Chris Trotter wrote:
So, all of you young, confident women of the 21st century urgently need to pause and reflect upon what is happening – especially all you young, confident women thinking of voting for the National Party.
The Standard quoted this approvingly and added:
A National government would change the direction of this country, away from social reforms to greater conservatism and even regression on social issues. National opposed civil unions, prostitution reform, paid paternal leave, s59, and every other social reform.Notice the sleight of hand, the ease at which they move away from talking about a women's right to decide whether to go through pregnancy. In order to pretend that the labour government has supported women's right to an abortion, they have to avoid talking about abortion. Because the last substantial changes to our abortion law were passed in 1978, under Muldoon. The reason that Justice Miller can say that there is reason to doubt the lawfulness of many abortions, is that our abortion law was designed to make most abortions illegal. The people who wrote our abortion law, were the sort of people who argue that rape shouldn't be a criteria for abortion, because then women will claim to have been raped in order to get an abortion.
Helen Clark and Phil Goff spoke out about how bad the law we have now is back when it passed, but they haven't done anything about it, since they had the power to.* Sue Bradford, Sue Kedgley, Keith Locke, Ruth Dyson, Margaret Wilson, Marianne Hobbes, Maryann Street - they were prepared to fight this battle in the 1970s, before they got into parliament, they were feminists (or feminist supporters) then. And it's not just those who are in parliament now the numbers have been there for at least the last nine years, others had their chance: Jonathan Hunt, Matt Robeson, Laila Harre, and especially Phillida Bunkle.
Any one of those MPs could have written a private members bill that ended this. 18,000 women every year have the stress of jumping through certifying consultant hoops to get an abortion. First trimester abortions become second trimester abortions, because no-one gives a damn about those women. And now things may get worse, the Abortion Supervisory Committee may tighten the screws on certifying consultants, the hoops may get higher and the. None of this would have happened if any of the MPs who believe that women have a right to choose whether or not to end their pregnancy had acted on their beliefs.
Despite this Chris Trotter and The Standard are still trying to use abortion law as a reason to vote Labour. If we're not good, if we don't do what they want, things will get worse. But if Chris Trotter or The Standard really cared about women's control of their bodies, they would have said something before now. They would have spoken up for the hundreds of women each week who go through the certifying consultant process. They weren't prepared to fight for something better than the bad system that we've got now. Chris Trotter doesn't even care about abortion enough to get his fact rights, arguing that 1978 was the year women won the right to safe legal abortion in New Zealand - in 1978 there were 100 women a week who had to fly to Australia to get safe legal abortions.
* Twenty years ago, when she was Minsiter of Health, Helen Clark proposed a bill that would allow all doctors to be certifying consultants. She gave up pretty quickly and hasn't tried anything since.
12 comments:
But if Chris Trotter or The Standard really cared about women's control of their bodies, they would have said something before now.
Indeed they would have. But that doesn't change the fact that there is likely to be a vote on this in the next Parliament. If we want that vote to go the right way, we need to make sure that Parliament has a solid majority for choice. And the way to do that is by voting for candidates and parties likely to support our views.
It may not change the political reality, I/S, but it is a terrible way to sell yourself to women. By and large Labour has actually been a mildly feminist government, but if it really cared about its credentials in that area, instead of just saying "the National Party is worse!", Labour and its supporters should be talking about what they can do to make things even better for women.
If Labour would just follow through on its principles with conviction, it wouldn't be in the mess it is now where National, of all parties, is painting it as egotistical, unilateral, and uncaring.
By and large Labour has actually been a mildly feminist government, but if it really cared about its credentials in that area, instead of just saying "the National Party is worse!", Labour and its supporters should be talking about what they can do to make things even better for women.
I agree entirely - and it speaks volumes IMHO that hey're unwilling to make a simple statement of principle on this but rather dump all queries to Annette King who has no comment to make.
But then, that's what happens if you let dinosaurs like harry Dynhoven in your caucus.
(And OTTH, no party has said a thing; it's radioactive as far as they're concerned. So all we have to go on are voting records at this stage).
I have some sympathy for Helen Clark in this, because if she does come out (now) as pro-choice then she will be loudly labelled a childless baby-killer by a loud few, who will then get extra media coverage of their pro-life platform off the back of that. But Annette King could express her sentiments without the same result, imho.
Neither major party is going to touch this though, other than to say it's a conscience issue. I've got a post percolating on the political strategy from here, hope to have it up tomorrow.
Thanks for writing this Maia, I think it is a valuable perspective on the frustration many feminists feel.
idiot/savant: having read teh judges decision I'm not sure there will be a vote in the next parliament, unless it's on our side.
