One of Jacinda's inevitable targets was abortion law, which she has repeatedly claimed she wants treated as a health issue that shouldn't be in the Crimes Act. This is a non sequitur. The location of abortion law, or any law, is irrelevant: you break the law, it's a crime. Or so we would hope. The current abortion law isn't even in the Crimes Act: it's in the Contraception, Sterilisation, and Abortion Act 1977.
There are only two relevant parts that are in the Crimes Act: (1) the punishment for murder of an unborn child (unless sanctioned by the government per the previously mentioned Act), and (2) a specific clause protecting from prosecution those who cause the death of an unborn child while taking action to preserve the life of a mother.
Abortion hasn't been a crime since the late 1970s and only a handful of cases can ever be found of women who were denied their request to have their babies legally terminated by the state. With over 13,000 dead babies every year, it's a little duplicitous to say that abortion is a crime – those numbers point to a toll of genocidal proportions. There's just a little bit of inconvenience involved in the current process, and that's what this is all about. Women complain that they shouldn't have to feign mental illness in order to get an abortion, but it's an ugly irony – one really does have to be sick in the head to want to kill their own offspring.
The Law Commission, the highest legal body in the country, has come back with three recommendations, all of which expand the current regime. It's not about making abortion a health issue, it's just about making it easier.
Before we look at the recommendations, let's take a gander at the introduction:
This briefing paper refers to the “woman” seeking an abortion and uses the pronouns she/her. In doing so, the Commission intends to include any person who is capable of becoming pregnant. The Commission acknowledges that not every person seeking an abortion is a woman; trans men, takatāpui (a term encompassing diverse Māori gender and sexual identities) and other gender diverse people may also become pregnant and seek an abortion.
If this all sounds like a joke from a Monty Python script, it is. What a start. The "top legal body" in the country is ideologically corrupted by nutcases who reject reality itself. Yet, as shall become apparent, this opening statement is central to the ideology that drives their recommendations.
Here are the three options, one of which will inevitably be implemented:
Under Model A there would be no statutory test that must be satisfied before an abortion could be performed. The decision whether to have an abortion would be made by the woman concerned in consultation with her health practitioner.
Under Model B there would be a statutory test. The health practitioner who intends to perform an abortion would need to be satisfied that the abortion is appropriate in the circumstances, having regard to the woman’s physical and mental health and wellbeing.
Under Model C, there would be no statutory test until 22 weeks of a pregnancy. After 22 weeks, the health practitioner who intends to perform an abortion would need to be satisfied that the abortion is appropriate in the circumstances, having regard to the woman’s physical and mental health and wellbeing.
Let's see how the slightly right of left-of-centre National Party commentator David Farrar put it:
Model C looks preferable, at this stage to me. Effectively it gives a pregnant woman a right to have an abortion up to 22 weeks, but after 22 weeks (when a birth may be viable) it restricts abortion. Having an abortion at say 35 weeks should only occur, in my opinion, when there is danger to the mother or fetus.
Lovely. At that stage it's far easier and less messy to get a baby out alive rather than chopped into pieces as Farrar desires. Why would someone endorse brutally dismembering and murdering babies that would have little trouble surviving outside the womb if they were left intact? I suppose he's suggesting that if any deformity is discovered at the last minute, a bit of genetic cleansing could be done. But why the rush, can't that wait a few more weeks, just to be sure... or is that not kosher to suggest?
Why does the arbitrary 22 weeks keep showing up? It's not a scientifically grounded measurement, nothing special or magical happens to the baby at 22 weeks, and the so-called viability of the child is hardly fixed. Look here at this baby born at 21 weeks. Survival rates for premature babies only go up as we make amazing advances in medicine and technology, including research into artificial wombs. We could go further back and demonstrate the clear humanity of a baby at 12 weeks, to the brainwaves at 6 weeks, the heartbeat at 21 days, or the formation of unique individual DNA in the new human being at the moment of conception.
I won't spend any time on dismantling any pro-abortion arguments, which is often an inefficient process via the written arts. It's an easier thing to do face-to-face. Just watch a few Ben Shapiro Q&A videos and you'll be as good as him in no time. Try this one, or this one.
A word of warning though: you're not likely to convince very many people by dismantling their arguments, as the issues they raise are usually superficial compared to their deeper ideological commitment to abortion, which we can get to now.
There was an interesting exchange between an abortionist and a journalist a few days after the Law Commission report. You can watch the whole interview on Facebook, but there is only one key line that needs to be focused on:
It is our opinion that personhood is not conferred until birth.
– "Doctor" Alison Knowles, professional baby killer.
The face of evil. Also the face of the true pro-abortion argument brought to its logical conclusion.
Remember how the Law Commission stated that non-women can give birth? We laugh, but they genuinely believe it.
This is because they reject the unity of reality for a duality of mind and body. Imagine a house with two stories. The upper story is the metaphysical (the mind), and the lower story is the physical (the body). They believe these can be separated, the mind can identify as a "takatāpui" while the body (obviously) remains female. This is how a "man" can give birth – because the realities of the body are rejected for the self-identification of the mind. The upper story is considered supreme while the lower story is simply treated as raw material to be reforged at will. Until reality catches up, as evidenced by the extremely high suicide rates of those who get sucked in by this deadly philosophy. To stick with our house analogy, when the foundation is damaged, the whole structure eventually comes crashing down.
With that in mind, let's get back to abortion. At what point is it no longer OK to kill a child? At something they call personhood. The upper metaphysical division is personhood and the lower physical division is the tiny biological human baby. They then argue that the unborn is not a person until society deems it as such – which just so happens to be birth. Prior to that, the "upper story" is not considered present and so the "lower story" is simply raw material – fuel for the fire.
A person has rights, a nonperson does not. This is the philosophical undercurrent behind almost every genocide in history.
Of course, it's not all about philosophy, there is also a more primal urge that entangles abortion – people have been sacrificing babies to Moloch and Baal since the beginning of time. It wasn't until Christianity culturally overshadowed pagan Rome that infanticide virtually disappeared in the West.
When it comes to culture, think for a moment about the latest Royal Baby craze, the expectant father and mother recently present on our shores. There is no mention of a "Royal Fetus" in any of the tabloids. The Royal Baby is special and wanted. Inconvenience is the difference between a baby and a fetus in our post-Christian culture, which is starting to look an awful lot like a pre-Christian one.
The killer question for any unborn baby in New Zealand is, to borrow a few more Latin words, are you a persona or a persona non grata?