People who are lying about abortion law reform

So the only material we have about Steve Chadwick's proposed private members bill is one NZ Herald article. A lot of the people quoted in the article make reference to the origins of the current law - a topic I happen to know a reasonable amount about. History important for many reasons, including that some people will try and twist it to their own ends, and it helps to know the truth.

So liar the first Bernard Moran, president of Voice for Life (that's SPUC that was):

The present law is a compromise to recognise that there is an unborn child, that there is a human person involved in this procedure.
Decriminalisation would basically be saying that the human person, the child, has no value whatsoever; it's like removing an abscess or a tooth. That's a modern form of barbarism.

You see this idea repeated by quite a few different people, but it's absolutely incorrect - our current law is not a compromise. The law we have now was a total victory for misogynist anti-abortionists. The law was written and promoted by misogynist anti-abortionists David Langue and Bill Birch (respectively). None of the women in parliament voting for it. It was a horrific desperate defeat for feminists all over the country. Over 300,000 people signed a petition to repeal the law. For more than a year after the law was passed women who needed abortions flew to Australia to get them.

The current law is a savage defeat.

Then there's Phil Goff: "Labour leader Phil Goff said he hadn't given the matter much thought."

Deborah and QoT have both responded to this. But I had a slightly different reaction which was "Bullshit." In 1977 and 1978 Phil Goff was the spokesperson for Young Labour. Young Labour actively opposed the current abortion law. Phil Goff got a reasonable amount of publicity. The sort of person who goes on to become leader of the opposition, pays attention to the media coverage they get when they're 24. He has thought about abortion. He knows where he stands. He may not want to talk about abortion, but the rest is bullshit.