[00:00:00] Hi everybody. Welcome along to another episode of the Dispatchers podcast. My name is Brendan Malone. It is great to be back with you again and today's topic of conversation, ideology, animus and control in the latest New Zealand abortion report.
[00:00:16] Hi, my name is Brendan Malone and you're listening to the Dispatchers, the podcast that strives to cut through all the noise in order to challenge the popular narratives of the day with some good old fashioned contrarian thinking. You might not always agree, but at least you'll be taking a deeper look at the world around you.
[00:00:34] A huge thank you to all of our patrons and supporters. It's thanks to you that this episode is made possible. If you're not already a supporter of our work and you want to do that and you want to get exclusive supporters only content, please go to either patreon.com leftfootmedia the link is in today's Show Notes or or you can go to the Dispatches on Substack and you can become a monthly supporter that way. The link for that is also in today's Show Notes. Alrighty, let's jump into today's topic of conversation, ideology, animus and control in the latest New Zealand abortion report.
[00:01:07] A few days ago, another abortion report was quietly published by the New Zealand Ministry of Health. It is titled Review of Certain Matters under the Contraception, Sterilisation and Abortion Act 1977. Now, now, the title of this report is a little bit misleading because it actually sounds like it's a review pertaining to the original legislation that actually kicked off all the way back in 1977. But that's actually not what it's about. Instead, it is a review process that was initiated and written into the old law in 2020 when Jacinda Ardern's Labour government passed their Extreme Abortion Legislation Act 2020. And I'll read to you Section 171 of the Contraception, Sterilization and Abortion Act 1977, because you understand what this is all about. The CSA act requires the Director General of Health to undertake a periodic review not later than five years after the commencement of this section and then at subsequent intervals of not more than five years. So this is a five yearly review that was initiated as part of the Abortion Legislation Act 2020. And this is important to understand because this review of the abortion law is not actually open and wholesale. It doesn't have great depth and breadth. Instead, it has been very narrowly defined and you'll see why in just a second. The review must consider whether New Zealanders have timely and equitable access to contraception Sterilisation and abortion services, information or advisory services about whether to continue or terminate a pregnancy, counselling services related to abortion services. The review must also consider the relative costs throughout Aotearoa, New Zealand for people accessing those services.
[00:02:56] Additionally, Section 21 of the CSA act requires the Director General to report not later than five years and then at subsequent intervals of not more than five years, on whether any evidence indicates women are seeking abortions for the sole purpose of selecting the sex of the foetus. The review must also include recommendations that the Director General considers appropriate, if any, for making access to those services more timely and equitable. So the very first thing to note here, before we even get into what's in this report, is that this is a very tightly defined report and it has been narrowed down in scope majorly. And as a result there is a seriously diminished accountability. The breadth and the depth is lacking. It sounds impressive that every five years you are reviewing your abortion law. That sounds like a full investigation into what's happening, into risks to harms, all those other kinds of things. But no, that's not what this is. There's no reference to fault finding beyond the issue of sex, selective abortion, and we'll see soon just how vacuous that is when we get to that particular part of the report in this episode. And you'll also notice that the Director General wields a lot of control over whether and what so if any actual recommendations are even given to the government and then what those recommendations might actually be.
[00:04:20] So there's not much in the way of open, wide and deep sort of investigation and transparency going on here. The big focus is on the costs the of this and also on whether it is what they call timely and equitable. So in other words, are we just delivering abortion quickly and are lots of people able to access abortion? So all of a sudden you realise that in actual fact, the scope of this report is not particularly good.
[00:04:47] And I think it's not unfair to say that it has been deliberately designed this way to limit a proper investigation and I think also full accountability about the actual state of abortion and what's really going on in New Zealand. So basically, it's important to understand with this report, this review, that increasing abortion rates, like more and more abortions taking place in our society, is not only not a problem in this particular review, it would actually be good in this particular vision of reality that they have crafted here around this review, it would be beneficial if more people are getting abortions. They don't see this as a problem and so there's no desire to understand what's actually going wrong in a society where abortion is sort of spiraling more and more out of control because under this construct that actually looks like a good.
[00:05:36] Also, there's no mention at all in this particular report and I found this really, really troubling. But again, it's understandable because they've narrowed the scope so badly. There's no mention of the fact that the number of adverse outcomes for women who are having abortions now since the passing of the Abortion legislation Act in 2020 has now almost doubled. And there's no mention of that fact.
[00:06:02] So almost twice as many women are now having negative harmful effects caused to them by their abortions than what we had previously. And there's no mention of that yet again in this particular review. The last report that we had, the latest annual data that was quietly published very late in the year in December, and the media didn't even report on this.
[00:06:24] That report included the data showing that this is going on, but it didn't speak directly to that. And not only that, but the introduction to that particular annual report also spoke about how happy the Ministry of Health was with the way things were progressing.
[00:06:41] So what's happening here in actual fact is when you look at the data, it seems pretty clear to me that there is a powerful case to be made that New Zealand woman are actually being sold down the river by this system.
