Will a new RNZ board stop the rot?

The Treasury has publicly advertised vacancies on the RNZ board for a new chair and two “governors” (I presume that means directors). The appointees will replace current chair Jim Mather and board members Jane Wrightson and Irene Gardiner, all of whom were installed during the term of the Ardern government. All three are well-connected Wellington insiders who were never going to upset the status quo by insisting RNZ fulfil its obligation to cater to a wider audience than the privileged “progressive” class – I use the inverted commas deliberately – from which the state broadcaster draws its core support. The question now is whether the government will appoint people willing and able to do the job the current board clearly had no interest in tackling.

The advertisement for candidates is notable for its use of the word “trust”. It mentions that RNZ “plays a vital role in fostering a strong national identity through trusted journalism, current affairs, and cultural programming”. Later, it says applicants should have an understanding of “media and public sector dynamics, public trust, and audience engagement”.

Trust has emerged as a crucial issue for media credibility. Judging by the wording of the ad, it seems to be assumed that RNZ enjoys wide public trust, but that’s not necessarily the case. While RNZ can claim to be the “most trusted” New Zealand news source, according to a 2025 survey conducted by the Auckland University of Technology, it’s merely the best of a bad lot. RNZ was given an average score of six out of 10, zero being not at all trustworthy and 10 being beyond reproach. So barely a pass mark.

RNZ itself published a piece by the authors of the AUT report noting that New Zealanders’ overall trust in the news had declined “precipitously” – from 58 per cent to 32 per cent over the past five years. Mather, who has chaired the RNZ board since 2018 (in other words, a period coinciding with that decline), acknowledged in RNZ’s annual report that trust in the media had been shaken globally and said it was incumbent on public media, in particular, to address this.

The AUT survey also revealed that despite generous taxpayer funding and the great marketing advantage of not being encumbered by crass, intrusive advertising, RNZ trails well behind its private-sector competitors in the news business. Last year it was the sixth most popular news source in New Zealand, lagging behind Stuff, TVNZ, the New Zealand Herald and even Facebook and YouTube. That indicates there’s a lot of ground to gain. Trust could (and should) be a vital factor in winning back all those New Zealanders who have turned sour on the media.

So what is RNZ doing to rebuild public confidence? Er, not a lot. It signalled last month, when it announced the appointment of John Campbell as co-host of its flagship news and current affairs programme Morning Report, that it was wilfully blind to mounting public concerns about political bias in the media and the tendency in recent years to blur the lines between news and opinion, of which Campbell is a master practitioner. RNZ either didn’t grasp or chose to ignore (either is inexcusable, but it was far more likely the latter) the reality that Campbell is a polarising figure who has done nothing to disguise his political leanings, and in particular his dislike for the government that his fellow New Zealanders chose to elect in 2023. 

Coming immediately before the start of an election year, when the quality and fairness of political journalism will be under intense scrutiny, his appointment should be seen as an act of provocation and defiance - not so much against the government (since journalists in a liberal democracy owe governments no loyalty), but more importantly against the many thousands of New Zealanders who, like me, were once RNZ devotees but gave up listening because they felt they could no longer rely on it to be fair, balanced and impartial. To that I might add … and also against the millions of New Zealanders whose taxes pay for RNZ but who never listen to it, and indeed may not even realise it exists, because for decades it has ignored them, preferring to position itself as a bastion of cultural privilege. (I will here insert my usual qualification to the effect that there are people at RNZ, including some journalists, whom I respect, and who I believe do their jobs conscientiously and professionally. This article is not about them.)

The New Year brought fresh evidence of RNZ’s disregard for basic principles of editorial balance and impartiality. A story broadcast on January 3 noted that there had been a 37 percent increase in the number of abortions – up from 12,948 to 17,785 – since the few remaining legal impediments were lifted in 2020.

This was presented as a benign, indeed positive, trend. The sole source quoted in RNZ’s story was Dr Simon Snook, whom the lobby group Voice for Life identifies as the man who set up the 0800 Dial-an-Abortion service and has spent years lobbying for an increase in the number of abortion facilities around the country.

Snook’s own company, Magma Healthcare, provides medical abortions through a service funded by Health New Zealand (i.e. the taxpayer). It’s hardly surprising, then, that he put the best possible spin on the surge in abortion numbers, saying it reflected "improved access to care" rather than an increase in demand.

Referring to the tendency for women to obtain medical (i.e. drug-induced) abortions rather than invasive surgical ones, Snook was reported as saying: “I think what we are seeing now is people who previously would have wanted an abortion and couldn’t get one for their own reasons are now getting it. We are getting the abortion numbers correct for the country’s need.”

To quote a celebrated line from Mandy Rice Davies of Profumo scandal fame, “He would say that, wouldn’t he?” Of course Snook is going to spruik an increase in the number of abortions as a good thing. No doubt he would argue that he’s approaching the issue from a position of sympathy for women, but there’s no getting around the fact that it's good for his business. That doesn’t rule him out as a legitimate source, but his credibility needs to be judged in terms of his vested interest in the lucrative abortion business.

A competent, fair-minded reporter would have recognised this and sought to balance the story with comment from someone with a different perspective on the abortion trend. Failing that, someone further up the editorial chain should have insisted on it.

After all, it’s not hard: Voice for Life, the country’s main anti-abortion lobby group, has been around for decades. It has a website with an email address for media inquiries. And it’s not as if VFL is some lunatic fringe group: it tells me it has 30 branches, more than 8000 newsletter subscribers and more than 14,000 followers on social media. (I’m not a member, although my views on abortion are reasonably well known.)

Here’s the thing. Setting aside personal views, abortion remains a highly contentious and divisive issue in New Zealand. Responsible editorial decision-makers would recognise that and realise that any story on the subject calls for balance. RNZ failed that elementary test. Small wonder that VFL described the RNZ story as “a shocking example of woefully biased pro-abortion propaganda, where one of the very people who should be held accountable by the media for the massive increase in abortions is effectively allowed to wave away the harm he has actively contributed to by claiming this increase in harm is a good thing”.

Of course VFL’s statement didn’t get published. Journalists now routinely ignore people whose opinions they disagree with. This became especially noticeable during the term of the Ardern government, when lobby groups dissenting from ideological orthodoxy valiantly kept pushing out media statements knowing they were doomed to languish unseen.

There’s a striking contrast here with previous generations of reporters who went out of their way to seek and report opinions and statements that they often heartily disagreed with. That the current generation doesn’t bother – in fact is often taught by journalism tutors that there’s no need for impartiality and balance – is a prime reason why trust in journalism has collapsed.

It needs to be stated repeatedly that RNZ, as a publicly funded news organisation, has a special obligation to be neutral and balanced; to publish stories that reflect the diversity of public opinion rather than those that conveniently correspond with its journalists’ own views. Mather's statement seemed to tacitly acknowledge that public media operate to different criteria from their private competitors.  Companies such as Stuff and NZME (publisher of the Herald) can make their own rules, as long as they’re willing to risk consequences such as loss of trust and declining readership. RNZ (and TVNZ, but let’s not go there) has no such latitude.

Will the new appointees to the RNZ board recognise all this and do something about it, or will they meekly accept advice from RNZ functionaries that editorial practices are an operational matter, therefore none of their concern, and sit uselessly and impotently on their hands? We shall see.

(Footnote: The original version of this article has been slightly tweaked to insert a new point and clarify an earlier one.)

