Tag: reproductive choice

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Anne Tolley’s next abhorrent idea: forced sterilization of poor people

It’s going to be incredibly difficult not to Godwin the hell out of this one, people.

Appearing on TVOne’s Q+A programme this morning, Social Development minister Anne Tolley would not rule out more actively trying to limit or prevent births to families which have come to the attention of authorities.

…

“Well, we’ll wait and see what the panel report. I expect that they’ll be saying, ‘We should get much, much faster contraceptive advice in. We should be offering, you know, tubal ligations, all sorts of things and counselling those families’,” she said.

Tubal ligation is not a form of contraception. Tubal ligation is a form of sterilization.

And sure, anybody who wants to make an informed decision to get a tubal ligation should be able to. I know plenty of childfree people who’d run at the chance, after many years of “you’ll want kids when you’re older” concern-trolling from the medical establishment.

But let’s not confuse Anne Tolley’s suggestion with any kind of progressive reproductive healthcare policy. This is simply National applying further bullying to “undesirable” people not to have children. And there are many words for that, and most of them are rightly associated with, shall we say, certain fascist societies.

Let’s remember how this government generally acts towards people on benefits, and ask ourselves if we really believe the “offer” of sterilization or counselling or long-term contraception is actually being made in an open-minded, compassionate way.

Let’s remember that their plan of offer free long-term contraception – which was an expensive failure – wasn’t just targeted at beneficiaries, but at their teenage daughters – and what kind of message that sends about “those kind of people”.

I support reproductive choice. I support the state making options available to people, on their own terms, to control when they have kids and how many kids they have. It’d be great to see a government which actually cared enough about stopping unwanted pregnancies to extend free doctor’s appointments for sexual health to more young people, or ensuring quicker access to abortion services.

But that’s not what we’re getting. We’re getting another dystopic, daddy-state interference in the lives of people who are already pushed to the absolute limits. We’re applying the power of government to threaten people who have incredibly little with even less if they dare to have a family the powers-that-be don’t approve of.

It’s grotesque. And worse, it’s probably not even sincere. Anne Tolley knows this won’t solve any of the problems she says exist in our social welfare system. But it will get great headlines about cracking down on those filthy bludging breeders-for-a-business. And even people on the left won’t be rushing to call it out for what it is: a repugnant attack on basic human rights.

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Some people want to see the good in everything and think we should focus on the important stuff – better access to contraception – instead of calling out Tolley’s horrific agenda. Unfortunately, the coverage this morning makes it all pretty clear:

The Minister for Social Development wants to find a way of stopping the most at-risk beneficiaries from having more children.

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Anne Tolley admitted it was a tricky subject, but said something had to be done about the women who have multiple children taken into care.

Emphasis mine; coercive restrictions on poor women’s reproduction all hers.

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The need for abortion law reform

I wrote yesterday about Right to Life’s latest attack on abortion access in New Zealand, so it’s timely to talk about the issue.

Abortion is one of the great untouchable topics in New Zealand politics. In the 80s we could fully decriminalise homosexuality, but we couldn’t decriminalise abortion. In the 2000s we could decriminalise sex work, but we couldn’t decriminalise abortion. We have absolute marriage equality now … and abortion is still the issue that people, especially on the left, freak out about every time.

As Alison McCulloch said in a post I linked to yesterday:

If this were any other issue, if the lives at stake were any other than those of people seeking abortions, action to provide this health service locally and more safely would be swift. But this is abortion. So even though this is about a procedure roughly one in four New Zealand women will undergo in their lifetimes, and even though abortion is something that is absolutely crucial to the autonomy and freedom of at least half of the population, politicians will continue to say everything is fine, judges will continue to make the law and doctors will continue to have control over our bodies, and our lives.

Alison’s book on the history of the abortion rights struggle in New Zealand, Fighting to Choose, is an absolute must-read.

Why is this the line? Why, at the recent Region 4 conference of the Labour Party I attended, did a remit on medical funding for trans people pass with no problems (I’m not going near the subsequent media statements by Labour MPs), and a remit on end of life choice pass with no problems, but a remit on abortion failed?

I can’t speak for the people who voted against it or spoke against it. I can only guess, and probably unfairly, about why abortion gets treated as a special issue.

But these are the facts.

Abortion is a crime in New Zealand. It is only allowed under certain circumstances, on the agreement of two separate physicians. Rape is not grounds for an abortion – it was specifically omitted because our lawmakers assumed pregnant people would just lie about being raped. You know, the way we always do.

Abortion access is very difficult for some people. The Abortion Supervisory Committee has regularly highlighted this. Until very recently, pregnant people seeking abortions who live in Invercargill had to travel to Christchurch, on a specific day of the week, sometimes staying overnight, to have their terminations. Pregnant people from the West Coast still have to do this.

Our abortion laws were written in the late 70s. Medical technology has moved on – that’s why Right to Life hope to be able to force the Family Planning clinic in Tauranga to stop providing safer, easier, cheaper medication abortions. Society has moved on.

