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ParentsAugust 24, 2017

Surely it’s time for a grown-up conversation about abortion?

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More than 13,000 abortions were performed in New Zealand last year. Despite this, abortion in this country is enshrined in the Crimes Act. Jessica Hammond Doube doesn’t think it should be, and she’s doing her best to do something about it.

The kaupapa of The Spinoff Parents is to uplift, love, and support parents – but especially mothers and women who want to be mothers. Abortion access is absolutely an issue for mothers, because we know that in 2015, 57% of women having an abortion had already had one or more previous live births. Our position is that we support women making the right choices for them and their family – whatever that choice is. Therefore it is obvious that we are pro-choice. For that reason we will continue to share stories about abortion here. For more information about abortion access in New Zealand please visit Abortion Law Reform New Zealand. – Emily Writes, The Spinoff Parents editor.

When I was about 10 years old, my parents took me to an anti-abortion protest. As a good Catholic schoolgirl, I enthusiastically took up my placard, believing it was obvious that abortion was murder.

And then a few months ago I became a political candidate. One of my priorities: getting abortion removed from the Crimes Act

What happened in the intervening years? I saw what happens when real women have unwanted pregnancies. I saw desperately wanted pregnancies with really sick babies. I studied bioethics and read countless arguments about the moral status of a foetus. I learned about concepts like the right to bodily integrity. I had my own babies and saw the unimaginable physical, emotional and financial toll having babies can take.

In short, I grew up.

I think it’s time New Zealand had a grown-up conversation about abortion.

Jessica, Jenny Condie and Terry Bellamak, President of of ALRANZ (the Abortion Law Reform Association of NZ)

Here are a few things we might want to talk about:

  • Surveys show that most New Zealanders think abortion should be legal in most circumstances.
  • In fact, abortion is only legal in a narrow range of circumstances. Most women procure abortions by saying their mental health is at risk. Most of the time this is probably a lie.
  • About one in four New Zealand women have had an abortion.
  • Over half of women who have abortions are mothers. They are women who know all too well what it means to have a baby. They are women who need to be able to look after the children they already have.
  • Women have to wait, on average, 25 days to have an abortion from the time when they first see a doctor to get one. That’s almost a month of carrying a pregnancy that they want to end – with all the physical and emotional costs that entails. Abortion is a very safe procedure, but it’s safest when performed earlier. Those delays tip most abortions past the best practice cutoff of 9 weeks’ gestation. The delays are, for the most part, completely avoidable and are caused by the unnecessary hoops women have to jump through.

I understand the arguments for and against abortion. I’ve believed both of them in my lifetime. It’s time to move past these arguments and to think about the real women – one in four women – who are affected by the law as it stands.

In an uncanny coincidence, while I was writing this, a friend rang me to tell me she was pregnant and was struggling to jump through the hoops to get an abortion. I don’t want to identify her by giving too many details – but for several reasons this friend is not able to care for another child.

Intellectually, this is not a hard decision for her to make. For some women, it’s not an emotionally hard decision either. But my friend is finding it tough.

She has so far had two internal examinations and a blood test. She’s had to pay for an ultrasound, where the sonographer made her listen to the heartbeat and gave her a link to the photos. She has been offered a session with a social worker an hour’s drive from where she lives, but she can’t take leave from work to get to the appointment. She hopes she can find the two certifying consultants she needs to see soon – and locally. She knows the delays mean she will pass the 9-week limit on getting a medical abortion so she will need to have a surgical one.

Meanwhile she is trying to take care of her other young children with the usual sickness and exhaustion that goes with first trimester pregnancy. At every stage of the abortion process she feels she is being judged. She worries she will fail one of the hurdles and be one of the 200-plus women a year who are denied an abortion.

If she gets though the hoops – and most women do – she will get the abortion. It will be a painful and emotional experience. She will go home, go to work, look after her kids, cry when they aren’t looking. I’ll cry for her.

Why are we making what many women already find a traumatic experience less safe, more costly, more stressful and more invasive than it needs to be? It can’t be because we want to reduce the number of abortions. We know the best way to reduce the number of abortions is to make reliable contraception accessible, which is why the rate is slowly coming down in New Zealand – so it can’t be that.

Are we making the process unnecessarily horrible to appease abortion opponents? Are we trying to punish women for ending their pregnancies?

I don’t want to punish women, and neither do most New Zealanders. I want to support women, and so do most New Zealanders. I want to get to parliament and I want to remove abortion from the Crimes Act. I think most New Zealanders want that too.

Read more from The Spinoff on abortion in New Zealand here.

Jessica Hammond Doube is The Opportunities Party candidate for Ōhāriu. She is mum to two little girls and their imaginary friends, Jackawaya, Sish, Rosetta and Ham (who is a piece of talking ham). Jessica worked on the abortion policy for TOP, which will appear in their soon-to-be-released health policy.

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Credit: Pixabay
Credit: Pixabay

ParentsAugust 23, 2017

The legend of the Relaxed Mother

Credit: Pixabay
Credit: Pixabay

You know her right? The Relaxed Mother? The mother you’re always compared to? Georgina Langdon-Pole takes on the myth.

Gather around, ladies and gents. I am going to tell you the story of a magical sorceress. Legend calls her the ‘Relaxed Mother.’