A grotesque irony in the honours list

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.

Abortion in New Zealand: the statistics

Contrary to what I wrote in a recent blog post about Roe v Wade, recent statistics about abortions in New Zealand are still available. They are published by the Ministry of Health and replace those that were previously compiled by Statistics New Zealand for the now-defunct Abortion Supervisory Committee. (I was under the impression that with the disestablishment of the ASC, statistics would no longer be collected. I was wrong and have added a footnote to that effect to my blog post.)

The statistics for 2020 reveal, among other things, a slight increase in the number of abortions compared with 2019 – from 12,857 to 13,246. That equates to 13 abortions per 1000 women aged between 15 and 44. There is a suggestion in the notes accompanying the statistics that this increase may be linked to reduced access to contraception during the Covid-19 lockdown.

Longer term, the overall trend has been downwards. Abortion numbers peaked at more than 18,000 per year in 2003, 2004 and 2007 and were consistently above 15,000 from 1997 till 2011.

The percentage of pregnancies that ended in abortion in 2020 was up slightly on the previous year, from 17.7 per cent to 18.6 per cent. The mean age of women having an abortion was 28.

Two striking figures not mentioned in the ministry’s summary of “Key Facts” were that 64.8 per cent of patients were not using contraception when they became pregnant and 3000 women had had at least one previous abortion. Forty-four women had had six or more abortions and 549 had had three or more.

Other significant statistics:

■The vast majority of abortions (12,237) took place during the first 12 weeks of gestation, but 102 were performed at 21 weeks or more. Twenty-two weeks is generally held to be the gestational age at which babies can survive outside the womb, but the statistics don’t reveal at what stage in the baby’s development those 102 late abortions were performed. The figures show that the proportion of abortions carried out in the first eight weeks of pregnancy has risen markedly, presumably as a result of more women having early medical abortions (see below).

■Women aged 25 to 29 had the most abortions (26.3 per cent) followed closely by women aged 20-24 (24.2 per cent). Twenty-six abortions were performed on girls aged between 11 and 14 – a depressing statistic, but less so than the 68 carried out on the same age group in 2011. Seventy abortions were performed on women aged 45-plus.

■21.7 per cent of abortions were for women who identified as Maori and 8 per cent for women who identified as Pasifika. Women of Asian ethnicity accounted for roughly the same number of abortions as those who identified as Maori. 

■The proportion of early medical abortions, in which a miscarriage is induced by drugs (the so-called abortion pill), increased from 22 to 36 per cent. In pregnancies of less than nine weeks, these “medical” abortions outnumbered surgical procedures. Overall, however, abortions in which the foetus was surgically removed still made up the majority of procedures (59 per cent), although that figure was lower than in 2019.

■Auckland’s Epsom Day Unit had the dubious distinction of performing by far the greatest number of abortions: 3855 in 2020. That's nearly 15 a day for every working day of the year. Measured by DHB region, Counties-Manukau ranked highest for the number of abortions.  

■5445 women who had abortions, or 41 per cent, had not previously given birth.  5776 had had one or two babies (described as “live births”), 71 had had six babies and 43 had had seven or more.

■8645 of the 13,246 women who had abortions were not using contraception at the time of conception. Another 2495, or 18.7 per cent, relied on condoms. Figures for women using oral contraception, IUCDs or depo provera were far lower. The level of non-contraceptive use was remarkably uniform across all age groups, though marginally highest among those under 20.

You can read the ministry's abortion summary here. A peculiar aspect of the report is that it refers to pregnant "persons" and "people" rather than "women", but disappointingly it doesn't disclose the number of men who became pregnant.

 

 

 

More on that Roe v Wade feeding frenzy

■ In the New Zealand Herald this morning, Richard Prebble says Christopher Luxon made “politically the exact right decision” in instructing his backbench MP Simon O’Connor to take down his tweet welcoming the reversal of Roe v Wade.

The key word here is “politically”, which is not the same as “morally”. A past master of the political dark arts himself, Prebble tends to view politics through a Machiavellian lens.

As the days pass and the New Zealand media continue to revel in a self-generated feeding frenzy over Roe v Wade, Luxon looks more and more compromised. On Morning Report this morning, he described the US Supreme Court’s decision as “really distressing” and “a real shock”. How does he square this with his professed pro-life beliefs?

His equivocation can only be interpreted as an attempt to ingratiate himself with the woke cabal that seeks to control the national conversation. There would be no inconsistency in Luxon unambiguously affirming his personal stance on abortion while simultaneously making it clear that a change to the abortion laws would not be on National’s agenda under his leadership, but he can’t even bring himself to do that. Conclusion: he lacks the moral courage to stand by his principles.

Two points on which I do agree with Luxon:

He is right to point out that he has repeatedly made it clear that National has no intention to relitigate abortion, but the media refuse to leave the issue alone, no matter how many times he says it. Luxon says he doesn’t want to import the culture wars from overseas but of course he’s whistling in the wind, because they’re here already.

In this instance the conflict is being stoked by media whose motive appears to be primarily ideological. This extends to journalists seeking out MPs who exercised their right to a conscience vote by opposing the 2020 abortion legislation, effectively demanding that they explain their defiance of  ideological orthodoxy and inviting them to recant. There is an ugly undercurrent of authoritarianism here, and it’s highly effective; politicians of all stripes were scuttling for cover. But the witch-hunt (for that’s what it looked like) produced delicious unintended consequences when Labour MPs Rino Tirikatene and Jamie Strange, both of whom voted against the Abortion Legislation Bill, explained that they would have been aborted had their mothers not defied medical advice. Game, set and match, you might think, but no; journalistic hubris is not so easily squelched.

I’m sure Luxon is also correct when he says most people are more concerned with the cost of living than with a judicial decision made 14,000km away and with no direct relevance to New Zealand. But the media no longer reflect the concerns and priorities of ordinary New Zealanders. The world as seen from newsrooms and TV studios in central Wellington and Auckland is very different from the world as seen from living rooms in Opunake, Manurewa and Gore.

■ Simon O’Connor, whose tweet provided abortion rights agitators and their media allies with the flimsy excuse they needed for their display of confected outrage, now offers a confusing and rather contradictory explanation for removing it.

On the one hand, he says he took down his comment because the online reaction was spiralling out of control. But almost in the same breath he says he did it at Luxon’s request, so it appears it wasn’t entirely his own decision and the headline on NewstalkZB’s story – “I have not been gagged” – doesn’t look entirely convincing.

He’s quoted as saying he doesn’t resile from his comment that the reversal of Roe v Wade was a good day, yet he now admits it was a “misstep” and “a distraction from our core messaging” and said he would apologise to the National caucus. This political jargon comes straight out of the spin doctor’s playbook and can mean only one thing: that the party control freaks have got to him and he’s capitulated. Why O’Connor should feel it necessary to apologise to caucus when abortion is supposed to be a personal conscience issue isn’t explained.

In the circumstances, his insistence that he hasn’t been gagged has a hollow ring. This is particularly disappointing in the light of his impassioned advocacy for free speech in the House recently, and will leave people wondering (not for the first time) where his party stands on issues of individual freedom. National looks like a party that demands conformity above all else.

