WHETHER OR NOT ABORTION emerges as a major issue following next year’s elections depends on National’s candidate selections. National lost 13 seats in 2020, and on current polling can be reasonably confident about reclaiming most of them in 2023. Much then depends on the beliefs – pro-choice or pro-life – of the candidates selected over the next few months. If National replenishes its caucus with pro-life MPs, and ACT emerges with a reasonable number of pro-lifers in its own, then the debate may well be rekindled.
The reignition of the Abortion Debate will become a dead certainty, however, if Brian Tamaki is successful at bringing together the fractious Far-Right political parties under a single banner. Should his new conservative coalition crest the 5 percent MMP threshold, the outbreak of an American-style culture war will be very hard to prevent. Moreover, if Labour and the Greens sustain significant losses in 2023, as current polling suggest they will, then that war will be very hard to win. Certainly, a woman’s right to a safe and legal abortion would be the first casualty.
This state of affairs will not be attributable entirely to the electoral success of the Far Right. In both Labour and the Greens, a defeat of sufficient magnitude to bring the likes of Tamaki’s Christian soldiers into Parliament, will likely generate a particularly vicious backlash against the social-radicalism which conservative leftists will be quick to blame for their party’s punishment at the polls.
After all, it’s not as if Labour’s te Tiriti-driven, feminist and LGBTQI factions will be able to point to a proud collection of policy successes in relation to poverty, housing, health and education – quite the reverse, in fact. Working-class party members (if any remain) will have every reason to demand a thorough-going purge of middle-class social-radicals from Labour’s ranks. A similar purge, mutatis mutandis, will sweep away the identarian Greens.
If such purges do not eventuate, and the two left-wing parties remain in the grip of identity politicians, social-radicals and ethno-nationalists, then it is difficult to see them making a swift recovery at the polls. At least initially, the voting public is likely to cast about for a political movement less alienating, and more encouraging, of “mainstream” electoral support. If the rightward tendencies within Labour and the Greens do not succeed in providing these conservative left-wing voters with such a vehicle, then they will call forth somebody better equipped to offer them a ride.
Historically, however, the damage inflicted by such right-wing re-settings of left-wing parties’ ideological compasses is enormous. Convinced that a Labour Party as left-wing as Norman Kirk’s could never be re-elected, the rightward elements that would eventually give New Zealand “Rogernomics” spent fifteen years destroying Labour as a party of economic redistribution. After years of bitter factional strife, the party’s left-wingers were finally driven from its ranks. Labour only survived to reclaim the Treasury Benches in 1999 on account of being restrained from veering too far from its electoral base by the competitive presence of Jim Anderton’s Alliance and Jeanette Fitzsimons’ and Rod Donald’s Greens.
The New Zealand of the 2020s is not, however, the New Zealand of the 1990s. Our thoroughly digitalised society no longer possesses the human resources capable of creating new political parties dedicated to the nation-building and/or nation-restoring missions of the Alliance and NZ First. Corny though it may sound, at the heart of these two essentially patriotic electoral projects lay an undeniable love of country.
Thirty years on, the creation of political movements is driven much more by the voters’ intense hatred of what their enemies: neoliberals, colonisers, patriarchs, heterosexuals – take your pick – have done to Aotearoa-New Zealand. Where once the urge was to build and/or restore, today’s activists seek only to tear down, punish and destroy.
In relation to the issue of abortion, these destructive and punitive impulses will make it virtually impossible for the debate to proceed on a rational, let alone a civil, basis. Indeed, the very idea that those on both sides of the abortion issue might be decent and caring individuals, whose opposing positions are based on reasonable and eminently defensible philosophical propositions, religious principles, medical facts and socio-economic realities, will be rejected as dangerous nonsense. Pro-lifers are no such thing, they are simply misogynistic religious bigots. Pro-choicers stand condemned as monsters for whom human life matters less than personal convenience.
In these circumstances, simply to raise the issue of abortion is to set up the conditions for the most reckless expressions of hatred and loathing. In the Age of Twitter, Tik-Tok and Instagram, which is to say, in the Age of Declarative Solipsism, extremism will always arrive on the battlefield firstest, with the mostest. Small wonder, then, that Christopher Luxon is so determined to make sure that the battle never takes place.
