There's been a little in New Zealand's mainstream media recently about abortion, the political equivalent of a kiss of death. It used to be prostitution or homosexual law reform that stirred wireless sets across the country, but now it's abortion.
For many, abortion is a dirty word, an act akin to homicide, and certainly worthy of the most blood-curdling opposition. For MPs, it is a subject better not discussed; the absolute last thing any MP needs is an association with the pro-abortion lobby. Like a lot of conscience issues, a position on abortion is best left un-positioned.
Why?
The issues best left alone are often the ones, more often than not, that we need to talk about. Recent discussions on abortion here in Enzed has centred on Labour MP Steve Chadwick's bill* to shift abortion from the country's Crimes Act to a health-appropriate Act, and, in certain cases, to allow abortions up to 24-weeks.
Opposition has been predicable, both in tone and form. Some quarters have loudly associated Steve with the devil, saying she's sanctioning murder and mass genocide. Others draw inspiration from the Word, irrespective of which supernatural entity was responsible for it, saying religion cannot permit the deliberate taking of life.
Our laws - those rules we invoke to regulate and control our lives - need to fit with fundamental human rights, basic common sense, and the principle of justice. To force a woman to carry a baby to term, particularly where the baby may be the result of rape or incest, or where the foetus has been identified as suffering from a significant deformity, is none of the above.
So why do some of us have an obsession with using the law to further an agenda that's just fundamentally flawed? That because they think one way, that's the right way to think? Or because everyone else is wrong, or foolish, or, in the case of abortion, cruel?
The same applies with sex education in schools - which by the way we'll teach in New Zealand before even civic education, and which is also perversely related to the abortion debate - that in some communities (outside of New Zealand) is outlawed. It denies a fundamental human trait: the biological urge to reproduce, often kindled in those going through puberty. It may have biblical support but it lacks biological logic.
So why do we submit ourselves to this madness? Is it because the law is as subjective as good taste? Perhaps. But it's probably more to do with the blindness and influence of organised religion - the same lobby most opposed to abortion law reform.
It's time to recognise religion - and I speak as a Christian - plays a role in an individual's life but is not a mindset to be communally applied. In other words, we shouldn't make our religion another's problem.
I have no right to tell a woman what she does with her body. It's certainly regrettable that some are rumoured to use abortion in the manner most would use a condom, but it's still not my right to say to her "You must have that child. You may not abort. It is a human life."
It may well be a human life, and at 24 weeks it would almost certainly be recognisable as such, but I would rather live in a society that preserves my right to my body (thus, her right to her body) than the alternative.
*I say "bill" but it's not one really. A bill really only becomes bill-like when it's in the ballot and actually has a chance of being pulled & inserted on Parliament's legislative radar. Without that, it's a white paper.