And here’s another disturbing thing. If the online reaction to O’Connor’s tweet was overwhelmingly hostile, as seems obvious, then removing it was a triumph for the online equivalent of the so-called heckler’s veto, whereby agitators and disrupters negate people’s freedom of speech by the simple expedient of shouting them down. Asked what he had to say to people who agreed with his tweet, O’Connor said they could email him – but he must know that’s not the same. When you withdraw from open, public debate for fear of an adverse reaction, the other side has won by default.

Having said that, I feel sympathy for O’Connor because he must feel isolated. In a supposedly free society where all he did was express a legitimate opinion, he shouldn’t be in that position. But the media wanted to make an example of him, and they succeeded. He has been hung out to dry.

■ Ah yes, the media again. TV Three’s nightly wokefest The Project began last night with a vox-pop in the streets in which the people interviewed were overwhelmingly against the US Supreme Court’s decision. Quelle surprise! But the problem with vox pops, of course, is that they don’t tell us a thing, since the respondents are chosen at random and it’s always possible that some ended up on the cutting floor because they didn’t give the answer the producers were looking for.  Never mind; it served the desired purpose of giving the impression New Zealanders are united in their firm belief that abortion is a human right guaranteed by the US Constitution, which is what the overturned Roe v Wade judgment argued - not that the question would have been put to them in those terms. 

Then The Project rolled out the writer Catherine Robertson, who was presented as an authority on abortion for no better reason than that she’s one of the hundreds of thousands of New Zealand women who have had one. (What’s different is that Robertson is prepared to go on record about it, as she did here.) On The Project, nodding heads and murmurs of assent from the panellists as Robertson held forth served to reinforce a familiar aura of self-reinforcing groupthink. But here’s a question: would The Project have featured a woman who had had an abortion and now bitterly regretted it? There are such women, and I’m sure any pro-life organisation could have put the show’s producers in touch with one. Perhaps The Project mislaid their phone numbers.

That raises another point. In all the white noise in the media about Roe v Wade, one voice has been conspicuously absent – namely, that of the countless unborn children denied life, mostly because of “mental health” justifications that even the Abortion Supervisory Committee was forced to admit were often spurious. But of course the victims of abortion are forever silent, which is convenient for pro-choice activists. There are plenty of people prepared to speak for them, however, and they are silent not by choice, but because the media denies them a platform.

One last thing. In recent years there has been a striking change in the tone of pro-abortion rhetoric. Abortion is no longer portrayed just as a measure of last resort for desperate women. It is now proudly embraced and celebrated as an assertion of female autonomy. To put it another way, feminism – which was once defined simply as a belief in sexual equality – has taken a grotesque turn and now appears to measure its success in terms of the ease with which society can dispose of its most helpless and vulnerable.  Is this really its crowning achievement?

 

 

 

 

A few thoughts on Roe v Wade

It’s universally accepted that life begins at conception. To quote the American College of Pediatricians: “At fertilisation, the human being emerges as a whole, genetically distinct, individuated zygotic living human organism, a member of the species Homo sapiens, needing only the proper environment in order to grow and develop. The difference between the individual in its adult stage and in its zygotic stage is one of form, not nature.”

This is not some fanciful doctrinal pronouncement from a bunch of desiccated old men wearing weird clothes in the Vatican. It’s a clinical statement from medical professionals describing a biological reality.

The point here is that it’s impossible to arbitrarily determine any moment after fertilisation when a foetus suddenly and magically morphs from being a lump of tissue to becoming “human”, since it’s already a genetically unique and complete living being. Any such theoretical point (12 weeks? 20 weeks? The point at which the baby can survive outside the womb? The moment of actual live birth?) can be chosen only for reasons of convenience, pragmatism or sentiment – or perhaps all three.

If we accept the biological fact that life starts at the moment of conception, then it follows inexorably that abortion at any point during the development of the foetus involves extinguishing a human life. Whether you choose to call that murder is another matter. Society chooses not to, generally preferring to regard murder as a crime that can be committed only on a living, breathing, sentient human. (I say “generally” because the Crimes Act provides for a jail term of up to 14 years for someone “who causes the death of any child that has not become a human being in such a manner that he or she would have been guilty of murder if the child had become a human being”. I’m not a lawyer, but I think this offence is used in cases where a pregnant woman is violently assaulted, resulting in the loss of her unborn baby.)

The idea that abortion is murder is usually dismissed as unrealistic and absolutist, even fanatical, yet it’s one that can reasonably and logically be held.  Society rejects it, however, because a consensus view has evolved that there are circumstances in which abortion is justified, necessary and humane. Placing time limits on it, as most abortion laws do, is essentially a pragmatic compromise aimed at making acceptable what might otherwise be unthinkable. Thus society is prepared to approve thousands of foetuses being aborted at, say, 12 weeks – although even then a baby is fully formed, with all its organs, muscles and limbs in place – but recoils in disgust at the idea of a near full-term baby being removed from the womb alive and left to die, cold and gasping for breath, in a hospital back room. (Couldn’t happen? Oh, but it did.)

At whatever point the abortion takes place, the timing is still arbitrary. There is no magic line marking a point beyond which snuffing out a human life (often by violent means, including dismemberment) suddenly becomes unacceptable. But what has happened in New Zealand, as in other “progressive” democracies, is that as society has become more inured to the idea of abortion, limitations on when the procedure can be carried out have been stretched to the point where they eventually disappeared altogether. Under the Abortion Legislation Act 2020, there’s nothing to prevent babies being aborted even when they are capable of surviving outside the womb. All that’s required is for two doctors to agree that the late-term abortion is “clinically appropriate”.

At this point, abortion really is tantamount to murder, albeit carried out with the sanction of the state; in other words with our concurrence. But we’re not told how often this happens in God’s Own Country, because since the passing of the Act there’s no longer any provision for the collation and publication of information about abortions* [see footnote]. It’s legal now, you see, so the public is deemed to have no more interest in knowing about abortions – how many are performed, the reasons for them and the gestational age of the baby – than it has in knowing about tooth extractions, facelifts or hernia repairs.

This probably suits most people perfectly well, since what they don’t know won’t trouble them. Society has been conditioned by decades of feminist indoctrination into believing abortion is a human right and a women’s health issue. What it actually entails – that is to say, the moral implications as well as the physical detail – is something people prefer not to dwell on. Easier just to ignore the whole thing.

The morality (or otherwise) of abortion has suddenly been brought back into sharp relief by the furore over the US Supreme Court’s reversal of the Wade v Roe judgment. Much of the reaction – for example, the grotesquely hysterical scenes at American protest rallies and the ostentatious displays of hand-wringing by the likes of Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi (both nominally Catholic, incidentally) was predictable. What was less so was the desperate attempt by abortion rights activists in New Zealand, assisted by their allies in the media, to make political capital out of the decision despite it being of no direct relevance here.

Even in America, the primary consequence of the majority ruling is simply that decisions on abortion laws will be handed back to the states, which is where they belonged in the first place. This has been wilfully misrepresented as a deliberate assault on American womanhood when in fact it’s an acknowledgement that decisions on issues like abortion should be made by elected legislatures in state capitals, not by a judicial elite in Washington DC. (Last time I checked, American women were allowed to vote, so are free to exert influence on their politicians via the ballot box.)

