NZ government lying to the UN about abortion

Well, here’s a turn-up for the books:

During the CEDAW Committee’s review of New Zealand this afternoon, the country’s delegate stated that the New Zealand government has no interest in expanding its abortion laws. This was in response to being told twice that the country needs to modernize its abortion laws.

…

As the New Zealand delegate went on to explain, in order for a law to be changed, a government member needs to submit a bill to the legislature. There is no such abortion bill at the time because as the delegate put it, “there is no appetite by government members or other parties to discuss or modernize the legislation.” Any abortion vote would be a personal vote, and the members of parliament are just not interested in addressing abortion.

What utter, unmitigated bullshit.  Wasn’t it a mere two years ago that Steve Chadwick was trying to get support for a bill to change our current dire abortion regulations?  Two years ago that the media spun the issue into such an out-of-proportion freak-out that Chadwick ended up withdrawing her bill?  (Oh, and fuck you once again on that one, Comrade Trotter.)

Don’t we still have a case before the courts about the interpretation of our messed-up laws?  Hasn’t Southern DHB illustrated the stupidity of the current situation by getting a lot of grief for daring to acknowledge that some people from Invercargill get abortions?

But no, our government is quite happy, when told point-blank that our laws are archaic and unjust, to say “Nah, not an issue at the mo, sorry.  Anyway, no one cares.”

We fucking care, douchebags.  And we know there are MPs who would support de-fucking our abortion laws – Steve Chadwick was trying to get them all together and on the same page before her bill got leaked and blown into a dark plot to murder innocent Kiwi babies.  And they’re not, to my knowledge, limited to the lefthand side of the spectrum.

But it doesn’t suit Nice Mr Key to look like he actually has strong views on anything, especially not such [bizarrely] polarising issues as basic healthcare.  And it certainly didn’t suit Boring Mr Goff to stick his neck out, not when he could get invited to Family First conferences instead.

Lower down on the right there’s Bill “I can afford to have 6 kids because I rorted the taxpayer for years” English and Judith “parental notification” Collins.  Lower down on the Left there’s no doubt plenty who agree with Chris Trotter that the laydeez should just shut up and keep making the coffee, because John Pagani says we should be more like John Key and he knows his shit.

But unfortunately, the issue is still there, because pregnant people in New Zealand are still being denied medical treatment, still being forced to jump through hoops, still being denied the dignity of the assumption that they know what the fuck they’re doing.  And the UN has noticed.  And they’re not accepting our hand-wavey “yes, but we gave women the vote, so we must be good, right?” bullshit any more.

A hell of a lot of our national pride is based on our progressiveness, our independence, our stand-up-for-what’s-right attitude as a nation.  Are we really going to let that disappear because we can’t act like fucking adults, own the problem, and find a solution?  Looks like our government will.