The myth of the Relaxed Mother is perpetuated by the Baby Whisperers AKA visitors AKA your great auntie’s cousin’s best friend’s neighbour. Shortly after I gave birth they came in their droves, bringing the smell of musty perfume and tales of the Relaxed Mother. Legend has it, she can be found having a hypnotic birth beside a stream, or sitting happily in a deafening cafe just a few days after her birth. The high-pitched gushing seemed endless. “Oh, she has SUCH a good baby. It must be because she’s SUCH a relaxed mother,” they’d cluck, while I thought about more pressing matters like the fear of my first poo, or wondering if I’d ever leave the house again.

I wanted to meet this incredible woman. After the birth of my son I stumbled around the house in my nana nighty, anxious, covered in a thin layer of milk and baby pee. I cried on average once an hour. Sometimes for genuine reasons, like over my dishevelled vagina, or at the realisation I might never sleep again. Other times for stranger reasons, because – oh, I dunno – my partner made me peanut butter instead of nutella toast, or I saw a dew drop on a leaf in the garden.

The Relaxed Mother, walking on air. (Credit: Pixabay)

I had every intention of being a Relaxed Mother. Smart looking people in books told me that during labour, the more tense you are from the pain, the slower the cervix dilates. So I figured I’d just need to relax a bit, right? Like, take a chill pill, bro. Meditate. Go to my happy place. Think about fairies and butterflies and sunsets on beaches. This did not happen. Instead, I fantasised about getting a giant needle in my spine. Chanted for it like a possessed demon. When the anaesthetist arrived she was wearing normal, serious doctor clothes, but she may as well have been covered in gold and glitter with giant angel wings sprouting from her back. I was all like: “YES!!! PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE CAN YOU STICK A GIANT NEEDLE INTO MY SPINE I WILL LOVE YOU FOREVER YOU ARE MY SAVIOUR!!!”

Post-birth on my first outing to a cafe, I tried to breastfeed my baby. He wailed so loud you could barely hear the painful/repetitive/monotonous music overhead. I fumbled with my nipple shield (which made me look like a bit Madonna, only housewifey). Meanwhile, my breast hung out as milk projectiled directly into his eye. At moments like these, appearances matter. You want to avoid the judgement that you being unable to calm your baby is a reflection of how uptight you are. Cue slightly concerned but relaxed look. Casual, nonchalant laughter. Keep calm; look at ease. Actual internal dialogue: “Oh god everyone is staring at me. What’s wrong with you you little shit! If you’re hungry, just eat!”

Yes, I admit it. I have called my precious bundle of joy a little shit. This was usually followed by uncontrollable weeping. Out of guilt – but also because he did something excruciatingly cute, like blinked, and it was so perfect and adorable and beautiful. Those first few weeks are a roller coaster ride, naked and without a seat belt. Unless you’re a 1950s housewife who has developed a strong appetite for tea and codeine, most of us first time mothers are not relaxed. We flick from extreme to extreme, calling our baby a ‘dick’ one minute, the next cradling them and sobbing, plotting never to leave their side before their 21st birthday.

Not everyone understood this. Some Baby Whisperers gave me subtle (and by subtle I mean in your face), encouraging (and by encouraging I mean pushy) advice. The kind of advice followed by a stale smile, the smile that said: “I am worried for you, Georgina. Worried you’ll become a crazed hermit, breastfeeding your baby until he’s 16.” Again and again, I was encouraged to just get on with life and be ‘normal’ again. And in some other pre-mangled genitalia, pre-night is the new day, pre-tiny human dimension, (THE PAST), I wanted this. But in the present? I didn’t want to go out for a chai latte, while I sat there analysing how the trendy chair hurt my hemorrhoids. I wanted to curl up into a ball, crawl under my duvet and rock gently. I wanted to sit there, stare at my sleeping baby and weep because this tiny human was the embodiment of perfection. And because my vagina hurt. It hurt bad.

This is not my happy place. Credit: Pixabay

So who is this Relaxed Mother, this mysterious shape-shifting creature? She is that Barbie doll you played with when you were five and that really together looking person in the latest issue of Woman’s Day. She is off over there in the distance riding her unicorn over a fucking rainbow. Real mothers are exactly that: real. Human. And, although they often come into the world looking like a cross between a sultana and a martian, our babies are only human too. When they cry it is usually less a reflection of our mental state and more to do with the fact that we ate cabbage and bok choy for dinner.

I anticipate there will be a few more concerned smiles before my son grows up. Because I’m too soft or too hard, or not relaxed enough. But if the cry of my baby didn’t make my brain pulse and my heart race, I’d probably be sitting in the bath with a whiskey while my toddler graffitied the lounge walls with his faeces. I might accidentally take the wrong child home from the park, or even worse: the odd socks would never be found. I am happy to let the Relaxed Mother ride her unicorn off into the distance. I’ll be the one in the car park, swearing at my stroller as I try to assemble it. I’ll be right here on planet earth, being human, thank you very much.

Georgina Langdon-Pole is a writer, lecturer and community development practitioner passionate about social justice and giving a shit. She’s also the proud mother of two tiny humans. Follow her on Twitter.

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This content is entirely funded by Flick, New Zealand’s fairest power deal. In the past year, their customers saved $398 on average, which pays for a cheeky bottle of wine in the trolley almost every shop. Please support us by switching to them right now!

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