[00:06:54] They are not the primary focus. The focus is on having more and more and more easily and widely available abortion.
[00:07:03] Now, some key aspects of this new review report that really stuck out to me.
[00:07:08] First of all, once again we hear dubious claims being made about chemical abortions, also known as early medical abortions or medical abortions or RU486 medical abortions. There's lots of different names that people use, but it's the two stage pill that is used. They are commonly known as early medical abortions. In this particular review in particular, that's the phrasing that they use. And on page six we read the following earlier abortion is also associated with better health outcomes for women accessing these services.
[00:07:38] This is simply not true at all.
[00:07:43] We know from their own reporting that was published only a couple of months ago that that in actual fact there has been not only a major spike in adverse outcomes for women who are having abortions in New Zealand, but it's clear when you look at the data they have included in that report that early medical abortions are the driver of that increase in adverse outcomes for women having abortions. So in actual fact, it is not safer. Their own data is not showing that at all. We have had a very recent study published, one of the biggest, I think, that's ever been conducted. Almost a million abortion cases were looked at using the early medical abortion pill in America. And that particular review, one of the largest ever conducted, found that in actual fact, there is a 20 times greater risk than what the actual medicine labeling claims is a risk. It is higher than what they've actually thought it was or claimed it was previously. And it's not just that, but over a decade ago I wrote an article for an ethics website overseas about new data from Australia from a couple of different government regulatory bodies which was showing that in actual fact you were more likely to require follow up hospital intervention if you had an early medical abortion than what you were if you had a surgical abortion. So this has never been a true claim. And here we have, once again, the Ministry of Health making this claim.
[00:09:05] And it simply is not something that can be sustained anymore. It is getting more and more untenable for people to be claiming this. And this matters a lot. Why does this matter?
[00:09:14] 66% of abortions in New Zealand are now chemical abortions. They are now early medical abortions. It is the majority of abortions. This is an increase, by the way, of 38% of the abortions that were early medical abortions back in 2020. So this has been one of the direct results of this new law. And so it matters a lot. There is a serious safety, what you might call a safety signal, perhaps, if you're looking at the data and speaking in those kind of terms. There is something here that really matters and once again, it has been completely ignored. What I found particularly harrowing was they have included a couple of early medical abortion testimonies in this review on page 41.
[00:09:53] And I think their intent here is really to try and present it in a very positive way. They're focusing on, you know, this equitable and widespread easy access to abortion. So that's what they're trying to hone in on. But when you actually look at these couple of testimonies, they really don't read particularly well at all. They really, I think, are quite harrowing if you have a heart, for people. So let me read you the first one. I decided to do the medical abortion because I wanted to obviously have this quite traumatic procedure. I wanted it to be in a place where I was comfortable. And so I chose to do the medical abortion so that I could do that process at home, in a place I was comfortable with, surrounded by people I was comfortable with.
[00:10:31] And so here's someone actually quite openly saying this is a traumatic procedure and they are doing it at home. Here's another one who rang the 0800 number for the dial and abortion service that was set up as a result of the Abortion Legislation act in New Zealand. And they say this. I mean, having the home one really afforded a lot of privacy, which I really appreciated. I didn't even have to go to the pharmacy to collect the medication. You know, it just got delivered to my door.
[00:11:01] So this is what we have become now in New Zealand. You have a 0800 number for a DIY dial, a home abortion service in this country, and they will courier the drugs directly to your door. There is no proper supervision, no proper oversight. And I'm sorry, you just can't, with a straight face, claim that that is not a recipe for disaster, that that is somehow safer or better for women. It is absolutely not. So even if you're pro choice, this is something I think you should care about. The report is also riddled with ideology. I'll give you some different examples that really stuck out to me. Page 22. They say the abortion counselling standard outlines that abortion counselling provides therapeutic support to women who are considering having or have had an abortion. It is grounded in te tiriti o Waitangi and health equity practice.
[00:11:49] Now, the first thing that really stuck out to me about that was, what do you actually mean when you say those words? It is grounded in te tiriti o Waitangi. And how can abortion counselling, no matter what kind it is, how can it actually be grounded in te tiriti o Waitangi when te tiriti o Waitangi, the Treaty of Waitangi, has absolutely nothing to do with abortion or health care.
[00:12:11] It is an agreement about land and governance between the English Crown and the Mori people. It's a very short document, and yet here we are. This phrase is just thrown into these government department reports. It's a very typical thing to see now, but. But I think if you sat down with some of these people and said, can you explain practically what this actually means? I think they would really struggle to put this into words because in actual fact, there is no way to reconcile these two things. They don't actually belong together.
[00:12:39] One has no bearing on the other. Now, we'll come back to the counselling issues in a moment because there are some very serious issues that have also been revealed there in that particular part of the report as well, then on page 10, they cite the UN Population Fund and the World Health Organization and claim that contraception is a fundamental human right.
