Abortion Supervisory Committee
10 April 2019
Danny Pickering
fyi‐request‐9977‐[email address]
OFFICIAL INFORMATION ACT REQUEST
I refer to your request of 1 April 2019 sent to the Ministry of Health seeking information under the
Official Information Act 1982 (the OIA). Your request has been transferred under section 14 of the
OIA to the Abortion Supervisory Committee (ASC) as it relates more closely to the functions of that
department.
Specifically, you have requested:
The total number of abortions carried out per annum, broken down by DHB. Please break this
down by year as far back as records permit. Please further break this down by ethnicity.
Please refer to table 1 which lists the total number of abortions reported to the ASC for each year
between 1978 to 2017. There is a slight discrepancy with the way data was recorded in 1978 as the
annual report for that year recorded data from 1 April 1978 to 1 March 1979.
The ASC is not able to provide this information broken down by DHB. Your request is refused under
section 18(g) of the OIA as the information is not held by the ASC.
Information collected and reported on by Stats NZ prior to 2008 either did not contain a breakdown
by ethnicity or was not collated in a way than can be reported in the table provided. Over the
previous 40 years there have been different Committee’s, Secretaries and forms used to collect data.
As a result, annual reports to Parliament have been inconsistent.
Please contact [email address] to request ASC annual reports, which contain comprehensive
statistical data that you may find helpful including information on ethnicity and abortions by
hospital.
If you are not satisfied with our response to your request, you have the right to make a complaint to
the Ombudsman under section 28(3) of the OIA. The Ombudsman may be contacted by writing to
the Office of Ombudsman at PO Box 10152, Wellington 6143, by email to
[email address] or by phone to 0800 802 602.
Yours sincerely
Rachael Cole
Secretary
Abortion Supervisory Committee
Tribunals Unit | Level 1, 86 Customhouse Quay
DX SX 11159 | Wellington
T: 04 462 6660 |
E: [email address]
W: www.justice.govt.nz
Table 1: Number of Induced Abortions by Year 1978 – 2017; Broken Down by Ethnicity*
Total Abortions
European
Maori
Pacific
Asian
MELAA
Other
Year
1978
**2,654
1979
3653
1980
5945
1981
6759
1982
6903
1983
7198
1984
7275
1985
7130
1986
8079
1987
8789
1988
10044
1989
10200
1990
11173
1991
11613
1992
11595
1993
11893
1994
12835
1995
13652
1996
14805
1997
15208
1998
15029
1999
15501
2000
16103
2001
16410
2002
17380
2003
18511
2004
18211
2005
17531
2006
17934
2007
18382
2008
17940
10499
4250
2230
2875
206
25
2009
17550
10113
4131
2360
2892
216
23
2010
16630
9378
4056
2228
2778
207
17
2011
15863
9044
3855
2054
2649
189
22
2012
14745
8266
3596
1985
2480
169
12
2013
14073
8015
3459
1712
2405
158
20
2014
13137
7564
3012
1544
2358
156
23
2015
13155
7613
3080
1487
2382
165
13
2016
12823
7283
2896
1380
2563
170
12
2017
13285
7519
3111
1369
2630
199
6
*Each abortion has been included in every ethnic group specified. For this reason, some abortions are counted more than
once. Therefore, the figure provided under total abortions will be fewer than the ethnicity numbers combined.
**The Abortion Supervisory committee does not have accurate abortion numbers for 1978 as the total was from 1 April
1978‐31 March 1979 in its Annual Report of 1979
Note:
(a)
MELAA = Middle Eastern, Latin American and African
(b) Other includes “New Zealanders”
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