Mon Oct 25, 2021 – 8:49 am EDT
(Live Action) – A lawsuit brought by the New Zealand Health Professionals Alliance (NZHPA) alleging that recent changes to the country’s abortion law violated their rights to freedom of thought, conscience, religion, expression, and association, as well as their right to be free from discrimination, was decided last week.
The March 2021 lawsuit specifically challenged sections 14 and 15 of the Contraception, Sterilisation and Abortion Act 1977 (CSA Act), which was amended in 2020 to make it the most permissive abortion legislation in the world. NZHPA members argued that the 2020 changes made them complicit in abortion, and breached their right to conscientious objection as set out in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990 (NZBORA).
Section 14 requires that “[i]f A has a conscientious objection to providing, or to assisting with providing, to B the service requested, A must tell B at the earliest opportunity — (a) of their conscientious objection; and (b) how to access the contact details of another person who is the closest provider of the service requested.”
Section 15, however, specifies that an employer must not discriminate against individuals who conscientiously object to assisting with or referring for abortions,
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