[00:13:01] Now, clearly this can't be true, because artificial contraception is not something that corresponds to a natural law good. And that's what fundamental human rights are. In actual fact, when you think about human history, for almost the entirety of our human history, there has not even been artificial contraception. It wasn't even a thing. So this is a very recent technological invention, and they are now claiming that this recent technological invention is actually a fundamental human right. And as I said, it doesn't correspond to any natural law good.
[00:13:37] And yet they have artificially constructed it as a fundamental human right. You can claim that it's a legal right if you want to. Legal rights are things that are created by various legislative bodies and then they are given to people. Like you have the legal right to drive a car if you have a licence at the age of 16.
[00:13:52] There's no fundamental human right, though, to drive a car. That doesn't exist. But what they're claiming here is that we have a fundamental human right to use artificial technology that prevents us from getting pregnant. I'm sorry, there is no such thing as a fundamental human right that exists in this particular area at all. And it raises serious questions about the project of human rights when this is going on, and also the validity of government actions in this area. The absurdity not only of a report that calls artificial contraception a fundamental human right, while at the same time refusing to accept the fundamental right to life, which actually is a real fundamental human right. The ultimate good for a human being is the good of being alive.
[00:14:35] And they have said that that good is not considered a fundamental human right.
[00:14:40] An entire class of human persons can be denied that right through abortion. And that's what this whole regime exists to facilitate.
[00:14:47] And at the same time, they are claiming something that is not a fundamental human right as a fundamental human right. And on top of that, just think about the implications of claiming artificial contraception as a fundamental human right and what that means when you think about government budgets and government policy making.
[00:15:02] This is a clear example of how the ideology is now just the dominant player in all of this. Now, speaking of contraception, on page 18, there are some rather troubling paragraphs. Let me read them to you. The disability sector has had long standing concerns about sterilisations performed on disabled people without informed consent. As noted during the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse and care in 2024, the royal commission asked the Ministry to provide data on how many disabled people that received sterilisation and, and whether they had provided informed consent for that. So in other words, they asked them, can you provide us the data which shows how many people with disabilities have been sterilised and how many of those people actually provided informed consent?
[00:15:48] And here's the truly alarming bit. The Ministry was unable to provide this information due to the lack of any coherent or reliable data.
[00:15:59] So they don't know.
[00:16:01] While legislative requirements outline practitioners responsibility to report all cases where a third party gives consent for a woman accessing an abortion. So in other words, if a third party is the one consenting to the abortion for the woman, no such legislative requirement applies to sterilisation services.
[00:16:19] And then they go on to say a small number of cases have been reported where a third party provided consent to a sterilisation.
[00:16:29] This is a description, a very clinical description, a bureaucratic describing of a eugenic practice where someone has been sterilised but they did not give their consent to be sterilised. Someone else has said, I want this person to be sterilized. And so the state has sterilized that person.
[00:16:51] It seems to me that this particular aspect of the report should be a lot more concerning than what it appears to be for the authors of this report and the very brief attention that they give to just openly admitting that this is happening in our country.
[00:17:06] On page 48 we read this. While society does seem to be changing and the subject of abortion is becoming less taboo, Parker et al. 20, 25. So that's a particular piece of research found that many participants found abortion was emotionally complex. Some felt that in deciding to have an abortion, they were doing something wrong.
[00:17:28] Now, I don't know if you've noticed what's going on there in that little paragraph, that little statement there, but what they're actually doing is they are treating abortion guilt as if it is just a pathology that is being layered upon people from an oppressive society. So these people felt that in deciding to have an abortion, they were doing something wrong. And what's hidden in the subtext of this is that this is just a feeling. And of course it's a form of stigma that is being layered upon them by an unjustly and prudishly overly moralistic society instead of what it actually is.
[00:18:05] Because you see, this is a denial of moral reality. And not only is it a denial of moral reality, it's also subtly gaslighting women who know and experience the guilt of an abortion because they understand what's actually happened and they Feel the pain and the grief and the guilt of that. And it's basically downplaying and denying that and sort of suggesting that somehow that what they are experiencing is not really real. It's just an artificial social construct that's been imposed upon them. Also on page 48, they have what they call stakeholder feedback. And this is from abortionists who are working in the abortion industry. And this was one particular feedback that really stuck out to me. It says this. This is a. Remember, this is an abortion provider who is giving this feedback. We have also heard reports that a gynaecologist has denied a patient a first trimester abortion in a hospital which required patients to travel to another city to seek care.
[00:19:07] While these are anecdotal reports, they indicate a significant barrier for women who are seeking abortion. Well, first of all, women, this as an anecdotal report is a secondhand story and it has not been verified. And as such, okay, they can put that in their feedback if they want to, but the Ministry of Health should be far more rigorous and saying, we can't include this in our report because people might actually take this as read that we think this is happening or as us declaring that this is happening, when in actual fact we have not even verified the story. Did it even happen?
[00:19:44] If it did happen, was there actually perhaps a legitimate reason why this situation unfolded that way? They've just included what people are openly telling them are actually just secondhand reports. They're secondhand stories that they've heard and they put into a government department report.
