Family Life International NZ says that claims made by the Auckland District Health Board (Auckland DHB) about the effectiveness of its emergency contraception scheme are nothing more than PR spin designed to gain public support for spending even more money on a completely untested scheme which has failed in most other parts of the world.

"It is no coincidence that the day before funding lapses on this trial scheme the Auckland DHB starts making public statements which strongly imply that their trial programme has resulted in a reduction in Auckland abortions" says Family Life International media spokesperson Brendan Malone.

"The simple fact is that there are currently no sound scientific grounds to support the implications being made by the Auckland DHB that its emergency contraception trial scheme has been a success, and many important questions still remain unanswered."

"The Auckland DHB emergency contraceptive trial was six months in duration, yet the statistics they have presented only apply to one Auckland abortion clinic, and only for the first three month period of the trial. Not only that, but no definite causal link has been shown between the emergency contraception trial scheme and this one specific and localised incidence of abortion rate reduction" says Mr. Malone.

"Did the Auckland DHB examine whether there was an increase in women presenting for abortions at the Epsom Day Unit who had used emergency contraception? Did they track the age of the emergency contraceptive users, and then compare this to the age of the women presenting for abortions at Epsom? Have they actually seen the abortion rates at Epsom for the second three month period of their trial scheme? Did they wait to see if the reduction in abortions at Epsom is actually part of a general localised, or national, downward trend, or whether it was just some sort of irregular blip in the current national upward trend?"

"This type of scheme has failed in many other parts of the world, and a research report published in the November 2006 edition of the Obstetrics and Gynecology journal examined 23 different studies about emergency contraception availability, and it concluded that no study has shown that increased access to emergency contraception reduces unintended pregnancy or abortion rates."

"Just last August a report was published in Sweden which showed that despite more than five years of having emergency contraception available as a non-prescription drug, their abortion rate had risen by approximately 17%."

"The Auckland DHB have ignored solid international research, and instead resorted to cherry-picking local statistics to try and garner public support for spending public money funding an untested and unproven scheme related to lifestyle decision making, at a time when there are more pressing health needs, and when economic times are tough" says Mr. Malone.