I cannot accept that it is impossible to explain this issue clearly and concisely to people – and get a good, constructive response.

In fact, I know it’s not impossible. In 2013 Alison McCulloch did a Prochoice Highway tour across New Zealand, and received overwhelmingly positive reactions. When you have a chat to people and say “Hey, did you know abortion is still a crime in New Zealand law? Did you know pregnant people have to get two different doctors to sign off on their procedure, and have to plead mental illness to get it?” they are surprised. That’s not the New Zealand they know – the liberal hippie paradise which gave women the vote first and kicked out American nuclear subs. Our abortion laws are worse that America’s – that shocks people.

And when you tell them that people still have to raise money to fly to Australia for abortions if they don’t find out they’re pregnant early enough, they’re shocked. Or that abortion providers are still targeted for vandalism and abuse, in this day and age.

The message is simple: abortion is a common, safe medical procedure, governed by laws from the 70s. There’s nothing radical about acknowledging they need to change. There’s nothing scary about letting pregnant people be in control of their own bodies.

Yes, the religious extremists will howl and wail and threaten divine retribution. Just like they did for prostitution law reform. Just like they did for civil unions. Just like they did for marriage equality. But for God’s sake, New Zealand. Maurice Williamson of all people became an international star on the basis of mocking that kind of ridiculous scare-mongering.

They are bullies. They attack us to make us back down. And time and time again, on this issue, we – the progressive left of New Zealand politics – have rewarded their behaviour by shying away from it.

All we need is the courage to say “our abortion laws are outdated. Bringing them in line with modern medical knowledge will save taxpayer dollars and provide huge benefits to New Zealand women.* It’s the right thing to do and you’re right. There are other important issues too. So isn’t it great how quickly we can fix this one and move on?”

This issue isn’t going away. So why not make it a win?

 

 

*Not only women get pregnant.

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QOTD: myself on parental notification for abortion

This is one of those issues which just makes me tired every time it rears its head, so instead of burning energy writing up a big post on it I just blurted out some thoughts on Twitter. And people seemed to like them! So for posterity:

(I’ve only copied every second one since I cannot find how to stop them displaying the previous tweet with each one!)

Later this week: a post on abortion which I DID have the energy to write.

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(Repost) Informed consent: As simple as asking?

This post originally appeared at On The Left.

The experience of a woman who had an IUCD inserted without her knowledge shows that there’s still a long way to go when it comes to informed consent in New Zealand.

The intrauterine contraceptive device was inserted when the woman went to Epsom Day Unit to have an abortion in 2010. She had not consented to having it and it was only in 2013 that she discovered it, after unsuccessful attempts to get pregnant.

An investigation by the Health and Disability Commissioner found the doctor mistakenly “assumed” the woman wanted the contraceptive device after seeing it on a hospital trolley.

There’s a lot of deep, serious stuff you can get into about informed consent – an issue with a dark history in New Zealand. Sandra Coney’s book recounting the Unfortunate Experiment at National Women’s Hospital in Auckland was one of the first “feminist” books I read, and even though I wasn’t old enough to really understand all the issues (certainly not the science) one thing was really, horribly impressed on me: that patients have the right to know what’s happening to them. And they must be allowed to make their own choices. And cis women (and, I’d learn as my feminism developed, trans women, people of colour, people with disabilities, people in every marginalized group and especially people in more than one) were frequently, automatically, denied that choice.

It raises a lot of questions about the assumptions we make (doctors are demigods, patients aren’t rational, science is unbiased) and the systems and structures we have around medical care, which feed in turn into questions about how our society regards certain people (e.g. husbands having the power to commit their wives to mental institutions). Those are big, meaty ideas which could require a lot of soul-searching and discussion.

But in this case – based on nothing more than reading the Stuff article quoted above – it seems that the woman’s trauma could have been entirely avoided just by a surgeon bothering to ask, “Hey, is this IUCD for you, or another patient?”

Add in the fact that Auckland District Health Board initially refused to acknowledge that anything was wrong with depriving someone of the ability to have children for three years, and this seems to be much less about serious ethical considerations about informed consent, and more about sheer arrogance and lack of concern about people’s wellbeing.

So what do we do to change that? In this case it’s good that the Health and Disability Commissioner has taken action to make it very clear that this kind of thing simply cannot happen. Auckland District Health Board has been “recommended” to do a spot review of patient records to make sure this hasn’t happened multiple times. We need to pay close attention to make sure that they actually change the way they do things to stop it happening again.

(I’ve tried to use gender-neutral language where appropriate in this article. Not all people who become pregnant/get abortions/have IUDs are women, and not all women can get pregnant. But I think the medical establishment, like society, still groups all people who are assumed to have uteri and assumed to be able to get pregnant under the heading of “women”, and the second-class status of that group is a contributing factor to this particular case.)