Fighting to Choose

The Abortion Rights Struggle in New Zealand

in English, 340 pages,
Victoria University Press, June 2013
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Fighting to Choose chronicles one of the most important yet neglected chapters in New Zealand’s recent political history. More than thirty-five years ago, at the height of the second wave of feminism, New Zealand passed a conservative abortion law that bucked a trend in the West toward liberalisation. How did this happen in a country proud of its progressive social policies – particularly its record on women’s rights? And why is such a cumbersome, expensive, endlessly litigated set of statutes still on the books? In Fighting to Choose: The Abortion Rights Struggle in New Zealand, Alison McCulloch sets out to answer those questions by taking a close look at the people involved and the tactics they employed in waging what was – and continues to be – an intense and impassioned battle.