Sometimes, as the US Supreme Court may yet discover, to its cost, doing nothing is the only sensible thing to do.
We should not underestimate Tamaki’s appeal.
I’ve met guys who consider they’ve had their lives improved by Destiny. In one case, a man who’d been illiterate- basically able to transpose numbers from weighbridge scales, and not much more- learnt to read as part of reading the Bible in his group.
A lot of them were getting to their mid 30s, and starting to veer away from some of the s**t that was fun in their younger days already. If we had a more functional socialist movement then they’d have been great recruits for that. But certainly, neoliberalism has nothing to offer these people.
Elections are about personal predilictions
For most abortion is low on the list of motivational drivers, they are indifferent.
The coming election will be virtualy totaly honed on economics = how well am I surviving under Jacinda ?
Will my life be better under the “other” outfit?
Only those who are not finacially stressed have the option to vote for “wouldn’t in be nice” issues.
The Green vote is founded on this group of afluent voters, potentialy they, the Greens, face a colapse next year as a consequence of the tight economic conditions.
Abortion will only be mentioned in passing.
No lets not have abortion as an election skewing arguement; but in the meantime life goes on and women have to deal with fertility, pregnancy, rape culture, sexism, pay equity and so on.
I offer solidarity to women on a class left basis at any time, but perhaps some of the grey beard pundits should listen to what women have to say for a bit on this?
The abortion debate is a distraction.
What people do in the US, a completely different country with different constitutional arrangements and population is totally irrelevant to NZ. We are just hearing about it non stop because it is a button pushing issue that detracts from the fact the country is completely in the toilet and people are struggling hugely with no relief in site. Did anybody catch the economists prediction yesterday? that mortgage rates would go to 12% over the next 12 months? Probably not because of all the noise this issue is generating.
It is a wholly orchestrated situation designed to detract. If anything occurs to change the status quo on abortion in NZ over the next 4 years I will eat my hat. NZers arent called the ‘passionless people’ for nothing despite identitarianism’s best efforts to divide and conquer, most people in NZ really believe in the doctrine of “Do what you want mate, just stay in your lane’. And abortion is quintessentially that – your decision is not going to affect me so have at it. Also clearly there is no political mileage in it except at the fringes.
But Chris makes a great point, our pride in our country and our identity as Nzers has been tragically damaged by vitriolic culture wars and the undermining of our institutions by politico’s who are guided by self interest rather than nationhood.
As others have said Luxon (the Fence Sitter in Chief) needs to do nothing in order to win as Labour will lose the election all by themselves. Another reason why Capt Underpants wont touch abortion with a bargepole.
But can you believe Luxon? The man who said he had not been to church for ages? Giving the general impression that he is not overly religious?
Well, it turns out that he belongs to a fundamentalist group called, “The Open Room”. They have no churches – they meet regularly, but only by renting empty town halls or gyms, etc. No churches at all.
You see the deception? Hadn’t been to church for ages..
Did he say how many religious meetings he had attended? No, not on your nelly.
That is a half-truth = effective lie.
Clearly, that man is a two-faced politician who cannot be trusted
Another National “silent Assassin “
To me, it is an issue of due process. I do not feel as if though women should have to jump through hoops in order to get an abortion; simply that there should be reasonable regulations so that these women do not get hurt in the process of obtaining an abortion, and so they know, without a doubt, that there is more than adequate assistance available to them if it is required.
Given Americas history around litigation for everything, women could well be sued for having a miscarriage.
Bert In at least one Sth American country recently, a woman who miscarried has been charged with the criminal offence of procuring an abortion. Those of us, and we are not a few, who have experienced the anguish and the pain of miscarriages beyond our control, can only tremble in fear at these horrendous developments. Many miscarriages occur naturally for reasons not necessarily discernible to the medical specialists. To have these sorrows politicised or criminalised is wicked- and unnecessary.
Appalling Applewood and my thoughts go out to you, as my wife suffered the same experience with her first pregnancy.
Daniel Lang – that sounds far too sensible and caring. As Chris says the extremes appear with the suddeness that my work disappears off the screen when I inadvertently press the wrong key on the computer. Everything happens superfast these days – wait till we communicate directly from our ‘brains’ without any mediation at all.
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