The whole point of the current law is that it's supposed to make abortion very difficult to get. The judgement is a push to make that happen. There's no need for a legal change for that to happen.
It's true that there might be more of Judith Collins type legislation. But why would they even try? The tactic for those wanting to restrict action to abortion now is to nibble around the edges. If they can do that in such a hands off way, there's no need for them to do anything more.
The current access to abortion wasn't won through legislation, and it probably won't be lost through it. The 1999 parliament, in particular, had a fair number of women (and a few men) who had cut their teeth on this issue. Far more important than who sits in those seats, is whether there's any push outside the house.
Maia: the reason I think there will be a vote is precisely because the restrictions will produce such a push. People seem quite happy with the practical status quo of effective abortion on demand. And when that changes, I think there will be a certain amount of anger and pressure on politicians to fix it.
There will be a vote in parliament on the make-up of the Abortion Supervisory Committee because there always is. If you look at the last debate and voting record you'll see that with a larger proportion of Nats we'd've had a very different ASC, which would have lead to further restriction on access to abortion.
I'm heartily sick of Chris Trotter. He's doesn't represent the views of anyone on the left that I know of. And I don't particularly like the implication than women should vote with our uteruses (uteri?) - as if the reproductive issues were some marginal women's-only thing, and as if it's the only election issue we might be expected to care about. Somehow, it reminds me of that 'Women: know your limits' sketch by Harry Enfield. At times I want to make a Chris Trotter pinata.
Anna - you make the pinata, I'll bring the baseball bat.
Really good post, Maia. Sure, I'm now a lot more worried about a more-conservative Parliament and the effects on women's rights - but damned if that leads me instantly to say "Ergo I must vote Labour, after all they've done so much to avoid us even BEING in this situation with regards to abortion!"
i'm going to bite the bullet and disagree with most people here. i think the main point of trotter's piece has been missed, or misread. i've copied below (way below) the comment i put on the ex-expat's blog, on a similar topic. although her post was a little different in focus (see http://exexpat1.blogspot.com/2008/06/trotter-misses-mark-again.html).
in terms of the lack of action on changing the law, i think everyone had been happy to leave well enough alone. while the system isn't perfect, it has been working effectively for many women, and there certainly hasn't been a big public push to change the status quo to make abortions easier to get. without that, it would have been almost impossible for any politician to start talking about changes to the current act.
this court case has changed things a little, but not much yet. it'll be how the next stage develops that will really tell where we're going with this. which is not to say that all of us should sit quietly and wait for developments.
anyway here's my comment from a few days ago:
i also think you misread trotter. he's not saying that all national party MPs and supporters are anti-abortion per se. he's talking about nz's "taleban" (who he names as people like bob mccroskie and ken orr ie i assume he means fanatical conservative religious types) who believe they have a much greater chance of pushing their conservative agenda under a national government. the nz "taleban" he's talking about are supportive of a national government. why would that be? it could only be because they think more conservative social policy would be implemented under a national government. and the evidence would be with them, in terms of the change in the voting on civil unions by some national MPs after support from a conservative christian group. also, see the link put up by i/s.
trotter does not at all imply that all right-wingers are against abortion and he hasn't labelled all of them taleban.
i'd agree that it can be read as patronising that he's addressing young women, instead of everyone. i think he does so because it is likely that younger women haven't been through the whole abortion debate, are very likely to be affected. older women are more likely to remember the debates, and will have more of an idea of what's at risk. should he have included young men as well? absolutely. on that point, criticism is valid. on the other hand, as many have said over the past few days, it's women's bodies that are primarily affected by abortion.
in the long-term, yes, we want to build up a cross-party consensus. in the short-term, we need to be very careful. i say this because i just read through this debate:
http://www.parliament.nz/en-NZ/PB/Debates/Debates/4/3/3/48HansD_20070614_00000824-Appointments-Abortion-Supervisory-Committee.htm
thanx to anita, a commenter here:
http://www.thestandard.org.nz/?p=2193#comment-60856
and finally, trotter doesn't say "ergo vote labour". he says we should think about the consequences of voting national. ok, you could call this nit-picking, but not voting for national could mean voting for the maori party, the greens, nz first etc. the same goes for the standard - they simply point out that for a range of issues, most national mps have voted in a conservative way and most labour mps haven't.
Maia, a strong but slightly baffling post.
You seem to be saying that if The Standard's authors cared about abortion we'd have said something about it before the post you critique. We did, through a guest post by Julie here - http://www.thestandard.org.nz/?p=2159
Granted, in our nine months of existence I don't think we'd touched on the issue before, but it hasn't been the subject of any great debate in our political discourse until a week ago and to be honest up til now abortion law has not really been our focus.
