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Party on, Garth

If there are two sides to Garth George - a Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde - then today's piece is back on form for the latter. No longer sated by those Raetihi pies, Garth wades back into the abortion debate, querying the lack of reporting of the Health and Disability Commissioner's finding that certain DHBs have been failing their responsibilities to consumers by not offering women considering an abortion a look at their ultrasound. From what I can tell, and I might be wrong, no one has been stopping women looking at ultrasounds - they just haven't been offering the choice.

The complainant is in this case was the anti-abortion lobby group Right to Life. Yes, you read that right, an anti-abortion group are concerned because women are being offered a lack of choice.

This decision will have national repercussions since a survey last year revealed that a number of DHBs do not offer women considering an abortion the chance to see their scans; they have to ask.

It is important, too, because studies in the United States have shown that inviting women to view their scans causes many, recognising the child's humanity, to decide against an abortion and to give birth to their babies. Pregnancy counselling services report that the number of women who change their minds after seeing an ultrasound scan varies between 62 and 95 per cent.

Pregnancy counselling services, you say? Such as? Why does it vary like that? Here's another explanation of that alleged statistic: 62 to 95 per cent of women are guilt-tripped by the anti-abortion establishment into doing something they are not comfortable with - keeping an unwanted baby. A silly generalisation, but no worse than the condescending claim that women can't make a decision about their bodies without the abortion equivalent of those gruesome warning pictures on cigarette packets.

Meanwhile, Right to Life are also pushing in court - fortunately almost certainly fruitlessly - to have a foetus considered as a person...

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