Meanwhile, in New Zealand, we were subjected to the unedifying spectacle of politicians from across the spectrum scrambling to clamber aboard the abortion rights bandwagon, each trying to outdo the others with their pronouncements of woe and despair. Even David Seymour, who has arguably the least to gain and the most to lose by pandering to leftist feminists, couldn’t resist joining the chorus of denunciation. It wasn’t the first time Seymour had allowed his obvious antipathy toward the anti-abortion lobby to get the better of his political judgment. So much for ACT’s greatest political virtue, which is that it isn’t like the other parties. On this issue Seymour hunted with the pack.

Less surprising was Christopher Luxon’s eagerness to convince the media that a National government would leave the abortion laws alone. This was a no-win situation for Luxon; people who hate National didn’t believe him anyway, while people who might be inclined to support the party probably thought less of him for his moral equivocation, given that he has previously declared himself to be pro-life. He should have taken a less defensive stance. As it is, voters are entitled to wonder whether Luxon (a) has any bedrock values or (b) has been intimidated by the media into watering down his personal principles in order to appear more woke.

Instructing his MP Simon O’Connor to take down a tweet welcoming the Roe v Wade decision didn’t help. Abortion has traditionally been treated as a personal conscience issue for MPs, so O’Connor’s exercise of his right to free speech need not have been seen as a threat to the party. By censoring him, Luxon achieved the unusual feat of simultaneously appearing timid and a control freak.

As for the New Zealand media – well, needless to say they covered the issue with their customary detachment and unstinting commitment to neutrality and balance. The tone of the TV coverage was a blend of despair, denunciation, alarmism and moral panic, and overall only marginally less hysterical than the footage of a woman shown on her knees sobbing inconsolably in the streets of Washington. The dominant narrative, shared across all mainstream media but with no obvious basis in fact, was that women’s abortion rights were threatened in New Zealand too, although exactly how or by whom wasn’t explained.

I was able to predict with almost 100 percent accuracy the pro-choice activists who would be wheeled out to tell us what an appalling setback for women the court’s decision was. Both channels had 87-year-old Dame Margaret Sparrow (Newshub honouring her with the adjective “legendary”) and the voluble American Terry Bellamak - media favourites both -  plus an unfamiliar (to me) American academic from the University of Otago who baldly pronounced, with no basis, that Luxon shouldn’t be believed when he said National would leave the abortion law intact. In an item that took up much of the first segment of Sunday night’s 6 pm news, Newshub could find no room for a single pro-life voice. (TVNZ, to its credit, did.)

At the heart of the protests over Roe v Wade is the notion that abortion is a human right - a very recent idea that has somehow taken precedence over the right to life, which is at the core of most moral values systems. This can only be explained as a triumph of ideology over humanity.

When I did a rough calculation in 2018 (the last statistics were published in 2019), the number of babies aborted in New Zealand since the law was first liberalised in 1977 was creeping up towards the half-million mark. In the US, more than 40 million babies were aborted between 1973 and 2019 – more than the population of Canada or Poland. Pro-abortion lobbyists celebrate this as a triumph for women’s rights, but it seems a tragically perverse way to assert women’s autonomy. 

Footnote: I was incorrect in saying abortions statistics are no longer published. In fact the Ministry of Health has published detailed statistics for 2020, which can be seen here. I apologise for the error.

 

 

On Roe v Wade and the media frenzy

On May 2, someone leaked the first draft of a US Supreme Court decision proposing that the historic ruling in the case Roe v Wade be reversed. Justice Samuel Alito’s draft decision, if adopted, would mean American women no longer had a constitutional right to abortion.

The reaction was immediate and frenzied. The overwhelmingly left-liberal (i.e. pro-abortion) media, not just in America but throughout the English-speaking world, erupted with fury at the prospect that a long-entrenched feminist article of faith – namely, that a woman’s right to abort a baby takes precedence over the unborn child’s right to survive – might be overturned. As Kerry Wakefield (a woman, in case you’re wondering) pungently put it in The Spectator Australia: “The feminist offence machine ratcheted up to full, wild-eyed stridency, with Democrat congresswoman Elizabeth Warren doing everything short of howling at the moon.”

The revisiting of Roe v Wade is a rare setback for a political class that has become accustomed to calling the shots. The tone of their outrage was perfectly captured by the whiny headline on a video published on the Guardian’s website: “It feels like such a betrayal”. Another Guardian headline pronounced that the Alito draft, if adopted, would be a "global catastrophe for women". Such restraint ...

Well, better suck it up, folks. The anti-abortion lobby knows all too well what it’s like to be on the losing side. Now the boot appears to be on the other foot and the champions of abortion rights are not taking it at all well.

But here's the thing. In the weeks since the leak I’ve listened to hours of discussion, analysis and speculation on the BBC and America’s left-leaning National Public Radio. Not once did I hear a pro-life voice. (Correction: the BBC’s Stephen Sackur included a question about the Alito draft at the very tail end of an interview with Victoria Sparz, a pro-life Congresswoman, but left no time for her to expand on her answer.)

Not surprisingly, Roe v Wade has aroused less interest in the New Zealand media. Why should it, when the New Zealand abortion rights lobby has achieved its aim of making abortion as simple, at least in legal terms, as a tooth extraction (and treats it as if it’s no more morally complicated)?

But there has been a certain amount of venting in solidarity with the American sisterhood. On TV Three’s dependably woke The Project, I saw an over-excited Kate Roger shrieking with incoherent rage while her fellow panellists nodded and murmured in agreement. No surprises there.

Media coverage of the Alito draft, in other words, has been overwhelmingly and egregiously one-sided – a perfect illustration of where the media sit in the culture wars. Even people who believe in a woman’s right to have an abortion would struggle to argue that the controversy has been reported in a fair and balanced way.

As with climate change, a stifling and oppressive media groupthink prevails. And what’s particularly striking about the tone of media commentary is the obvious assumption that everyone shares the media elite’s anger, as if no half-intelligent or reasonable person could possibly be opposed to unrestricted abortion rights.

These are the new bigots – people who are not only intolerant of dissenting views but so convinced of their own rightness that they don’t even acknowledge the existence of counter-arguments.

None of this should come as a surprise to anyone. One thing that did surprise me, however, was to learn that the supposedly neutral and “fiercely independent” Wellington-based online news site Scoop declined to publish two news releases on Roe v Wade from the anti-abortion group Right to Life – this after running a pro-choice column by Scoop's leftist in-house commentator Gordon Campbell and two statements from abortion rights groups attacking the Alito draft.

I’ve admired Scoop in the past, naively believing it was willing to publish all shades of news and opinion, but its credibility now is shot – a shame, because if it had the guts and integrity to live up to its own hype, it could serve as a valuable platform for groups unable to gain traction in the mainstream media.

As for Alito’s draft decision, some pertinent facts appear to have been overlooked amid the backlash. The first and most important is that if the Supreme Court goes ahead and overturns Roe v Wade, abortion rights will become a matter for each state to decide. In other words, decisions on abortion law will be handed back to the elected representatives of the people – which, in a properly functioning democracy, is surely where they belonged in the first place. The 1973 decision overrode states' rights to determine their own laws and now they may get them back. But far from applauding this judicial nod to people power, the pro-abortion camp is aghast. Leftist ideologues tend to be distrustful of democracy because they can never be sure that people will vote the correct way.

To put it another way, a reversal of Roe v Wade would be only a partial unspooling of the law. It’s not as if the court is likely to rule that abortion will become illegal everywhere and in any circumstances (although some abortion rights activists, desperate to stir up opposition even if it means telling porkies, are suggesting that’s exactly what will happen).  

