Tuesday, September 16th, 2008
by Chris
Caught on Scoop and elaborated on over at No Right Turn is a story of the Anti-Abortion group, Right To Life, having a tantrum because they weren’t allowed to procure the names and other personal information of the new abortion advisory committee.
The qualifications? Maybe. Identifying information in the hands of these people? Hell NO.
Although, as pointed out by I/S, the Abortion Supervisory Committee is covered by the Official Information Act, the individuals that serve on the committee have a right to privacy. A right to not be harassed. And those rights supersede RTL’s “right” to be sticky-beaks.
This is Right To Life’s latest action in a plan to draw Abortion in as an election issue. I would like to see a thorough and reasoned debate on it but we all know that won’t happen. It’s very dangerous to let loose such an emotionally charged issue during an election campaign as I don’t believe any government would draw a party line on such a thing and it would all come down to a conscience vote anyway.
Although, perhaps, it’s better than waiting until after the election, with a probable chance of a National-led government. National does not has the chops to tackle the issue, I mean, who is likely to give this issue a better look? The party of old white men, with heavy religious backers that have voted against almost every socially progressive change brought through parliament? Or the bunch of anti-family, lesbian man-haters? Oh, right.
Thursday, June 12th, 2008
by Chris
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.