[00:20:03] Page 50 says this. The ministry is aware of a funding issue for international students who may be seeking abortion care. And by the way, the ideology of abortion care, that languaging it is absolutely verbal manipulation, verbal engineering that is going on there. This has been something that has been introduced in recent years, this desperate attempt to try and turn abortion into something that it is not. So they phrase it now as abortion care and they are desperately hoping that this will stick. The reality is, outside of these ideologically driven reports, it won't stick.
[00:20:36] Because even pro choice people, they don't think of abortion in that way. I mean, firstly, that phrase is quite clumsy. Calling abortion abortion care is a clumsy and unnecessary step to take if you're just using the English language. Secondly, it is clearly ideological. And thirdly, I think for most people, even people who are pro choice, they don't see having an abortion as a form of care.
[00:20:59] Instead, they would tend to frame it as being a necessary evil. So in their mind they would think, oh, okay, it's not actually a caring thing. It's not a good thing to happen in someone's life.
[00:21:09] In actual fact, it speaks to some sort of lack of support or a very desperate situation where they didn't have any other option open to them. That's how the majority of people think about this. So this phrase I don't think will ever actually carry any meaningful weight, but it is clearly being used here. It's not neutral, this report. It is riddled with this ideological phrasing. They desperately want to actually socially engineer and engineer into our society, not just a acceptance, but a celebration of abortion, because if something is care, then that's a good thing and it should be celebrated. Let me read. Anyway, the Ministry is aware of a funding issue for international students who may be seeking abortion care, as their health insurance policies may not cover abortion health care and they do not fall under the Health New Zealand eligibility criteria. This means that international students may have to pay for their abortion healthcare, and these costs can be prohibitive for them. So what's happening here is they are just dropping into this report the idea that perhaps the New Zealand state should now also be funding the abortions of foreigners who come here.
[00:22:18] So it's bad enough that we're not even giving them the support they need when they're in our country, but in actual fact, we will help to facilitate the ending of the lives of their unborn children. And then, of course, presumably the majority of these people would then go home after that, carrying the burden of that. A truly awful gift. If this is something that is to be funded, it clearly seems to be. That's the intent. Why else would you include this in this report? It seems that they are signaling that they want this particular issue addressed. And that would be a truly awful, dark gift. I don't even want to use the word gift that would be given to them by the New Zealand state. And then on page 17, we read this. We. We acknowledge that some of the questions set out in the CS and A Act. So the Contraception, Sterilization and Abortion act are no longer relevant or appropriate, including questions around relationship status, race and number of children of the person seeking a sterilization. The Ministry is working through changes to the questions for sterilization services to which I say, hold on, why are they no longer relevant? Who has decided this? Surely if someone is taking the very serious step of a permanent sterilization, a surgical and deliberate ending of their fertility, then wouldn't we actually want to understand why this is happening and what the demographics are because surely that will show us if there is a problem. Like, for example, if this is disproportionately happening to one particular ethnicity, shouldn't we understand that? Because that could actually be indicative of a problem.
[00:23:47] If we start seeing that lots and lots of women who have not had kids are having sterilisations, shouldn't we recognise that that is a very serious social crisis, especially in light of the fact that we have got a major demographic crisis now unfolding around us?
[00:24:03] But at the very least, wouldn't we recognise that there's something perhaps not right, if suddenly we start seeing a spike in the number of young women who have no children being permanently sterilised? That is not a hopeful sign for a society.
[00:24:16] But it seems that the people who are producing this report, they don't seem to grasp that. And so it's quite troubling to see that these questions are about to change, like who's deciding that? This is a great example, by the way, of how it's not really our politicians, but in actual fact, it's the managerial bureaucratic classes who really do decide what happens day to day in our country. Here they are just talking about how they're going to be making all these changes. There's no politicians who are involved in that process. It's just happening. On page 46, we read two recent papers published in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology highlight the challenges of providing safe and effective abortion care. There we go again. For women whose pregnancies are beyond 22 weeks gestation.
[00:25:03] So we're talking here about late term abortions beyond 22 weeks.
[00:25:10] Challenges they identify include the limited number of specialists providing such care and the lack of a national referral system.
[00:25:19] So, in other words, once again, they are signalling that they want something done about this to improve the ability of our country to end the lives of children who are older than 22 weeks in the womb.
[00:25:35] On page 39, we read to increase the workforce and therefore the availability of services around the country for all second trimester abortion care. Again, there's that word. Hospitals could manage conscientious objection at an organizational level to ensure that it does not impede timely and equitable access to post 20 week abortion healthcare.
[00:26:05] So what they're saying here is this is a very clear intention. They want proactive action taken to, number one, increase the ease of access and ability for children who are older than 20 weeks to be aborted in our country.
[00:26:24] And also they want them to, quote, unquote, manage conscientious objection at an organisational level.
[00:26:33] So in other words, a bureaucratic control demanding that the conscience of individual medical practitioners be made subject to the whims of the state.