On that note, it’s amusing – in an ironic way – to hear activists wailing that a bunch of mostly male judges in Washington DC have made what they condemn as an “ideological” decision. Isn’t that pretty much what happened in 1973 when the court (which was then entirely male) ruled in favour of women’s right to terminate a pregnancy? The only thing different is that the dominant ideology on the court bench has been reversed. The current is now running in the other direction and the feminists, having had things their way for 50 years, don’t like it.

As my friend and former colleague Bob Edlin observed, “the ruling effectively demonstrates that one bunch of judges can determine something one day, based on what they argue the US constitution allows or disallows. Another bunch of judges with different ideological leanings can rule to the contrary several years [or in this case decades] later.”  

As Bob points out, the US constitution hasn’t changed; only the composition of the court has. This highlights a fundamental flaw in a system that places enormous power in the hands of judges appointed on the basis of their political and ideological leanings in the expectation that they will interpret the constitution accordingly.

The court is expected to release its final decision next month or in July. In the meantime we can expect to be bombarded with canards such as “abortion is a health issue”. (Not for the unborn baby it’s not. And in any case, since when were pregnancy and childbirth classified as illnesses?)

Placards waved by Roe v Wade demonstrators also assert that “abortion is a human right”. Since when? The Universal Declaration of Human Rights proclaimed by the UN General Assembly in 1948, which was the distillation of centuries of thinking and writing about the subject, makes no mention of abortion. It does, however, unequivocally assert the right to life. The fiction that abortion is a human right is an invention of late 20^th century feminism, but the slogan has an undeniably catchy appeal to people incapable of thinking above bumper-sticker level.  

Dial an abortion

New Zealand women will soon be able to procure an abortion simply by lifting the phone, and the taxpayer will obligingly pick up the tab.

Associate Health Minister Ayesha Verrall has proudly announced the government will fully fund a telehealth service called Decide, describing it as the latest milestone in the provision of abortion services.

I can think of only one word for this: grotesque.

It means pregnant women will be able to obtain an abortion as easily as they can dial up a home-delivery pizza or order a movie from YouTube. And why not? I mean, what’s so special about human life that makes it worth protecting?

Users of the service will be able to order two pills which, when taken during the first nine weeks of pregnancy, will induce a miscarriage.

It’s called a medical abortion as opposed to a surgical one. It’s less gruesome, in so far as the unborn baby isn’t scraped or vacuumed out of the womb, and hence it’s a much easier sell to women who might have qualms about the process.

But both types of abortion involve the extinguishing of a human life. And if society measures its humanity by how it treats its weakest and most vulnerable, this latest “milestone” marks a shocking new low – one that’s strikingly at odds with the our prime minister’s carefully cultivated image of compassion and the Left's supposed concern for the powerless.

Generations of New Zealand women have now been thoroughly inculcated with feminist ideology which treats the unborn child as an inconvenient lump of tissue that prevents them from fulfilling their social or professional aspirations. They have been encouraged to believe that removing this encumbrance is a matter of no more consequence than the extraction of a problem tooth.

Stuff’s story on the new service comments that while the law changes of 2020 have made abortion more accessible, which is a euphemistic way of saying New Zealand now has one of the most wide-open abortion laws in the world, “there is still a long way to go”. In other words, it’s not enough that nearly one in five New Zealand pregnancies already ends in a human life being snuffed out. We must redouble our efforts!

I wonder what they’ll call the new abortion hot line. Presumably something easily memorised, such as 0800-killmybaby. That’s pretty catchy.

 

 

Well, at least we now know who the real defenders of free speech are

Parliament passed the so-called Safe Areas Bill, which I wrote about on Tuesday, by a majority of 108-12 at its second reading. That’s a slightly bigger margin than at the first reading last year.

Among those who swung behind Louisa Wall’s Bill after opposing it first time around were National MPs Christopher Luxon, David Bennett, Jacqui Dean, Joseph Mooney (no, I’d never heard of him either), Scott Simpson and Tim van de Molen. Labour’s Rino Tirikatene also changed his vote, while his fellow Labour caucus member Neru Leavasa courageously switched the other way.

National MPs Penny Simmonds, Louise Upston, Melissa Lee, Maureen Pugh, Harete Hipango, Simeon Brown, Simon O’Connor, Michael Woodhouse and Chris Penk opposed the Bill, as did Labour’s Anahila Kanongata’a Suisuiki, Jamie Strange and Leavasu.

Although it was a conscience vote, the Green Party caucus supported the Bill without exception. No surprises there. Chloe Swarbrick probably reflected the Greens’ confusion (a less charitable word would be hypocrisy) when she wrote an impassioned defence of the right to protest last year and apparently saw no contradiction in wishing to deny that right to people opposed to abortion.

More surprising than the Greens’ vote, and infinitely more disappointing, was the bloc support for the Bill from ACT. So much for the party’s posturing as champions of free speech. Perhaps the novice ACT MPs were influenced by their leader’s oafish attack on the anti-abortion movement during the first reading debate last year when, at the same time as declaring his commitment to free speech (yeah, right), he confessed to detesting the “odious ogres” who maintain protest vigils outside abortion clinics. Want to see a bigot masquerading as a liberal? There he is, right there.

There’s no disguising or softening the fact that yesterday's vote was a betrayal of free speech and a blow to the right to protest. New Zealanders who place a high value on those democratic principles will just have to note the names of those who voted for and against the Bill and remember them at the next general election.

Footnote: Someone asked me why I keep referring to the legislation as the “so-called” Safe Areas Bill. My explanation is simple: the space around abortion clinics is anything but safe for the unborn.

 

 

The Safe Areas Bill should be seen for what it is

The so-called Safe Areas Bill will have its second reading in Parliament tomorrow. It’s a brazen attack on freedom of speech and the right to protest, made more offensive by the fact that some prominent MPs who support it cut their political teeth exercising that same right.

The Bill, sponsored by Labour MP Louisa Wall and subject to a conscience vote, would allow the Minister of Health to designate 150-metre “safe areas” around abortion clinics from which protesters would be barred. It appears to be  a unique protection accorded no other public buildings.

Officially named the Contraception, Sterilisation and Abortion (Safe Areas) Amendment Bill, the legislation threatens to curtail the right of anti-abortion activists to maintain even silent, passive vigils near abortion clinics.

It has been promoted on the pretext that vulnerable patients attending abortion clinics risk being intimidated, obstructed and harassed. Yet the Christchurch-based anti-abortion group Right to Life submitted Official Information Requests to 20 district health boards inquiring whether patients or staff had suffered any such harassment or intimidation during the two years from 2019 to 2021, and none reported any.

So the need for “safe areas” has not been demonstrated and the Bill should be seen for what it is: an attempt to shut down legitimate protest against a practice that conservative Christians regard as profoundly wrong, but which is celebrated by the political Left as a defining triumph of feminism.

The Bill passed its first reading last March by a margin of 100 to 15 with two abstentions, but that’s not necessarily an indication of how MPs will vote the second time around. ACT’s 10 MPs all voted in favour of the Bill then, but party leader David Seymour said he had concerns about freedom of expression and wanted the Bill properly examined by a select committee.

Only three Labour MPs – Anahila Kanongata’a Suisuiki, Jamie Strange and Rino Tirikatene – voted against it. All Green MPs supported it and National was split: 19 in favour and 12 against. Christopher Luxon, who has since become the party leader, was one of those opposed.

