For this 40-year-old New Zealander a pre-Christmas rendezvous last year ended with an unexpected and unwanted result.

JANE: I caught up with an old friend and, unfortunately, circumstances turned out that I fell pregnant. It was unplanned. I wasn't going to see this person again. So there was a quick time between pre-Christmas catch-up to the post-Christmas regret.

Jane, which is not her real name, decided she wanted to have an abortion.

JANE: I'm not in a relationship at the moment. I separated last year, early on in the year. I've got three children. I'm a single mum. It wasn't appropriate for me to have another child at the moment and I was clear on what I knew I needed to do. It was still a really tough step, though..

After seeing three doctors and a counsellor, as required by New Zealand law, Jane decided to terminate her pregnancy using the abortion pill, known as a medical abortion.

REPORTER: Did the availability of the medical abortion, the abortion pill, in any way influence your decision to have an abortion?

JANE: No, it didn't in any way. I'd made two decisions - that I didn't want to go ahead and have... At this time I couldn't go ahead with this pregnancy. And going through that process I then made a decision that I wanted to do this by having a medical termination. That's a decision that I made as a preference for me.

Compared to Australia, there was remarkably little controversy about the introduction of the abortion pill to New Zealand. But it wasn't all plain sailing.

DR MARGARET SPARROW, WOMEN’S HEALTH PIONEER: We were quite impressed with the reports that we saw coming from overseas so we decided it should be a choice for New Zealand women and we went ahead and made some inquiries.

In the late 1990s, inquiries by women's health pioneer Dr Margaret Sparrow revealed that, unlike Australia, there were no legislative barriers to the abortion pill being used here, but there was a commercial problem.
The French manufacturer of the drug would only export it to a registered pharmaceutical company and Dr Sparrow couldn't find any company in New Zealand prepared to import the drug.

DR MARGARET SPARROW: None of the pharmaceutical firms were interested in bringing abortion in because it's quite a sensitive and controversial topic and it may impact on their commercial products.

REPORTER: So you actually approached some big pharmaceutical companies?

DR MARGARET SPARROW: Yes.

REPORTER: And what kind of things did they say?

DR MARGARET SPARROW: Well, they just felt that that was not something that they wanted to get involved with.

So Dr Sparrow and four other doctors formed their own company.

DR MARGARET SPARROW: We named ourselves after a Mesopotamian goddess of love and war because we thought she would be keeping a good eye on us, and once we formed the company, true to their word, the French manufacturers began negotiating with us and we eventually signed a contract.

Ishtar then applied to Medsafe, New Zealand's equivalent to Australia's Therapeutic Goods Administration.

DR MARGARET SPARROW: It cost quite a bit, and we had to finance that and it took 13 months for it to be assessed by the Ministry and then by an independent committee and then it was approved. And the final approval must be signed off by the Minister of Health but we didn't have any problems with our Minister of Health, and normally if Medsafe approve a drug, then she will sign it, and it was gazetted in August 2001.

At this private abortion clinic in Auckland women have been offered the choice of using the abortion pill or having surgery for the last two years. .... Around 14% of Dr Alison's Knowles's patients have opted for the pill.

DR ALISON KNOWLES: To comply with the law in New Zealand, as I mentioned before, it's necessary for the woman to meet two certifying consultants, or two doctors, and this is where she'll come to meet the second doctor and that's the doctor that will be actually giving the lady the abortion pill, Mifegyne, which we keep down here.

The trade name for the pill is Mifegyne - it actually hasn't been called RU486 for many years.

DR ALISON KNOWLES: Each tablet is worth just over $100 in New Zealand.

Unlike surgical abortion, which can take under 10 minutes, abortion via Mifegyne is a process that spans three days.

DR ALISON KNOWLES: Then once she's had the abortion pill we keep an eye on her for about half an hour, and that's just in case she feels nauseated and vomits the pill. This is all on what we call day one, and for us that's a Tuesday, and then the patient has my phone number and doesn't come back to the clinic until Thursday morning. They normally come in sometime between 9:00am and 10:00am on the Thursday, which is a day and a half since they took the pill.

On this second visit women are given a different, suppository medication that causes the uterus to expel the now ended pregnancy.

DR ALISON KNOWLES: The majority of the women, say three-quarters, pass the pregnancy within four hours, so if they are getting the Misoprostol from the nurse at between 9:00am and 10:00am the majority of them have passed the pregnancy by midday to 2:00.

REPORTER: Do women leave here before that happens or do they stay here for the day?

DR ALISON KNOWLES: Oh, we like to keep an eye on them.

JANE: On the Thursday morning you go back to the clinic, you are given three tablets to insert into your vagina. If you want somebody else to do that, if you want the nurse to do that that's offered to you, but this is your experience - you're working through it.

REPORTER: So you chose to do that yourself?

JANE: I chose to do that myself.

Wellington Public Hospital, where Jane had her abortion, only allows women to leave after this stage if they have a support person to pick them up. Jane's lift fell through so she stayed in the clinic.

