I have just sent the following letter to the Wairarapa Times-Age. It will be interesting to see whether they publish it.
I would like to point out a sad and grotesque irony in the New Year Honours list.
Professor Frank Bloomfield of Auckland University has been made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to neonatology.
Dr Simon Snook of Carterton has been awarded the same honour for services to reproductive health, which is a polite way of saying he has been honoured for promoting abortion.
In other words, one recipient is on the honours list for saving babies’ lives. The other is on the list for terminating them.
I know which of the two men I believe has done more to earn the honour and respect of his fellow New Zealanders.
Footnote: To its great credit, the Times-Age published my letter on January 2. If it had been Stuff, I doubt it would have stood a chance.
28 comments:
Your headline recalls Trevor Mallard, now Sir, for services to democracy trashing.
Quite so, Don. There are always deserving recipients on honours lists but the number of undeserving ones undermines the credibility of the whole system. Abolition is the logical answer.
Serious question, Karl. Would you as editor allow such a letter? I ask, because I recall a letter I wrote to The Dominion about a Minor Public Figure I had worked with and thus knew of behind the public image, but you declined it, saying it was defamatory, even though you thought I made a good point.
I think your letter makes a very good point here, by the way. Such irony.
As an aside, this Honours' List looks to me like it was prepared by Labour, judging by many of the people on it. I think these lists are made up well in advance (as there is a lot of checking with nominees that they will accept, etc).
I think you may for once have missed your target. According to Google, the Snip Clinic founded by Dr Snook provides vasectomies, and that is his speciality.
My eyes glaze over somewhat in scanning the honours list. I just don’t know these people. My motto has always been to make sure I say and do enough to keep my name off the list.
Have just checked out the Wiki entry for Dr Simon Snook. He is/was an abortion provider. Also a Vasectomy practitioner. All of which to me really qualifies him in the anti reproductive health field rather than anything else. Do you think he might get a bit snippy about your post here Karl?
Anyway, a Snippy New Year to Dr Snook.
David,
I see no reason not to publish the letter, but then I would say that. The Times-Age may see things differently, as it's entitled to.
I agree, BTW, that the honours list was obviously Labour's legacy to the new government.
George Troup,
The interview with Snook in today's Times-Age makes it very clear that the award was given for his work promoting access to abortion, of which he's obviously proud. An excerpt: "During the nearly 20 years he’s lived in Wairarapa, Dr Simon Snook has been behind transformative progress in improving nationwide abortion services, and these tireless efforts are being recognised by his being made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit."
I'm aware that he also does vasectomies. I suspect it's Snook who drives around town in a Range Rover bearing the number plate "Dr Snip". I'll say no more.
Eamon Sloan:
See above.
Ok, I stand corrected.
I used to regard the Honours List with respect in my early days until about 1975 and I will explain the relevance of that later.
Honours do go to deserving people in various fields but too many to those who simply did their job for a long time or served political/business-cum-poilitical/unions/activist groups or vested interests of some kind. Or they headed, chucked, batted or kicked a ball successfully for several years. For services to whatever cause. The bar is too low. (Same with elevation to the House of Lords' odious ranks in UK).
Some say abolish knighthoods as we are all about equality. Humbug.
The same questionable people (Savile in the UK merely one who comes to mind) would still, in the NZ context, get the Order of the Golden Weta of Glorious Peoples' Aotearoa, The Gleaming Gecko Cross or the Grand Order of the Silver Fern or whatever .
It is not the titles that matter so much; it is WHO gets them. Like the odd aging media type who gets one for peeing in the pocket of the previous govt and its race and other policies through columns for years. It will be the same rewards for brown-nosing from the current lot.
Back to the 70s. I gave up believing in knighthoods in particular (and other honours to some degree) when the UK dished out an honorary knighthood to Ceaucescu for bucking the Warsaw Pact etc although he was the worst of the lot. Combined with snow jobs by MSM here in NZ too on his regime. Blatant). The Securitate's control was unbelievably intense to the extent of minor matters like stamp exchanges. Speaking from experience.
Your assumption is Karl, that life is all that matters - Hitler's as valuable as Einstein's. Too simplistic. Often when I feel rage at the heinous behaviour of some appalling human being who has caused untold suffering to others, I learn that he was not a wanted child - his mother didn't love him - and possibly he didn't even know his father. Do you think the world would have been a better place if he had been aborted - and his own misery been spared?
Some people who conceive children are not those who plan and think and choose - life just happens to them - and some who have been conceived in adverse circumstances have nevertheless grown up loved and valued. Nevertheless abortion is a 'tool' It is the value of the life that matters.It remains a profound truth that every child needs to be precious to be able to live well for his own sake and for society.
EP your bizarre cherry picking of cases is beyond simplistic. Who knows how any of us will turn out or develop into.
AN ESTIMATED 40 - 50 % OF FERTILISED OVA FAIL TO IMPLANT.
Human Reproduction, Volume 35, Issue 4, April 2020, Pages 743–750, https://doi.org/10.1093/humrep/deaa048
ep,
I can't see what you're getting at here but I'm publishing your comment in case someone else gets your point.
In response to you earlier comment, the argument that some people are better off not being born is a familiar one. It's one of many intellectual contortions used to justify the casual acceptance of abortion as a legitimate and victimless (indeed socially beneficial, if its advocates are to be believed) form of birth control.
Are you saying we should assume the 13,000 babies aborted in a typical year in NZ would all have led wretched lives? I don't buy that for a moment.
As an aside, I don't regard myself as an absolutist on abortion and I certainly don't condemn any woman who has felt impelled to have an abortion in desperate circumstances, though I think tolerance ends at the point where a woman has had multiple abortions and clearly uses it as a form of contraception.
