Back when Christchurch anti-choice activist Andy Moore was still
around (he’s gone and left us, and moved to Texas), he and a few others set up a campaign called Stop Family
Planning (FP) – a campaign that looked a lot like the one in the U.S. against
Planned Parenthood.
The campaign here was prompted by FP’s proposal, which began in
2009, to provide early medication abortion at its Hamilton clinic – which was
to be a sort of a test clinic for possibly offering this option elsewhere. FP
waited two long years for a decision from the Abortion Supervisory Committee,
while the anti-choicers got busy whipping up a frenzy. Eventually, in 2011, FP
withdrew the application, and last time I checked, women from the Waikato who
wanted an early medication rather than a surgical abortion had to travel to
Auckland for it. You can thank, in part, our backward laws for that – and for
the fact that we’re
way behind comparable nations in providing this early abortion option. But
not helping the situation of course were the sterling efforts by Right to Life
and Voice for Life and ProLife NZ and all those charities like Family First and
Family Life International, who are only doing this because they care so much
about the health and well-being of (certain) women.
Things had died down on the Stop Family Planning front since then.
So much, in fact, that when I looked this past week, their old Web site (www.stopfamilyplanning.org.nz)
was gone and the domain name was available. (If you feel brave, you can still
look at the site using the Web archive/Wayback Machine.)
Family Planning has always been vulnerable to attack from
conservatives, and the attacks always come. So I suppose it’s not surprising that
the new year has brought a fresh round of invective being directed at FP, this
time from Ken Orr of Right to Life. (The others will no doubt pile on at some
point.) RTL just ended a 7-year-court case
which it mostly lost aimed at ending abortion in New Zealand, so I suppose they have some time on their hands.
The latest attacks, which so far include a complaint to the
Charities Commission about FP’s (and Women’s Health Action’s) charitable status
(here’s Red Queen on
that), a letter to the Minister of Health demanding FP be defunded (yes,
following the U.S. ‘Defund Planned Parenthood’ playbook to the letter), and, on
Saturday, one of the most – I don’t think I have the words – vile screeds I’ve
had the misfortune to read in a long time. (I’m not linking to all this for
various reasons, including its offensive nature, but if you want, you can hop
over to the site. Just search “Right to Life New Zealand”. Don’t say you
weren’t warned…)
That latest effort is titled, wait for it, “Family Planning Declares
War on Women”.
Aside from the usual attacks on abortion and the “culture of death” etc.
etc., this piece contains a lot of stuff that, as one person has already
suggested, is quite likely defamatory and is most definitely highly offensive
and insulting to, well, pretty much everyone. Everyone who isn’t in a
heterosexual marriage and only having sex for procreative purposes, which means
most straight men and women, and definitely all lesbians, gays, transgender
people, questioning, queer… (trigger warning for misogyny, homophobia,
transphobia over the jump)
