KEY POINTS:
I've been thinking about a full-page "pro-life" ad that appeared in this newspaper two weeks ago from a group called Voice for Life with what might seem like a non-threatening message: "We don't want to change the [abortion] law - we want it to work as it was
intended."
The anti-abortion activists have come a long way since the ugly political brawling of the 1970s. They've made themselves over with a softer, gentler look. Yes, you guessed it: Voice for Life is the new, image-friendly front for the old anti-choice brigade, SPUC, the Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child.
It provided kindly messages about caring for women, children and the elderly; and all of it wrapped up in a nice trendy political green colour. But don't be fooled. This group wants to take away a woman's right to control her own body.
The reason the anti-choice crowd don't want to change the law is because it is bad law. It's one of the most conservative abortion laws in the western world. Our perception that we allow women the right to choose is correct, but that's only because medical professionals in New Zealand, thankfully, take a commonsense approach.
But that right is vulnerable, and that ad signals the opening salvos in an election year. The anti-choice advocates are upping their propaganda on the assumption that after the election there will be a more-conservative Parliament. This should give all progressives the chills.
Voice Against Choice, as I prefer to call them, can apply all the green wash they like, but their bottom line is still the same: the state should control women's bodies and force them to have children.
Everyone knows the present law doesn't work, that it wastes money on "consultants" to whom women must justify themselves before they are granted permission to terminate any pregnancy.
The money spent on this farcical process could be better spent on fixing our hospitals rather than forcing women to jump through needless hoops. But politicians don't want to go near it because they know they never win when it comes to abortion.
Polls consistently show most New Zealanders support abortion rights. The anti-choice fanatics know this so they are trying a softer campaign to chip away at this support with the lines we saw two weeks ago - those "we've only got your best interests at heart" come-ons.
They've been successful in the United States, with restrictions like waiting periods, the ban on what they call "partial-birth" abortions, laws that require written consent from husbands or that force women to read anti-choice propaganda before they can have an abortion.
These people can be very creative but they also have a tendency to cross over into la-la land. Mike Huckabee, the evangelical Christian standard-bearer in the Republican presidential nominations, pledged to support a proposed law amendment that would define a fertilised egg as a person with all the associated legal rights that would imply.
If a fertilised egg is a person, a woman is not, it would seem. She would apparently be an incubator in which it grows. I've always found it telling that political parties which deplore state intervention when it comes to exploiting workers or protecting the environment demand state controls when it comes to so-called "moral" issues like abortion.
Our Voice Against Choice is being tactically careful (so far) not to scare the public with crazy ideas like the egg amendment. Its ad featured seemingly innocuous suggestions about how we should "reflect on a few things", and it trotted out that absurd make-believe-world argument the anti-choice people love, equating abortion figures to the populations of 10 New Zealand towns and asking: "What if these towns and cities were wiped out?" (Their answer: It would be a "devastating disaster".) Hmmm.
Let's play our own make-believe game and imagine their world. It might go something like this: "What if all the women in these towns and cities were forced by the state into unwanted motherhood?" Instead of "a devastating disaster" we would call it "a human rights atrocity".
But the anti-choice campaigners are only picking up on something liberals handed them on a plate. When the abortion figures for 2006 (just under 18,000) were released last year, even long-time pro-choice people started tut-tutting them as too high and a sign that "some women" were using abortion as a backstop contraceptive. What absurd nonsense.
Which of the women who had abortions in 2006 would the tut-tutters force to have an unwanted child? Abortion is either a woman's right to choose or it's not. Part of the problem is that those of us who support choice always seem to be on the defensive line, giving ground to the opposition by conceding, no, we don't really like abortion, but it's a necessary evil.
Let's stop that. Actually, we like safe, legal abortion because it gives women control of their lives, prevents back-street deaths and helps make sure that babies are wanted and cared for. We support it. Period.
