Decision on abortion consultants

Press, 21 April 1979, Page 3

Decision on abortion consultants

PA Wellington The Abortion Supervisory Committee will decide on Monday on the reappointment of 119 certifying consultants. Their appointments expired on April 1, but airport closings prevented the committee from meeting earlier. The reappointment of New Zealand’s other 89 consultants will be considered on the anniversary of each consultant’s initial appointment.

Ten doctors throughout New Zealand have been sent letters from the committee saying they may have been too liberal in their interpretion of the abortion law, adding that it had reservations about reappointing them.

Yesterday a Wellington recipient accused the committee of going beyond its brief in sending the letters.

The doctor, who did not wish to be named, said it was not the committee’s function to determine the law or the tenor of the law. He said that before the

committee could say doctors had a high rate of approv-; als, it should consider the: pre - selection measures) patients had to go through! before their operation was approved by a certifying) consultant. If the supervisory committee was to be consistent, | it should also write to those! doctors it considered were approving too few abortions. The chairman of the Abortion Supervisory Committee (Mrs Augusta Wallace S.M.) said yesterday it was unfortunate that the doctors in question had not released the whole text. Any suggestion that her committee was trying to define the law was “nonsense.” This would be clear if the letter were read in its entirety, she said.

Mrs Wallace said the committee had a duty to ensure the abortion law was administered consistently throughout the country. If any doctors were thought to be approving a very low number of abortions, they would have been sent a similar letter.