Trevor Mallard and Chris Hipkins supported the Bill. Both were arrested for protest activity before they launched their political careers but later had their convictions overturned. They apparently see no inconsistency in denying others a right they once vigorously asserted for themselves.

The Bill is bound to become law because of its overwhelming support from Labour and the Greens, but interest will centre on whether any MPs change their position now that the Bill has been through the select committee process. The vote will be a test of their commitment to the principles not just of free speech but of freedom of assembly and religion.

Seymour wasn’t the only person concerned about the threat to free speech. Even David Parker, who as Attorney-General was statutorily obliged to report to the House on whether the Bill complied with the Bill of Rights Act (BORA), conceded that a clause which would have criminalised the act of “communicating” with abortion patients in a manner likely to cause distress was “overly broad” and appeared inconsistent with BORA.

In its submission opposing the Bill the Free Speech Union agreed with that conclusion, but pointed out to the select committee that the legislation wasn’t necessary in the first place because protection against intimidation or threats is provided under existing law. The Summary Offences Act, for example, makes it an offence to direct insulting or threatening words at another person. There is also a legal prohibition against harassment – a word whose definition, the union said, would be expanded under Wall’s Bill.

The union went on to say: “It is not the speech of the majority that requires vigilant protection. It is the speech of the few that must be jealously guarded.” The union cautioned that the traditional legal test of what is “reasonable” was in danger of becoming one of what was “comfortable”.

In a spirited defence of the right to dissent, it said: “We are flummoxed by the suggestion that in a democracy, where government is created by people of different interests and beliefs, some ideas are deemed too different or disagreeable to be allowed. This suggestion is antithetical to democracy.”

The Bill that’s returning to the House tomorrow gives the impression of having been toned down, but it’s illusory. While the clause that failed the BORA test has gone, that doesn’t make the Bill any more palatable. Under the amended version, any person who “engages in protest about matters relating to the provision of abortion services” within a “safe areas” zone would be committing a criminal act.

It’s hard to imagine a more sweeping provision. The new section would give activist judges – who have proliferated in the 32 years since the passage of BORA, as the union noted in its submission – licence to convict people for doing nothing more menacing than silently praying on a public street anywhere within 150 metres of an abortion facility.  This can only have a chilling effect on the right to protest.

Regardless of their views on abortion, those who believe in free speech and the associated right to protest should take careful note of how MPs vote. National and ACT MPs, in particular, will be watched to see whether their votes align with their parties’ supposed commitment to freedom. 

Alranz: the radical fringe group that purports to speak for New Zealand women

There has been a changing of the guard at Alranz (the Abortion Law Reform Association of New Zealand), the organisation formed in 1970 to lobby for the removal of restrictions on abortion.

Terry Bellamak, the voluble former Goldman Sachs executive from New York who brought an American assertiveness to the Alranz presidency, has stepped down after six years. The new interim president is Tracy Morison, from Massey University.

A look at Morison’s academic CV is instructive. I’ve taken the following verbatim from Massey’s website:

Tracy Morison is a senior lecturer in health psychology. She is also Editor of Feminism & Psychology and an Honorary Research Associate of the Critical Studies in Sexualities and Reproduction programme at Rhodes University (South Africa) where she obtained her Ph.D. Her postdoctoral work was conducted at the Human Sciences Research Council in South Africa, where she subsequently worked as a senior researcher before returning to the academe. Dr Morison’s research is located at the intersection of health psychology, critical psychology, and feminism. Her work is driven by a social justice orientation and seeks to explore how the socio-political context shapes and constrains sexual and reproductive decision-making, relations, and practices. A key focus in her work is on gender, sexualities, and their interrelationship with other social locations. She draws on feminist and other critical theories and in-depth qualitative methodologies to illuminate the multiple, complex processes in which sexualities and reproduction are embedded.

Insofar as it’s possible to make any sense of all this, we can conclude that Morison inhabits the furthermost reaches of post-modernist lunacy. Her work bears no obvious relationship with the real world that most New Zealanders inhabit. Phrases such as “critical theory”, “critical studies” and “social justice” (a neo-Marxist construct that can mean just about anything, but which usually serves as a smokescreen for attacks on capitalism) point to a career built on abstruse theory and the determined pursuit of radical ideological agendas that in no way relate to the needs or wishes of ordinary people. This tells us something about the quintessential character of the zealots who run Alranz and who purport to speak for the women of New Zealand.

No surprises there. I don’t think Alranz ever pretended to be a grass-roots organisation. It has always appeared to represent a privileged feminist metropolitan elite, the members of which occupy positions of cultural influence and are adept at exploiting supportive connections in politics and the media.

Estimates based on information supplied by the Registrar of Incorporated Societies indicate that in 2018 (the most recent year for which figures are available), the membership of Alranz may have been as low as 36 and certainly no higher than 60. Under its constitution, the quorum for an AGM is four members, which surely says something. But Alranz does better on Facebook, where I’m told it has 2300 followers.

In this respect it stands in stark contrast to the country’s biggest pro-life group, Voice for Life, which has 1100 paid-up members, 10,000 supporters on its mailing list, nearly 14,000 Facebook followers and 32 apparently active branches. But ask yourself this question: which organisation gets more media exposure – Alranz or VFL?

Incidentally, the Alranz website refers to its new interim president as a “tauiwi academic”, which is a woke way of saying that like her immediate predecessor, she’s not a native-born New Zealander. (Morison’s CV indicates she’s from South Africa.)

Nothing surprising there, either. As I noted in a post last March: “As immigration has ramped up, so New Zealand has become home to an increasing number of activists, political aspirants, bureaucrats and academics from countries whose values and mindsets are often dissimilar to ours.”

Some of our most vigorous agitators for radical change are relative newcomers. As I said in that same post, we shouldn't expect immigrants to remain silent and invisible. But neither should they expect those of us who were born and raised here, whose families in many cases have been here for generations, and who have paid taxes and voted in New Zealand elections all our lives, to gratefully embrace newcomers whose first instinct on arrival is to plunge into political activism aimed at refashioning our laws and institutions.  

Bellamak, for example, had no compunctions about wanting to limit New Zealanders’ freedom of speech by lobbying for so-called “safe areas” around abortion clinics where peaceful protest vigils would be made illegal. She tried to justify this interference with our traditional rights by citing examples of violent anti-abortion protests in her native America, presumably because she couldn’t find any evidence of them happening here. Nonetheless the shameful “safe areas” legislation is making its way through Parliament now, despite the Attorney-General admitting that it cuts across the free speech provisions in the Bill of Rights Act. 

But back to Alranz, the continued existence of which raises an interesting question. Since last year, New Zealand has had one of the world’s most permissive abortion regimes, with virtually no restrictions on abortion until the moment of birth. The law is so lacking in basic humanity that it contains no provision for the protection of babies accidentally born alive in late-term abortions. They are left to die. But legally sanctioned, no-questions-asked abortion is not enough for the zealots of Alranz, who have vowed to keep fighting for “improvements” to the law. So my question is: what type of grotesque, dystopian, nihilistic world do they envisage? I shudder to think what the answer might be.

(Disclosure: My sister is a former branch president of Voice for Life.)

Can we now expect Chloe Swarbrick to vote against the "Safe Areas" Bill?