[00:26:47] Speaking of conscientious objection, the targeting of conscientious objectors is a strong and recurring theme in this particular review. For example, on page 47 we read the individuals other than health practitioners who have a conscientious objection to abortion healthcare. See what's going on here? That constant use of that phrase may also impact on someone's ability to access abortion healthcare services.
[00:27:13] For example, some administration staff within a healthcare facility may take this position. So these are people who are not actually carrying out the abortions. And they go on to say this. In contrast to the requirements that it imposes on health practitioners, the Contraception Sterilisation and Abortion act does not require individuals in such groups to direct women elsewhere for abortion services.
[00:27:41] So what they're saying here, again, they are signalling quite clearly here that what they are expecting is that this should be changed.
[00:27:50] They think that everyone who is involved in healthcare in this country should be required to, under pain of legal sanction, to actually be involved in the abortions of other people if they want them to be involved in that process.
[00:28:08] You can see how this ideology, this is about control.
[00:28:11] It's about ideology. It's about animus, as I said, towards those groups they view as enemies, not simply medical practitioners who are exercising their legitimate right to freedom of conscience. They are viewed as a threat, as an enemy that must be dealt with.
[00:28:25] They go on to say this conscientious objection at an organisational level. The Ministry of Health is aware of some reports that conscientious objection plays a part in the decision by some healthcare providers not to provide abortion care.
[00:28:42] The Ministry has engaged with Health New Zealand on these issues.
[00:28:46] While we acknowledge that they are not easily resolved, the Ministry continues to work with Health New Zealand on ways to resolve them. Failure to reduce the impact of conscientious objection on abortion service provision contributes towards the overall inequity in accessing abortion services around the country.
[00:29:08] In other words, see what I'm saying here about animus and control.
[00:29:12] These people who are exercising their legitimate and fundamental, by the way, human right to freedom of conscience. And they are being treated as a threat and they are viewed as a problem by the authors of this report because they want more and more easily accessible abortion around New Zealand and these people are not participating in their grand regime and they want something done about that fact. It seems to me, page 20 and 21 goes on to say this. The number of crisis pregnancy centres, so this is now beyond even just medical facilities that are funded and run by the New Zealand state. We are talking here now about crisis pregnancy centres that are funded independently and are driven by donors or other means of support. They are operating in the community, these charitable organisations, to actually care for vulnerable women. That's who they're talking about now, trying to drag under their purview. Let me read this to you. The number of crisis pregnancy centres and opportunity shops linked to to Pregnancy choice is growing in New Zealand. Several online or over the phone helpline services are also available.
[00:30:21] It appears based on their. And by the way, the word helpline there is in scare quotes that should tell you a lot.
[00:30:29] The fact that they haven't just called it what it actually is, a helpline, the fact that they've put it in quotes to imply that this is not a real helpline, tells you a lot about what's going on here. It appears, based on their publicly available information, that the intent behind these services is to delay or prevent women from seeking an abortion. So you see what's going on here.
[00:30:51] It's not enough that they've got this extreme legislation and it's being funded by the state.
[00:30:56] They want control, a control that is total over every sector of society. You can see this quite clearly in the subtext of what's actually being said here. In practice, we know that many of the people within these organisations are not health practitioners or registered social workers.
[00:31:15] Services are often provided by volunteers and I don't know why, but volunteers is in quote marks as well, like, surely that shouldn't be in quote marks. If they are volunteers, they are volunteers. Right. Services are often provided by volunteers who often refer to themselves as counselors. Well, in effect, if you are counseling someone in any capacity, like if I've actually counselled my daughter or I'm in a church and I do some prayer counselling. I'm not a qualified counsellor, but I am still a counsellor in the sense that I might have a particular ministry or role even as a volunteer, where I'm counselling people. But you can see what's happened here. This is the bureaucratic managerialism at work and Harrot is just so toxic. They've got to control the definitions and people must conform to their ideas about all of this.
[00:32:07] Services are often provided by volunteers who often refer to themselves as counsellors and they may belong to groups that oppose abortion. So in other words, these volunteers who are giving of their time to counsel and support women and offer alternatives to abortion. Again, remember, I thought we were supposed to be a pro choice society and they are offering them genuine choice by doing this. Apparently, the mere fact that they might belong to other groups that oppose abortion, that's not a good thing.
[00:32:34] They are therefore not bound by the CSA act or any kind of professional standards or regulations to offer services that are free from bias or coercion and do not spread misinformation.
[00:32:47] So you can see clearly what's going on here.
[00:32:50] Total control is what they are looking for. And they don't really mean misinformation because this report itself contains misinformation. When it claims that early medical abortions are safer, that is not borne out by the data. At very best, you could say that that would be a dubious claim. That's at very best. But in actual fact, I think if you're honest when you look at the data, you have to actually say that that is a false claim and it's in this report.
