The A-Word

A cunningly-timed attack on the current state of New Zealand abortion laws by a pro-life group has set the blogosphere abuzz. Obviously, their idea is to target this issue as an “election issue” and pull the stake out of this nightmare for the next election, much like ACT have done with Roger Douglas.

I will not spout my my views on abortion here, as they have been repeated ad nausium throughout the liberal blogs and even on Kiwiblog. Ultimately, in my opinion, it’s not an issue of “killing babies”, it’s an issue of woman’s rights.

Also, note that this is not a partisan issue. If anything becomes of this it will be a conscience vote in Parliament and then it’d be a case of knowing your MP and where he or she stands on the issue, regardless of the party line.

An interesting link from Ari’s post on Still Trucking is an essay from the New York Times called “The Bad Old Days” which I had stumbled across a few days earlier. This article is a very difficult read but I believe an important one.

So I’ll leave this here with some other very interesting links which are well worth a read. A Change of Heart is a very brave account by a woman who was pro-life but has since recognised that choice is the most important. The other article is titled “The Only Moral Abortion is My Abortion” which consists of a series of accounts and anecdotes from clinic staff who treat the women who take the choice they would deny other women. This is a very eye-opening read about the drives of such people and well worth 10 minutes of your time to check out.