Secondly, SP can speak for himself but he's not a "Labour Party man" - I don't think he's ever even voted for them. Nowhere has anyone on The Standard tried to use abortion law as a reason to vote Labour - it has however been used as a reason why not to vote National.
You can critique The Standard for not focusing enough on issues you care about, but please don't put words in our mouths. The post you so object to did not say Labour or even the Greens would liberalise abortion law - it merely said that under Labour-led governments the Christian right had been held in check and under National these forces could pose a threat to women's access to abortion. All of this is true.
Call that "political point scoring" if you will, but the fact is the outcome of the election may have an impact on women's right to choose, and it's important we have that discussion. Don't you think?
stargazer - I agree with your analysis from the politicians point of view, I just think that's a shit point of view, and disagree about what we should do about it.
The current law works well enough, except for a sizeable chunk of women who have to get abortion and are forced to travel hundreds of kilometers, make multiple appointments or wait weeks. While it's better than nothing, it shouldn't be good enough for anyone who claims to believe in women's right to choose (which includes a sizeable portion of the current cabinet, and a reasonable number of others in parliament).
I agree that parliament isn't going to do anything to change that without a push (and most of those problems are caused by the law, even if they're not set down in law). In fact if I was going to sum up the abortion struggle in New Zealand it'd be something like "politicians largely irrelevant, access central" [a point I'm going to repeat throughout this comment, because I wrote it backwards - sorry for writing such a long comment i didn't have time to write a short one]. But your argument about the inability for the government to do anything for the last nine years, is the same point as I was making. You can't argue that pro-chocie politicians are powerless, while pro-life ones are powerful.
Tane - Political blogging reveals what is most central to a person's pretty quick. If (either individuals or a group) haven't written about something for nine months, then either it's not central or the writer doesn't feel comfortable saying what they have to say (or maybe they only write once a week). I understand that abortion isn't the standard's focus, and that's why this post is using the issue to the standard's own political goals. Here are the qualities of the only post on abortion written by a regular contributor to the standard:
* It doesn't say anything about abortion
* It links approvingly to an article that is wrong to a staggering degree
* The only point it makes is 'national are bad'.
The central message at the standard is 'don't vote national'. You clearly don't have anything much to say about abortion. This post is using abortion to push the standard's central message, before the standard give any indication that abortion matters to the standard in any way. That's what makes me angry.
Having looked through the archives it seems to be a bit of a modus operendi for The Standard. I've looked at any category which looked like it might be likely to talk about women (including categories like beneficiaries) and there was usually only one post in each category, which bashed National. I think if the standard doesn't want to be seen to be using women's issues then either stop writing about them or write about women from a progressive perspective even when you don't see an opportunity to bash national.
"it merely said that under Labour-led governments the Christian right had been held in check and under National these forces could pose a threat to women's access to abortion. All of this is true.
Call that "political point scoring" if you will, but the fact is the outcome of the election may have an impact on women's right to choose, and it's important we have that discussion. Don't you think?"
You can't claim all this stuff as self-evident. Since the Auckland Medical Aid Centre opened in 1974 the impact parliament has had on abortion access has been very temporary. The basic work-around of abortion access for the last thirty years, was in place by about 1980. There have been two national governments and two labour governments in that time, at least four rabidly anti-choice prime ministers, a few anti-choice ministers of health and justice, and a few pro-choice ones. There have been parliaments with an anti-choice majority, and parliaments with a pro-choice majority.
So if there's a reason you think that 25 years of political history is suddenly going to change next term, then it's you who have to prove your side of the argument.
Anita - that debate is interesting, but there's clearly some wonky stuff going on with the voting (Lesley Soper, for example, is being whipped whatever they say about a free vote, and National's votes seem weirdly all over the place). I think you're jumping to conclusions. Partly because National would vote completely differently in government from the way they are in opposition (even in government they're not taking nominations for the ASC from Gordon Copeland). But also because there's no reason to believe that under a national government a very different ASC would lead to restrictions on abortion. Muldoon, Lange and Bolger were hardly friends of women's right to choose. The work-around has been in place a long time, with many different formations of the ASC.
That's not to say there's no reason to organise, because there is.What I'm saying is that it's not about parliament, it's about how we organise that will make a difference on abortion practice.
[Just so people know, this is one of my areas of research. I know quite a bit about the movements and the parliamentary politics of the abortion struggle of teh 1970s. I'm not just saying this stuff because it fits my ideology. I can go into the details of the Hospital Amendment Bills, the development of SPUC, and all those flights to Australia. I'm not trying to argue from authority. I'm just saying I can go into whatever level of detail people want - I can even do footnotes]
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