made sure the patient had contraceptive pills and gave her some pamphlets.
After a bit more than three hours at the clinic, it was all over.
Many of the girls were booked in by the clinic at a discount rate in the nearby Kings Cross hotel. They were given an emergency phone number to call. And they shared rooms for the night.
“My lass had a huge meal – and most of the other young ones did too. They were living it up with glasses of wine and they certainly seemed to be having a good time.
“But one did come back to the hotel weeping. I think she was afraid they would find out back home where she had been.”
Her schoolgirl charge suffered stomach cramps during the night. They went shopping the next morning and caught the afternoon plane back to Auckland.
“We saw no one we knew during the whole exercise. That night I simply dropped her off at her gate. She only missed one day of school. And her school friends would have no idea whatever had happened.”
The Sydney visit cost two return airfares ($325 each), hotel accommodation and $112 for the operation itself.
The 17-year-old and her boyfriend met most of the cost from their savings.
The girl said it was her first sexual experience. And her boyfriend said (at first) that she couldn’t possibly be pregnant. For they didn’t do it properly, he said.”

END