Green MP Chloe Swarbrick has written an eloquent assertion of the right to protest.

“Our communities don’t evolve and progress by sitting around, hoping for the best,” she says in the New Zealand Herald. “Rarely, if ever, does change come from the top.”

She goes on to reflect that “many of the developments we’re proudest of as a country” – she cites the revitalisation of te reo Maori, rainbow rights and the stands against apartheid and nuclear weapons – arose from protests that were “typically pretty tense” and “didn’t come easy”.

She adds: “They never would have happened if protesters had relied solely on pre-existing ‘official’ avenues for civil engagement.”

Perhaps most pertinently, she says: “Peaceful protest often involves putting your body on the line in pretty inconvenient places. The point is to occupy space and time. The point is to make a point. It’s a spotlight firmly on the issue … it’s to show the difference between what is legal and what is ethical.”

Swarbrick’s opinion piece was inspired by the cyclists who defied the police by riding across the Auckland Harbour Bridge, but all of the above applies equally to the people who maintain peaceful vigils outside abortion clinics in protest against the killing of the unborn.

Can we, then, expect Swarbrick to vote against Labour's so-called “Safe Areas Bill”, which is aimed at denying those people their right to protest (or to be more correct, to highlight the fact that abortion involves extinguishing a life)? Or is she just another left-wing hypocrite?

That "Safe Areas" bill: hypocrisy on a grand scale

This is a story you can be sure we won’t see in the leftist-dominated mainstream media.

The indefatigable Ken Orr, of the Christchurch-based organisation Right to Life, made an Official Information Act request to New Zealand’s 20 district health boards asking if they had received any complaints of intimidation or harassment from women attending abortion clinics over a two-year period from 2019 to 2021.

Not one had. No complaints from staff, either.

So why is the government pretending that harassment of abortion patients is an issue so pressing that it requires special legislation to protect them – legislation that even the Attorney-General admitted cuts across freedom of speech rights guaranteed under the Bill of Rights Act?

An estimated 26,000 women had abortions during the period covered by the OIA request, yet there’s no record of any complaining that they felt intimidated or harassed by anti-abortion protesters, who typically maintain a passive vigil outside clinics.

This explains why Terry Bellamak, the voluble American abortion rights activist who led the charge for the creation of 150-metre “safe zones” around abortion clinics, was forced to resort to evidence from her home country to demonstrate the supposed need for New Zealand abortion patients to be “protected” from right-to-life protesters.

As Orr says, the emotively titled “Safe Areas” Bill seeks to address a problem that doesn’t exist.

Not content with passing one of the world’s most radical abortion laws, the government has followed it up with legislation that curtails the right to protest. How ironic that this is being done by a government laden with people who cut their political teeth in the protest movement and would be outraged if restrictions were imposed on demonstrations in favour of approved left-wing causes, many of which impinge on the rights of others.

The right they claimed for themselves, they now wish to deny others. This is hypocrisy and double standards on a grand scale, and yet another manifestation of the cancel culture flourishing with the government’s tacit and sometimes active (as in this case) approval.

Footnote: Seventeen of New Zealand's 20 DHBs responded to Orr's request. Of the three that didn’t, two don’t perform abortions. Orr says Tairawhiti (Gisborne) is the only board that provides abortions but failed to meet its obligations under the OIA.

 

A fallacy exposed

Parliament last night passed a Bill that will provide three days’ paid bereavement leave for women who have experienced a stillbirth or miscarriage.

The Bill’s sponsor, Labour MP Ginny Andersen, argued that stillbirth and miscarriage can have traumatic consequences, and the House unanimously agreed.

Interviewed this morning on Morning Report by Suzy Ferguson, Andersen acknowledged that the Bill wouldn’t apply to women who have had abortions, as some submitters had urged.

She explained this was because the legislation was introduced before last year’s radical overhaul of the abortion laws and she wanted to remain focused on her principle objective.

However, when asked whether the new legislation could be amended to cover abortion, Andersen answered: “I think that’s a really good idea and definitely should be considered.”

This may have been a more significant statement than she realised. Andersen was one of the 37 Labour MPs who voted for the dismantling of the abortion laws on the basis that the right to abortion is all about women’s health. But by acknowledging that the procedure can have harmful consequences, she has exposed that argument as a brazen fallacy.

Terry Bellamak, The Spinoff and the anti-abortion terrorists

The online news and comment site The Spinoff published an opinion piece a few days ago by Terry Bellamak, the president of Abortion Rights Aotearoa, entitled Why we need safe areas outside abortion clinics.

It was written in support of a Bill that would create 150-metre “safe zones” (that word “safe” again, implying that people’s physical wellbeing might be at risk when the only life imperilled is that of an unborn child) around premises where abortions are provided.

The introductory blurb above Bellamak’s piece said these zones would ensure pregnant women wanting abortions don’t have to be confronted by “angry mobs” (really??) outside clinics.

The Bill, introduced by Labour MP Louisa Wall – no doubt with the approval, if not the active encouragement, of prime minister Jacinda Ardern and health minister Andrew Little – would make it illegal to “intimidate or obstruct” women attending abortion clinics. It would also outlaw attempts to communicate with patients “in a manner … likely to cause emotional distress”.

The Bill is a mopping-up exercise aimed at taking care of business that was left unfinished when Parliament abolished restrictions on abortion last year. Abortion activists wanted "safe zones" included in that legislation, but were thwarted by what Bellamak calls a “procedural misstep”.

On a conscience vote, Wall’s Bill passed its first reading on Wednesday night by a margin of 100 to 15, with two abstentions. But that’s not necessarily an indication of its level of support, because some MPs probably want the Bill to proceed to a select committee so they can then propose changes.

ACT, whose nine MPs voted for the Bill on its first reading, is said to oppose (as it should) the provision barring attempts to communicate with abortion patients, on the grounds that it’s an infringement of free speech rights. Rather embarrassingly, Attorney-General David Parker has found himself forced to agree. In the report that he was required to provide on the implications of the Bill, Parker said it appeared inconsistent with the right to freedom of expression guaranteed in Section 14 of the Bill of Rights Act. But don’t expect that minor technicality to impede its progress.

Now, back to The Spinoff. The hysterical reference in the introductory blurb to “angry mobs” was a clue to the tone of Bellamak’s piece, in which she talks of abortion patients fearing “escalation to violence”.

But if you take the trouble to follow the links that supposedly substantiate Bellamak’s fears of incipient violence from anti-abortion fanatics, they all refer to situations that have occurred in America – in other words, utterly irrelevant to the New Zealand experience.

If there was evidence that women attending New Zealand abortion clinics had been threatened or menaced, you’d expect Bellamak to cite them. The fact that she has to refer to American examples is telling. The one New Zealand instance of violence relating to abortion that she cites was the act of a plainly disturbed man who assaulted Greens co-leader James Shaw – an offence unrelated to vigils outside clinics.

Bellamak, of course, is herself American, and has introduced a strident American element to the abortion debate in New Zealand. This is probably not helpful, since the issue is strained enough without the introduction of American-style extremism and hyperbole.

Unfortunately, being passive people, New Zealanders tend to let the loud and assertive take over, which is what appears to have happened to Abortion Rights Aoteroa. But as long as we’re stuck with Bellamak, surely the least she could do is deal with the situation as it applies here, not in Colorado or Arizona.