JANE: The moment that you start bleeding, you go to go to the bathroom, you go to go to the toilet and you realise that you are going to... you're starting to discharge tissue - it's like starting a period, things are starting to come away.
There's a container that you place inside the toilet and you discharge into there. That is a really aware moment, I think, for anyone because that's the reality of the whole six weeks that's led up to where you are at that moment, that this happened, you made a decision, I was still comfortable with my decision, I was still really aware of the reasons why I made my decision, but you are working through it. It's not something that's happening over there, it's not something somebody else is in charge of. It's about you going through something very personal to you.

Strict protocols exist on the use of the abortion pill here. For first trimester terminations it's usually only available if you're less than nine weeks pregnant. You must live within an hour of an emergency hospital and you must speak English fluently so you can communicate over the phone if there's a problem at home.
Protocol in each country is different. In the USA, for example, women can actually take the pill at home.
Based on her experience, Jane rejects any suggestion that the abortion pill is quick fix.

JANE: It wasn't quick and gone, and sometimes when you're quick and gone with things you have in life, it doesn't give you a chance to actually walk through what's going on. The reality is it's a decision to take that much time through and to acknowledge, This isn't going to be something that I can... It's not going to be done in a day. Not only do I have three appointments, three times I've got to go to the hospital and have that all organised and have that time available, there's two weeks after that that's pretty solid where you are going to be working through bleeding.

Here at the Auckland Abortion Clinic there's been a comprehensive study of the nearly 400 terminations they've done using the abortion pill.
The results show that in these medical abortions, there is a complication rate of 1.6%.

REPORTER: And what kind of complications were they?

DR ALISON KNOWLES: 1.6% accounted for only a handful of patients. There was one needed to be admitted with an infection, and two or three had retained products of conception that's when there's a tiny amount of pregnancy debris left behind, i.e. an incomplete termination, and that can subsequently lead to bleeding or infection.

REPORTER: And how does that figure of 1.6% compare to surgical abortions?

DR ALISON KNOWLES: Over that same period of time our reported surgical complication rate was incredibly low at only 0.5%, so you would have to say that over that initial 2-year period there were a higher percentage of complications amongst our medical termination patients, however, the seriousness of some of the complications that women having a surgical termination experienced could be seen to maybe be more severe. We had one woman over that same period of time, who unfortunately, had a perforation of the uterus.

REPORTER: Were there any deaths from the medical abortion?

DR ALISON KNOWLES: No. No. Since abortion has been legalised in New Zealand there has never been a maternal death from a legal abortion in New Zealand.

REPORTER: So what's your medical opinion on how safe it is based on the research you've done over the last couple of years?

DR ALISON KNOWLES: I think medical abortion in early pregnancy is extraordinarily safe if it's undertaken using strict protocols and follow-up of the woman.

Other doctors who regularly prescribe the abortion pill in New Zealand say safety-wise it's no better or worse than a surgical abortion.
Dr Carol Shand works at Wellington Public Hospital where they've performed thousands of medical abortions.

DR CAROL SHAND, WELLINGTON PUBLIC HOSPITAL: I think the safety is much the same. I think women need to be described the process and decide which they feel most comfortable with.

In stark contrast to the at times hysterical debate in Australia, New Zealand seems to take a very pragmatic approach.

REPORTER: Are the pros and cons huge over surgical or medical?

DR CAROL SHAND: No, I think it's just... It seems fair to women, where possible, to give them a choice of the procedure that they might need to have if they are needing to have an abortion.

But how much choice do women seeking an abortion really have? This women's advocacy centre in Auckland takes calls from women who are wanting to know what their options are for dealing with unwanted pregnancy. For many the abortion pill is not an option.

JO FITZPATRICK, WOMEN’S HEALTH ACTION: I think we're lucky that we have medical abortions available in New Zealand as an option, but I don't think they're actually a real choice for many women.

REPORTER: And why do you think that?

JO FITZPATRICK: I think that because, firstly, there's only two places in all of New Zealand that offer them, and only one of those is a public facility, so there's only one place you can go to get a medical abortion on the public purse.
And I think, also, the kinds of conditions that have been put around it mean that it's also difficult for women to access medical abortions.
In Auckland you can only access a medical abortion if you're prepared to pay for it and that's at the private clinic, which is between $1,000 and $1,200.

Jane had her termination at the only public hospital in New Zealand that offers the abortion pill.

JANE: I was really grateful that I was given the opportunity to do this. It has certainly made my recovery much stronger, I think, for me as a person. I feel very... I have the ability to sit and have this interview. I feel confident about me as a person, having gone through this process, and I'm grateful that I was given that.

REPORTER: And you think it was because you were given a choice?

JANE: I think it definitely was because I was given a choice - it was in my hands.

REPORTER: Has the availability of medical abortion increased the number of abortions?

DR ALISON KNOWLES: No. In fact, last year, 2005, was only the second year ever that the total number of abortions in NZ went down and that's despite continuing population increases. So there's no evidence to support that having medical abortion is going to increase the number of abortions. That's just ridiculous.

GEORGE NEGUS: And it's worth noting that in 35 countries around the world more than 20 million women have used the so-called abortion pill.