Bottom line: if a society is judged by how it treats its most defenceless and vulnerable, we're not the humane, civilised people we smugly imagine ourselves to be.
I agree completely with you Karl.
You have summed it up excellently.
Doug
You completely ignore my point which is that LOVE is essential for a good life. The mere connection of egg with sperm (50% of which do not result in a living person anyway) is not enough to produce a person who not only has a good life himself but can enhance the lives of others. The greatest tragedy is to bring to life a human being whose desperate search for self-love leads him to rape and murder others - frequently documented. What's not to understand?
Restoring the British Honours List, with its echoes of the British class system, was one of John Key's more foolish decisions, along with his doomed flag referendum, which promoted an option that looked like an underwear label, and allowing Pita Sharples to surreptitiously sign up to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People, now the springboard for a full-blown separatist agenda. It's also of concern to me that the knighting of Mallard has attracted a lot of undeserved derision towards the name "Trevor". Not all Trevs carry themselves like "the Duck", and few could ever accept in good conscience such an undeserved award.
...and Happy New Year Karl, I look forward to continuing to enjoy your reflections through 2024.
EP,
Your argument may make sense to someone, but not to me.
In any case, before I engage in any further debate with you, please do me the basic courtesy of telling me who you are. I refuse to spend my time arguing the toss with someone who remains anonymous.
Well said, Karl. Abortion should necessarily be a nuanced discussion, unsuited to a "points scoring" mentality.
Like you, I see a legitimate role for it. The leftist absolutist position of "my body, my choice" OTOH strikes me as pathetic.
Huskynut
To make my position clear, I understand why some women find themselves in a position where they feel an abortion is their only option. That shouldn't be taken as approval of a situation where aborting unwanted babies is regarded as morally no more problematic than having a tooth pulled.
The leftist absolutist position of "my body, my choice" OTOH strikes me as pathetic.
During the Occupation of Parliament grounds, I walked through the ever-growing tent city twice daily between the train and my office. I therefore got to see what was happening there and who was there much better than our media, who shunned the protest and simply attacked it from afar. I took many photos. My observation was that well over half the protesters were women (many of them nurses, midwives and teachers judging from signs they carried), and protesters men and women were also disproportionately Māori, with both the 1834 United Tribes flag and the Tino Rangatiratanga flag flying in abundance,
I found it ironic that many of the women protesters had shirts and signs emblazoned with "My body, my choice." I suspect at least some of them knew the history of that slogan.
For the media, it was clear "my body my choice" did not apply when it came to vaccinations, despite the universal media support for abortion.
PS: I am very pro-vaccination as vaccination works, the science proves it. All my children were fully vaccinated from birth, as am I to this day; I had my latest Covid booster only three weeks ago. But I accept that in NZ people have the legal right to refuse vaccinations, or any medical treatment if they are so inclined or foolish.)
Abortion is far from an easy issue and I am fortunate that I've never had to grapple with it in my own life. I wish only to comment on your double standard in relation to your correspondents. As a long-term reader of your blog (and your columns for many years beforehand) I am in frequent agreement with your views (and frequent disagreement). A while back I was pleased that you abandoned your policy of allowing pseudonyms, something a good newspaper would only allow in exceptional cases. (You know that, you edited one and served at a high level on others.) But after a short time you let them back in. Now you are happily publishing comments from gutless wonders who support you from under the cloak of anonymity (see "Huskynut" and "Trev 1", above), but decide that "EP", who disagrees with you in a series of very reasonable posts, must identify him or herself or you will refuse to engage further. Shame on you, my friend. - Bill Moore
I’m glad we have some health professionals who understand the necessity for safe abortions. Women have always had abortions, and always will have abortions. There is no such thing as ‘no abortion’, and never will be, irrespective of any moral objections to them. It just a question of whether you’re happy to condemn a woman to an unsafe abortion, or allow her to choose a safe one. If there are men who don’t want women to have abortions, then they must control their ejaculations so that no unwanted pregnancies are initiated. And even though it’s easier to make women the focus of one's moral objection to abortion, both men and women who oppose abortion must advocate for all men to do the same. Ejaculations have consequences.
Bill,
You raise a fair point. Let me explain.
I only require people to identify themselves where they expect to engage in direct personal debate with me. This is no different from the principle in English law that one is entitled to know the identity of one's accusers. It's not a means of silencing my critics, as you might think.
As for all the other anonymous commenters, of course I would rather they gave their names. I think it's cowardly to hide behind pseudonyms, as you know. But I don't extend the same tolerance when someone is personally taking a whack at me. "EP" knows who I am, after all, and I think it's entirely reasonable to expect that he should reveal himself if he wants to take part in a duel. It's all about engaging on equal terms.
Katrina,
Of course it takes two to create the circumstances for an abortion and I agree that men need to share responsibility for avoiding unwanted pregnancies. As an aside, it disgusts me that so many men walk away after impregnating a woman. Not their problem ...
Grotesquely ironic much.
I've said before now I remain grateful I never had to consider abortion in my fertile years.I might've once marched with the 'pro' lobby, wouldn't dream of it now & don't have to...it's here. I also remain shocked at how many fail to contracept in modern times...abortion is largely the nasty business of washing one's hands of one's procreational life messes, to my mind, and so I agree with EP's remark that 'life just happens to them'. So does all manner of human-wrought evil.
As a medical practitioner who for a short time performed abortions, and for decades was a certifying consultant who referred women for this procedure, my enduring memory is feeling an overwhelming sadness and compassion for any woman who felt they had little option to decide otherwise.
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