Maia has an excellent post up summarising the information on abortion.gen.nz about the availability of abortion around New Zealand. For various reasons, some DHBs choose not to provide abortion services locally, which leads to women from Southland having to travel seven and a half hours to Christchurch for the procedure. This is a significant barrier to access, and one which needs to be removed.
Which suggests a project for a dedicated individual next year: questioning DHB candidates in certain DHBs about their stance on local access, and drawing up a voting guide. This situation can change, but we'll probably need to de-elect some people first.
Thanks - I do think some useful work could be done with the DHB, but they are limited by the legislation
ReplyDeleteI asked all the local candidates their position at the last DHB elections, but they all supported women's right to choose. I guess that's what comes of living in Wellington. Useful work could be done in Palmerston North though, where I do think the board might be part of the problem
I'm going to do a better version of the map as soon as I get a better photo editing programme, and I'm going to do a couple more of maps. I want to do one about the provision of second trimester abortions.