'Truth' in the Abortion Debate

So Karl du Fresne has joined Right to Life in piling on Sunday Star Times journalist Marika Hill over her article this past Sunday titled “Family Planning Association’s Charity Status Comes Under Fire”. Although he hasn’t gone as far as Ken Orr of Right to Life, who says the article is a “slanderous and libellous attack on Right to Life”, du Fresne accuses Hill of having been “captured by the pro-abortion lobby” and writing something “straight from the feminist propaganda handbook”.

What offended du Fresne and Orr so much was the lead paragraph, which said this: “Anti-abortionists are taking aim at the charity status of the Family Planning Association in their latest assault against women and pro-choice organisations.” In particular it was the “latest assault against women” the prompted du Fresne’s, um, assault against Hill.

I have to admit, I was surprised when I read that lead. As someone steeped in mainstream media speak myself (disclosure: du Fresne was actually my boss at the Dominion many moons ago), I just know you can’t write things on issues like abortion or women’s rights or reproductive justice (well, on anything really) that tread as closely to the truth of the matter as that phrase does. And I’m sure du Fresne’s outrage on behalf of the “objective” news media will have its supporters.

But why such outrage in this particular case? I suspect it’s because du Fresne himself is a committed opponent of abortion rights, something he didn’t point out in his post, and he doesn't care much for feminists. If this were on any other issue, I wonder if his commitment to “unbiased” journalism would be quite this fierce. (Though, to be fair, he’s recently written about the “objectivity” issue in more general terms.)

For my part, I found the lead utterly refreshing, because in this case, that statement actually did reflect the truth of the matter. Yes, despite the women du Fresne apparently knows who are hostile to Family Planning (fellow anti-choice travellers, perhaps?) and the endless claims by Orr that he is motivated in his efforts by his concern for women.

(It was also a bit amusing to see how much of the material in du Fresne’s post itself came straight from the anti-abortion propaganda handbook – like “feminist propaganda handbook”, “pro-abortion lobby”. Where is that feminist handbook? I want a copy!)

To assess whether or not Hill’s lead had more truthiness than not, I’d advise (or not, maybe) readers to take a spin through Right to Life’s Web site, (at www.righttolife[dot]org[dot]nz) which is filled with highly inflammatory material that attacks not just women, but anyone who isn’t in a straight, church-sanctioned marriage that has or will produce (and not via ivf) children. (I wrote about that here.) Among other things, in attacking Family Planning’s “Keeping it Safe” guide, RTL essentially calls “same-sex attracted women” amoral, and their sexual practices “unnatural and degrading”. Not an attack on women?  

Or how about this curious classic from the RTL site: “No woman wants an abortion as she wants an ice cream or a Porsche. She wants an abortion as an animal caught in a trap wants to gnaw off its own leg. No one has the right to choose to kill another human being.” (That first part about the ice cream and the Porsche is actually a quote from a U.S. anti-abortion activist. I don't know if it says what RTL wants it to say, but then again I don't really know exactly what it's trying to say. Pregnant women as trapped animals? Porsches? Murder?)

Or, considering how widespread the use of contraception is among all New Zealanders, this: “Contraception is the ‘mother of abortion.’” (Then re-read above on abortion.)

And of course, those of us who are pro-choice are frequently attacked, if not libeled and slandered – though we are quite used to it. We’re likened to Nazis, to supporters of genocide, to championing a “culture of death” – Orr even suggested Alranz may have “contrived” a recent threat it received “with the objective of discrediting the pro-life movement”, and said Family Planning “regularly smuggles girls out of school to have an abortion”.

The truth of the matter is that the truth of what Right to Life is calling for is actually never expressed in the mainstream media. It is tip-toed around, avoided, sanitised. Right to Life (I don’t know about du Fresne) wants: No contraception. No abortion. No homosexuality. (And that’s just for starters.) All of which, presumably, should be legislated for and enforced by the agents of the state. Think about what that means for just a second? Actually, it’s quite unthinkable. It’s so unthinkable that it never makes it into articles about Right to Life’s campaigns.

Truth, anyone?

Defend Family Planning

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)