Another reason to love the new government
Peter Dunne is associate minister of privitising the health system, which obviously fills joy in the heart of all right thinking people.
That makes him associate minister in charge of women's bodies, which is almost as scary. I guess if Bill English was unsuccessful in using his position as minister of health to punish the evil sex having women, then Peter Dunne probably won't do much better - but it's a bit of a worry.
I've heard mumblings that there's an unwritten clause in Peter Dunne's deals - so Labour won't be making New Zealand's abortion law less ridiculous and hypocrtical (for those who don't know New Zealand's abortion laws were considered the most restrictive in the Western world when they were passed in 1977; they don't quite work as intended). If either side in parliament wanted a full on abortion debate we would have had one by now, but America has shown how many different ways you can fuck with women's reproductive rights without directly changing the law, so I'm nervous.
I've been vaguely folowing the supreme court stuff in America. To the surprise of no-one Harriet Miers, Bush's latest supreme court nominee, is anti-abortion and about as close to corporate America as NZCTU is to the Labour party. I'll just curl up and die from not surprisedness.
The religious right in America were opposing Harriet Miers, for reasons that seemed to amount to 'you can't trust those uppity women'. They really are batshit crazy, they can't keep their misogyny damped down long enough to get exactly what they want.
Interesting what you say about the 'unwritten clause' with Peter Dunne not to change the abortion laws - if anything like that does exist its probably more of a verbal understanding. The irony is that he can't rely on Labour to stop such a bill, or for that matter one on cannibis, as both could be put forward as private members bills.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I hope we get private members bills drawn on both issues, as we could enjoy the sight of Dunne doing a spaz like he did on election night :)
It will immediately make the deals Dunne did with Labour look worthless. Things could get messy if he attempts to convince Labour to vote them down, but that would not look good for Labour MPs at all.
Well he can and he can't rely on them. If there was a single Labour MP with any passion for women's right to abortion then we would have had the repeal of the Contraception Sterilisation and Abortion Act 20 years ago.
ReplyDeleteThe thought of three more years in power can probably supress the burning passion that the Labour caucus has for women's rights.
The main pressure for abortion law reform is the Abortion Supervisory Committee. ALthough their proposed reform is the worst of both world's and failed in 1990 because there was no support for it anywhere.
But if the anti-abortion people succeed in their current law case against the Abortion Supervisory committee, then there might be some more pressure for the law change. Could be interesting.