FPANZ

Family Planning Association (NZ)

In 1939 the Sex Hygiene and Birth Regulation Society was renamed the Family Planning Association. Its aims were to educate New Zealanders on the need for birth control and sex education, and to reduce family size.

• FPA continues to be a major advocate for lowering the age to which sex education and contraceptive advice can be given to children.
• FPA's response to NZ's rising abortion rates is to advocate more contraceptives, and sex education at increasingly lower ages.
• FPA rejected a MoH booklet entitled "Considering an Abortion? What are your Options?" which they had helped develop, claiming the foetal photos were a distortion.
• FPA NZ opposes legislation requiring parental notification, "Legislation must be relevant to the realities of 21st Century life and FPA will continue to work to ensure the rights of young people are protected,"
• FPANZ works with IPPF to reduce high levels of population growth in Oceania & South East Asia.

In the early 1900s, New Zealand's public policy was strongly influenced by eugenic ideology (immigration restriction, sterilization, race segregation, selective breeding of superior stock, the biological threat of "inferior types," and the need for recording and controlling human heredity). Dr MacGregor, the Inspector of Hospitals blamed the welfare system for allowing "the unfit to breed". Dr W.A. Chapple and others called for compulsory sterilization of the "unfit."

Eugenics philosophy was the justification for the Mental Defectives Amendment Act 1928. The Act came short of banning marriage of "mental defectives" and this prohibition was severely criticised by what is now the Women's Division of Federated Farmers.

After WW II and the full horror of the Holocaust, the eugenics movement was discredited and it was "repackaged" so as to avoid the direct connection with birth control and the eugenics of the NAZI regime. (This repackaging was also evident in Margaret Sanger's policies on eugenics in her formation of International Planned Parenthood.)

Early Days
The 'Social Hygiene Society' was formed in Christchurch in 1916 and distributed pamphlets and books concerning venereal disease, which had become a problem with troops returning home. This was in opposition to the Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) that promoted chastity and pure living.

In 1935 a meeting was called by Freda Cook and Elsie Freeman (Locke) that convened a birth control group, and 1936 saw the forming of the Sex Hygiene and Birth Regulation Society. Its aims were to educate New Zealanders on the need for birth control and sex education. One of their major aims was to reduce the size of families.

FPA
In 1939 the Sex Hygiene and Birth Regulation Society was renamed the Family Planning Association.

Those lobbying for contraceptive and abortion reform, "...considered that the risk of some loss of innocence by the majority of school children was justified to protect a minority who were at risk of pregnancy, misery, and disease through ignorance." (Report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry, Mar. 1977, p. 79)

As a matter of note, in 1974 there was estimated to be 134,299 girls in forms 1 to 7. That same year 899 girls (0.67 percent) under the age of 16 got pregnant. Because of this small number, the laws were changed and the other 99.33 percent were introduced to sex education and suffered the effects of "some loss of innocence." (as above)

According to the FPA website it survived through its own funding efforts until 1972. It subsequently received some government support and was able to gradually open more clinics throughout New Zealand. Today FPA operates 12 education centres and has 30 outreach/school clinics and 30 clinical centres.

The FPA website cites that it is "also known for its research, training of health professionals and development of award wining resources. The Association provides policy advice to government and advocates for comprehensive, age appropriate sexuality education in schools and easier access to contraception for all New Zealanders."

Sex Education

In line with IPPF policy FPA strongly supports the right of a woman, regardless of age, to consent to or refuse to consent to having an abortion, and believes that access to abortion services should be "free, legal, and safe."

In the mid-90s came concern about the accuracy and content of the information provided by counsellors attached to abortion clinics. In September 1998, the Ministry of Health published 25,000 copies of an 18-page booklet entitled "Considering an Abortion? What are your Options?"

A working party in Auckland had been commissioned to write the draft. The members were Dr John Taylor, who had recently retired after years as the chief operating surgeon at the Epsom Day abortion clinic, Dr Christine Roke, a senior official of the NZ FPA, and Annetta Moran, a secondary school teacher and a member of the national executive of SPUC.

The 25,000 booklets were sent to GPs around the country and the feedback indicated they were acceptable and proving useful.

However, FPA executive director Dr Gill Boddy-Greer (PhD), strongly objected to the (Nielsen) foetal photographs and said on a TV programme, the Holmes Show, that the photos were a distortion. Abortion opponents claimed that the photographs were denounced by the FPA because they (the photos) accurately portrayed the foetus to look 'human.'

The FPA returned their copies to the Ministry, as did counselling staff at abortion clinics around the country. The Ministry then declined to print further copies and has maintained this policy despite repeated requests.

Parental Notification

New Zealand FPA Executive Director, Dr Gill Greer, said greater commitment to family planning and reproductive health programmes is needed in developing countries to slow population growth, improve maternal and child health, and protect against sexually transmitted infections (STIs) including HIV/AIDS.

"We know from the rest of the world's experience that countries that been most successful in reducing poverty have also done the most in reducing high levels of population growth by meeting reproductive health needs." (IPPF website, news reports - 21 Aug'03)

FPAID receives funding from the David and Lucille Packard Foundation which enables them to continue "to develop international projects and raise awareness in relation to the International Conference on Population and Development Programme of Action and the Millennium Development Goals."

Many private Foundations support population control through contraceptive and abortion programmes such as those developed and used by FPA.