[00:33:12] And of course, if you want to talk about coercion, this report has a heavy emphasis on controlling conscientious objection. So what is that if not coercion? So you can see what's going on here. This is an ideological regime that is absolutely pro abortion, that is now treating those who don't go along with this, who just quietly are actually offering help. They're not creating any problems within our community, they're actually helping women. They are seen with animus and they want control over what's going here. Page 44 is quite interesting to me because it contains a list of eight reasons why, quote, unquote, individual health practitioners do not provide abortion services.
[00:33:52] And of those eight reasons, here are three of them.
[00:33:57] So over a third of them that really stuck out to me. So these are the reasons that were given to them by healthcare practitioners, like individuals, why they do not provide abortion services. So number one was concerns about their reputation, for example, fear of impacting their relationships with other patients or the reputation of their practice.
[00:34:17] Now, who says that if what they are providing is genuine healthcare?
[00:34:22] People who say that are people who are well aware that what they're doing here is not actually genuine healthcare and it carries stigma because of the fact that it is a moral issue. There is a moral decision, there is absolutely morality involved in what is going on here. Second reason was personal reasons. For example, the emotional impact that abortion might have on them. That is quite a telling statement.
[00:34:48] So this is just general practitioners who are saying, I don't involve myself in this because of the emotional impact that abortion might have on them.
[00:34:58] And so, in other words, they are aware that, again, this is not healthcare. You don't have a negative emotional outcome as a result of offering people genuine healthcare that has another source and it is not good.
[00:35:14] And then the third reason of these three out of eight reasons, remember that people are giving for why they don't want to provide abortion services, why they don't do it was conscientious objection.
[00:35:28] So it's a whole separate category altogether. So what you can see here is that in actual fact, they're trying to flatten this down and make it very black and white, a simple sort of black and white binary, but it's not at all. It is far more complex than that and there is no way that it is either morally right or good or justified. When you read this particular data to try and treat all health practitioners under the simplistic black and white narrative and then try and compel their consciences, this is not a good thing at all. Because think about the implications of this, even if you are compelling the conscience of someone who is a pro choice medical practitioner, but they get emotionally burnt out by being involved in this practice in any way and so they just quit and leave. New Zealand is not in a position where we can afford to lose healthcare practitioners, so we don't want to be doing anything to actually provoke that. And any government that is doing that is a government that is not governing well. It is a government that has been so captured by ideology, it no longer actually cares about the fundamentals of good governance. And then also while they're setting their sights on crisis pregnancy centres, independent crisis pregnancy services that are offering genuine care and options to women. The review also reveals the following alarming new information on page 24.
[00:36:55] Between 2022 and 2024, we observed a 35% decrease in women accessing pre abortion counselling, despite a 21% increase in the total number of abortion procedures provided over the same period.
[00:37:18] So let me read that again. A 35% decrease in women accessing pre abortion counselling services alongside a 21% increase in the total number of abortions.
[00:37:32] This is not good at all.
[00:37:36] Less and less women are now being supported and being helped to understand this decision and also to address other issues that might actually be coercive factors in leading them into an abortion. Page 26 of this review indicates that the total number of women having pre abortion counselling in 2024 is now only 10%, according to this report and that data on page 26 this is a 50% less outcome than what we actually had in 2022. So it's a decrease of about 50% if I'm looking at this data and understanding it correctly.
[00:38:15] Because basically what it's telling me is that now 9 out of every 10 women having abortions are doing so without any prior counselling. And that is truly astounding when you think about the gravity of of this decision and the common issues and factors that are involved in this.
[00:38:34] How many of those nine out of ten women would actually choose differently if they knew and they had care and support and proper options open to them and they knew all of the various support networks that were out there?
[00:38:49] You cannot assume. It is absolutely aberrant and wrong and totally unjustified to assume that those 9 out of 10 women totally understand what's going on and they don't need any support and that their decision would not be different if they didn't receive proper care beforehand.
[00:39:06] Yet this report does not treat this with the seriousness that it deserves. This is extremely serious. And on top of that, the fact that nine out of every ten women having abortions now are doing so without any prior counselling, 70% of the 1 in 10 woman who do have pre abortion counselling are getting that counselling at the very abortion facility where the abortion will take place.
[00:39:31] They are not getting it from an independent source. How you can say that that is best practice standards is beyond me. At the very least, it lacks transparency.
[00:39:42] It shouldn't be happening this way. If they truly did care and they truly were pro choice like they claim, there would be independent counselling offered. It would be funded and separate from the abortion facility.
[00:39:55] No relationship whatsoever. Totally hands off. The woman would go there, receive counselling and then they would make their decision.
[00:40:05] That's the position. If you claim to be truly pro choice, that would be what this would actually look like. It doesn't even look remotely anything like that. Let's read now page 52 and page 53 of this report because this is really quite astounding, especially in light of what comes next. Just a page or so later when the recommendations are made. Let me read this to you during the select committee process in 2019, that's for the Abortion Legislation Act. Committee members were concerned about estimates from the UNFPA about the number of women missing due to gender biased sex selection through abortion. So sex selective abortions that is targeting young girls.