So what’s the reality in New Zealand? As it happens, I have a sister and niece who regularly maintain a vigil outside a provincial abortion clinic. As my sister describes it to me, their presence is essentially passive. “Generally we say ‘hello’ to passers-by but get into further conversation only if they respond,” she tells me. “We follow their lead.”

If the girl or woman is receptive, she says, they offer information on alternatives to abortion, such as adoption, and practical or emotional support through the pregnancy. They also pray and display posters (of the most inoffensive kind, in my sister’s words, although of course others may decide they’re “unsafe”). But most women attending the clinic are in cars anyway, so the protesters’ presence (although my sister doesn’t think of herself as a protester) is purely visual.

“Any ‘harassing’ or bullying’,” she adds. “is done not by us, but to us, by people passing in cars, on foot, on bikes.”

No one attending the clinic is obstructed, confronted or shouted at, then? “Never, never, never.”

So the Bill before Parliament, quite apart from the issues it raises in relation to free speech, may be based on a wildly distorted and exaggerated version of what actually happens “on the ground”.

Though I’m strongly opposed to abortion, as readers of this blog will know, I’ve never stood outside a clinic and probably wouldn’t. But I respect those who do, and I understand why they put themselves “out there” (literally). One reason is that many women and girls referred for abortion have been given the impression there’s no alternative. No one has offered them support if they want to continue the pregnancy. The protesters (I’m sorry, but I can’t think of another word) are letting them know they have options that “the system” doesn’t tell them about.

As an aside, it’s funny how the Left, which has always vigorously asserted the right to protest – sometimes violently, and often without regard for the rights of others, such as freedom of movement – wants to deny that right to others now that it’s in a position of power. Same old same old, as they say.

But don’t expect The Spinoff to acknowledge there are two sides to this story. The last time Bernard Moran, former president of Voice for Life, wrote to The Spinoff rebutting something Bellamak had written, Spinoff editor Toby Manhire replied that he preferred to believe Bellamak.

There’s an open mind for you, fearlessly committed to the pursuit of truth and the contest of ideas.

I can probably do no better here than quote from an email Moran sent to Manhire last Tuesday.

“I see Terry Bellamak is at it again unchallenged in yesterday’s Spinoff,” Moran wrote.

“Again I make the point: if our people behaved as she alleges, they would be creating a public nuisance and disorder.

“That would justify the clinics calling the police. It doesn’t happen.

“What she wrote is a series of fantasies. She presumably gets away with it because people at The Spinoff appear to believe that’s the way 'anti-abortionists' would behave.”

And this, from Moran’s previous letter to Manhire on March 6, 2019:

“You have run another oped by ALRANZ’s Terry Bellamak today and she makes serious and very damaging allegations without mentioning Voice for Life.

“But your outraged readers will naturally think our members are responsible.

“She says pro-lifers stand outside clinics and shout ‘whore!’, ‘murderer!’ and throw plastic foetuses at the women entering.

“We have had to put up with this damaging smear tactic for decades and like the Himalayan Yeti, we never ever get credible evidence of who is doing it, when and where.

“I’ll give you an example. Back in 2014, the Abortion Supervisory Committee, without checking with us, went public with similar accusations which were reported in the media.

“As the national president of Voice for Life, I immediately phoned the secretary and asked for evidence, which was refused.

“I then wrote to the committee saying that we took this very seriously and would expel any member who behaved as alleged – and asked for any evidence. They refused to provide any.

“Faced with this Kafka-like obduracy, Right to Life and Voice for Life requested the Ombudsman to investigate.

“The Ombudsman reported back that the committee couldn’t provide them with any evidence apart, from vague ‘verbal complaints’ from abortion clinic staff.

“I carried out an audit of our branches in 2014 and questioned those involved in prayer vigils outside clinics. They were adamant that such allegations were baseless.

“OK, so I carried out another survey in November, 2018. This was just after four Wellington High School students lodged a petition with Parliament calling for ‘exclusion zones’ to prevent anti-abortion protesters ‘harassing’ women seeking legal abortions.

“I discovered that Pro-Life Action operates in Wellington and they have one member, MH, who also is in Voice for Life. [Full name deleted by me – KduF.]

 “I contacted MH and she emailed back: ‘I take a sign which says ‘Pregnant? Anxious? Confused? Unsure?’ and sit on the concrete wall on the left side of the hospital driveway. I only speak if someone approaches me and wants to talk.”

“Christchurch – nothing going on.

“Dunedin used to have a Friday prayer vigil with a few pensioners.

“Invercargill: ‘We have a group of 8-10 people who meet each week near our hospital for one hour on a street corner. We have a banner and simple pro-life placards. We do not harass anyone.’

“That report is from Norman Maclean, a former head of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at Southland Hospital.

“Thames has a small group of pensioners who meet on a street corner every Friday morning when abortions are performed. They pray and in their seven years there, three babies have been saved when their mothers stopped to talk and changed their minds.

“Hastings has a group of two young women and one guy who meet outside the hospital. So far 33 babies have been confirmed saved (their mothers sent photos or brought them along as toddlers).

“Now if pro-lifers were behaving in the way Terry Bellamak claims in The Spinoff, that would be real harassment (public disorder) and the clinic staff would be justified in calling the police. We are not aware of that happening.

“Once again we are playing catch up to baseless allegations. Bellamak is never challenged to provide chapter-and-verse evidence.”

Moran has now followed up with a stronger letter to Duncan Greive, founder and managing editor of The Spinoff, in which he wrote:

“I was the national president of Voice for Life from 2011 to 2017, so I had a ring-side seat to judge the veracity of Terry Bellamak’s allegations.

“She wrote about mobs of protesters shouting abuse and throwing plastic foetuses at vulnerable women – surely assault and a police matter.

 “I imagine your readers would have been appalled at the antics of these anti-choice Brown Shirts – that’s us. But was it true?

“Well, as true as me writing that Duncan Greive and Toby Manhire wear MAGA caps at home, secretly attend Brian Tamaki’s Destiny Church, beat their wives and are cruel to animals.”

Moran continued: “I’ve had many years experiencing Terry Bellamak’s tactics.

“She’s a very smart operator, ran her own technology company in New York contracting to Goldman Sachs and now a lawyer in Wellington.

“Terry appears to be from the ‘whatever it takes’ school and she plays to win.

“She obviously recognises that the editorial staff at The Spinoff are sympatico with her cause and ready to assist.

“That’s why as a real New Yorker she sold you the Brooklyn Bridge of tales about anti-abortion protesters, knowing you would buy it without checking or questioning.

“In March 2019, she did the same thing and I responded to Toby Manhire with a two-page rebuttal. He replied dismissively that he preferred to believe Terry Bellamak.

“I re-sent the rebuttal to him last Tuesday as a reminder. You can ask him for it.

“It’s galling for us to be subjected to such awful falsehoods, knowing that you two guys accepted them at face value – that you both wanted to believe them. Otherwise you would have done some basic checking with us and the police.

“I’m sorry to have to say this, but the historical example for what you have perpetrated on us are the editorial and journalistic values of Der Stürmer*.”

I leave it to readers of this blog to decide who’s the more credible.

*Der Stürmer: a rabble-rousing pro-Nazi paper in Hitler’s Germany.

Footnote: I have corrected a reference to Norman Maclean. The original version of this post said he had been head of O and G at Southland Hospital for 40 years. He was with the department for 40 years, but in charge for 10.