Government takes first steps towards abortion law reform

Stuff co.nz 21 January 2018
Abortion law reform is back on the table with a new Government but not everyone supports the move to take abortion out of the Crimes Act. Jo Moir investigates the arguments for and against liberalising abortion.

Marina Young was 20 when she and her boyfriend found out they were having a baby. Initially they laughed at the crazy situation they had found themselves in, and then reality set in.

For Young, she started to worry that if she kept the baby her boyfriend would leave her; family members told her she’d never reach her full potential.

She’d never known her own father. Her mother hadn’t known her father either. She didn’t want the same for her child.

That was in 1986. Two years later, Young and her boyfriend-turned-husband started a family together, and that was when pangs of regret set in.

“When I got pregnant and had the ultra sound – that’s when it hit me as to whether two years had really made a difference.”

Her and her husband suffered “periods of depression and feeling this void and emptiness”.

“I think if someone had put forward another suggestion or angle at the time we would have thought about it more,” Young says.
READ MORE: https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/100473534/abortion-law-reform-is-on-the-way-and-promises-to-divide-the-nations-conscience

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