[00:40:46] Members recognized that there was no evidence of this occurring in New Zealand and wanted to reaffirm a strong position for New Zealand on the issue. Now, let's just be clear about this. There was no investigation conducted, so members didn't recognise anything. They were simply told that that was the case. But there was no independent verification that this actually isn't an issue in New Zealand. And I have actually, speaking of anecdotal reports, I have heard anecdotal reports that before this, this was something. There's a reason why there was a concern about this.
[00:41:17] It wasn't because people were just sort of wildly speculating. There was genuine reasons to think that this actually had already started to happen in New Zealand. So this is not a particularly honest accounting of what's gone on there. While the select committee considered options for responding using legislation or other means, most members agreed.
[00:41:38] So not all did that setting a restriction through legislation. This is on basically banning sex selective abortions could lead to ethnic profiling, women not disclosing about sex selection, or woman seeking unlawful abortions.
[00:41:57] So they're okay. What they're saying here is, in actual fact, we consider those outcomes to be worse than just actually allowing and not making the strongest statement we possibly could that sex selective abortion is wrong. Now I get it. There is a whole moral hypocrisy in that. You can't really say sex selective abortion is wrong after you've said that abortion is actually okay in other circumstances.
[00:42:21] If it's a human person, then it doesn't really matter the reasons why you're deliberately ending its life.
[00:42:28] As I said, there's a sort of, yeah, immoral hypocrisy going on there. But regardless, this is the system they've created and they claim to have a commitment to women and to women's rights and women's wellbeing. Well, quite clearly this is showing that really that commitment is tenuous at best, as other things more recently in society have also exposed. As a result of select committee considerations and feedback on this issue, section 21 of the CSA act now states that Parliament opposes the performance of abortions being solely sought because of the preference for the fetus to be a particular sex. I mean, this is. This reminds me of that old parody about the United nations sending a strongly worded letter to nations that are carrying out violent abuses upon their own people. If you don't stop that, we will send you a strongly worded letter. That's really what this equates to. It is toothless. It is a paper tiger. It is absolutely meaningless. If you are really seriously committed to addressing this issue and you really strongly opposed it as a parliament, you have the power and you would have used that power to legislate against it. Additionally, New Zealand is a signatory of the UNFPA's Program of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development. This initiative includes the objective of eliminating all forms of discrimination against girls and identifying the root cause of a preference for sons. So really, they're not actually committed at all to eliminating all forms of discrimination because they haven't acted to legislatively eliminate this form of discrimination.
[00:44:00] A clause in the CESA act states that a woman seeking an abortion at earlier than 20 weeks gestation does not need to give a reason. Therefore, no data as to reasons for an abortion is collected. So in other words, they're not even looking because they don't really want to find out. Like, imagine what would happen if it was actually revealed. Oh, hold on, we have got sex selective abortions happening and the rate of those abortions seems to be increasing.
[00:44:27] That would pose some very uncomfortable questions. A question in the annual provider reporting asks providers to inform the Ministry about whether they had any approaches for sex selective abortion in the previous year. So in other words, they've got a form that says to the abortionists and the people involved in the abortion industry, have you been approached? Can you tell us if you've been approached by someone seeking a sex selective abortion? A practitioner may also report their concerns to the Ministry.
[00:44:56] However, neither the CSA act nor any associated legislation gives any direction on what actions would arise from such a notification, and the Ministry does not have internal processes for responding to one.
[00:45:12] So in other words, they've got this blank form that goes nowhere.
[00:45:16] This is a perfect example of ideologically driven bureaucratic managerialism.
[00:45:25] They have a form and they are asking you to fill out this form.
[00:45:29] And even if you reveal to them or even if you ring them, they've also got a way of you being able to contact the Ministry and you can contact them and express your concerns.
[00:45:39] Even if you do, it will be completely meaningless because they don't have any direction on what to do when someone actually says, hey, there's sex selection abortions happening. And secondly, they don't have any internal processes for even responding to people in these situations. This is truly astounding. It shows you the cold, hard reality of what this really is. Although not intended by the Select Committee in its decision to include the Section 21 provision in the legislation about sex selective abortion, this provision has resulted in confusion among practitioners. Uncertainty has arisen over the appropriate action to take in instances of suspected abortion for the sole purpose of sex selection. Now, doesn't that seem to indicate to you that possibly this is actually an issue and there is confusion precisely because this is an issue. You don't really have confusion if something's not happening. Therefore you don't need to actually be confused about it.
[00:46:32] Whether practitioners should report these abortions directly to the ministry or. Or whether they should refuse service in suspected cases. So that's the confusion they have. Within the annual reporting forms, providers have indicated a handful of cases.
[00:46:48] And by the way, this is a government report. A handful. How about we just hear the exact number? Wouldn't that be more accurate and more appropriate to a government report? A handful of cases is what we're told here. Instead, within the annual reporting forms, providers have indicated a handful of cases where they suspected that a woman accessing an abortion did so for the sole purpose of sex selection.
[00:47:10] A small number of providers have contacted the ministry directly with concerns. Again, a small number. They don't tell us how many and how many of these actual contacts they've had directly with concerns about an abortion where the sole purpose appeared to be sex selection.
[00:47:27] They have asked for advice and whether they need to report such cases formally. New Zealand has no formal mechanisms for dealing with these cases and no clear guidance on what the best form of action should be.
[00:47:41] So in other words, this is happening in our country.
[00:47:45] Our politicians had the potential, because they are the ones who wield the power to actually make a law to do everything humanly possible to stop this from happening, and they chose not to.
[00:47:56] And now that it's happening, they don't even have a process to deal with it, it's just happening.
[00:48:02] In addition, practitioners are increasingly concerned about the private purchase of non invasive parental diagnosis testing and high resolution ultrasound to identify sex early. Currently no appropriate methodologies are available to assess if sex selection does occur in direct relation to these technologies. In other words, that's a very highfalutin way of saying we're not looking for that either. We're not keeping an eye on this. They're not looking, they're not doing their basic due diligence.
[00:48:30] And if you think about the nature of what we talked about at the restart, why would they? This whole focus is not about actually a proper fault finding mission. This is just about making sure there's lots of easily available abortions in New Zealand. And you know, why would this be relevant to that particular aim? So they're not looking at this. And by the way, this is only gonna become more of a problem because AI is absolutely going to advance and enhance these kind of awful technologies in Their capability.
[00:48:58] Recent research has attempted to address the knowledge gaps in evidence of abortion for sex selection in New Zealand. On 8 July 2022, the University of Auckland hosted a symposium to disseminate key findings from this project and they refer to a particular project here by the Health Research Council which explores cultural values behind the preference to have a son and practices of sex selection among Asian ethnic and migrant communities. Analysis from the research project did not find any evidence of sex selective abortion among Indian and Chinese populations in New Zealand. These findings provide foundational evidence for further research or analysis in the space to build on.
[00:49:35] In 2011, the World Health Organization released an interagency statement on preventing gender biased sex selection.
[00:49:43] The reasons for sex selective abortion are complex.
[00:49:47] Restricting technology or prohibiting sex detection can limit safe access to abortion and does not address the root cause of the problem. I'm sorry, but you can see what's going on here, right?
[00:50:02] This is about more and more easily available abortion and they don't want to do anything at all to hinder more and more easily available abortion. Many non legislative responses occur internationally, including commitments by governments to address gender discrimination and bias. Social Some countries where sex selection is more prevalent have introduced laws restricting the use of technology for sex selection purposes and some have criminalised sex selective abortion. So in other words, what they're saying is other countries are doing what we're not doing.
[00:50:33] These laws, however, have had little effect in addressing underlying causes and as noted by the who, can unduly restrict access to safe abortion care.
[00:50:48] So in other words, they don't really particularly care about addressing this because addressing this would mean that you'd have to put restrictions in place and they want lots of easily available abortion. That's the focus. It's so clear in this report.
[00:51:04] Now, what is so shocking, after dedicating a full two pages to this and telling us that this is occurring in New Zealand and also telling us that they don't have procedures or policies in place. There's no clarity around this issue.
[00:51:20] We get to what you think could be the really important part of this report. The recommendations from the Ministry of Health about what should be done here and what do we find?
[00:51:32] Not a single reference to sex selective abortions.
[00:51:38] There is not even a recommendation for further enquiry or investigation.
[00:51:44] They haven't even done that. There's not a single reference to a major issue that they have actually highlighted in their report.
[00:51:54] But what they have done is said that they recommend that the Ministry identifies and addresses gaps in availability of the services listed in this report throughout New Zealand. And again, that would seem to be a way of saying, hey, there's a gap here when you've got people who can conscientiously object.
[00:52:11] But you know what else is missing from this recommendation?
[00:52:14] A reference to the serious crisis of a lack of pre abortion counselling. They clearly highlight that this is an issue, but they don't make any recommendation at all. Again, not even the most basic of recommendations. We need to have a proper investigation or inquiry about what's actually going on here.
[00:52:33] This is a regime that is absolutely pro abortion. It's not pro woman. If it was truly pro woman, it would be actually probing and making recommendations about these issues. It's not.
[00:52:46] These women, sadly, are the fodder in this truly diabolical machine. Our unborn children, their mothers, their fathers, their siblings, their aunties, their uncles, their grandparents, they deserve better than this. Far better than this. And that's why I continue to dedicate myself to this at times very challenging work of pro life ministry.
[00:53:10] At times it can be a very lonely and difficult path to walk and it can be the last thing that anyone really wants to hear about.
[00:53:19] But we must recommit ourselves.
[00:53:23] Those of us who are people of goodwill, who genuinely care, who want to see better and who want to see a brighter future for our country, we need to recommit ourselves once again to continuing to work hard to build that culture of life.
[00:53:40] Thanks for tuning in. Don't forget, live by goodness, truth and beauty, not by lies. And I'll see you next time on the Dispatchers.
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