Global 'fact checker' caught promoting false claims about NZ abortion law
French based Agence France-Presse Fact Check (AFP Fact Check), which describes itself as “the leading global fact-checking organisation” has been caught promoting false and misleading claims about New Zealand’s new Abortion Legislation Act which was passed by the Labour Government in 2020.
The false and misleading claims appear in an article authored by Taylor Thompson-Fuller that AFP Fact Check published on Tuesday 1 December.
Ironically, Thompson-Fuller wrote the article to accuse the UK pro-life organisation Right To Life of promoting “viral misinformation about New Zealand’s abortion laws.”
The AFP Fact Check article attempts to present itself as an independent and authoritative source despite the fact that it clearly seems to have been written to push an ideological and political agenda in defence of the new abortion law.
The false and misleading claims
When discussing late term abortion, the AFP Fact Check article claims that:
“Abortions are permitted [by the Abortion Legislation Act] after 20-weeks, but only in specific circumstances, taking into account factors including the woman's physical and mental health. Two qualified health practitioners have to agree the procedure is necessary.”
This statement is false.
Firstly, the Abortion Legislation Act (ALA) does NOT require two qualified health practitioners to agree that a late-term abortion (post 20 weeks) is necessary before it can take place.
Instead the ALA states that the first qualified health practitioner simply has to “consult” with at least one other qualified health practitioner. Nowhere does the ALA state that the second qualified health practitioner has to agree or sign-off on the late term abortion before it can be carried out.
In practice, this means that the first qualified health practitioner can be the abortionist who will carry out the late term abortion, and the second one could be any other qualified health practitioner who is present where the abortion will take place.
The ALA defines a ‘qualified health practitioner’ to be: “a health practitioner who is acting in accordance with the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Act 2003”.
This is a very loose requirement.
According to the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Act 2003, a “health practitioner means a person who is, or is deemed to be, registered with an authority as a practitioner of a particular health profession.”
In a nutshell, the second person that the first qualified health practitioner speaks to (no agreement is required from that second person) before carrying out a late term abortion does not even need to be a suitably qualified doctor.
Secondly, the way this AFP Fact Check statement is worded is also misleading.
It clearly implies that late term abortions can only be carried out if a very narrow set of circumstances are met, when, in actual fact, the ALA simply requires the first qualified health practitioner to “have regard to”:
“all relevant legal, professional, and ethical standards to which the qualified health practitioner is subject; and the woman’s physical health; and mental health; and overall well-being; and the gestational age of the fetus.”
No actual objective standards need to be met in relation to these various factors other than the fact that the first qualified medical practitioner is required to “have regard to” them.
The phrase “have regard to” is subjective, and it is never qualified or even given an official definition/interpretation (i.e. ‘have regard to means…’, or: ‘the following criteria must be met’, etc.) anywhere in the Abortion Legislation Act.
When you compare this to the former New Zealand abortion law - which mandated that late term abortions after 20 weeks were only legal if two doctors agreed (and signed off) that it was necessary “to save the life of the woman or girl or to prevent serious permanent injury to her physical or mental health” - it quickly becomes clear how loosely defined and subjective the ALA actually is when it comes to late term abortions.
AFP Fact Check appears to be deliberately misleading the public
It is extremely odd that the AFP Fact Check have published such a blatantly false and easily disprovable statement about the new late term abortion law. The author has obviously read the relevant section (Section 11) of the ALA because he has posted this partial screenshot of it immediately after his false claim about late term abortion:
(The partial screenshot of Section 11 of the Abortion Legislation Act as it appeared in the AFP Fact Check article)
The fact that APA Fact Check have published only this (above) partial screenshot of Section 11 of the Abortion Legislation Act raises some serious questions that point to this being ideologically and politically motivated propaganda rather than genuine fact-checking.
They falsely state that their screenshot is “a screenshot of section 11 of the Abortion Legislation Act (2020)…”, when in actual fact what they have published in their article is only a partial screenshot of Section 11.
Here is what the entirety of Section 11 of the Abortion Legislation Act actually looks like:
(A screenshot of the entirety of Section 11 of the Abortion Legislation Act)
Straight away you will notice some important details that completely change the narrative that has been presented by the Taylor Thompson-Fuller AFP Fact Check article.
Firstly, none of the late term abortion requirements apply if the situation is deemed to be a “medical emergency”. (The only interpretation for medical emergency that the ALA provides is: “medical emergency includes a surgical emergency”.)
Secondly, you’ll notice that AFP Fact Check chose to omit the entirety of clauses one and two in their screenshot of Section 11.
Both of these clauses refer to the fact that late term abortion is now permissible in New Zealand if a qualified health practitioner “reasonably believes” it to be “clinically appropriate”.
The phrase “clinically appropriate” is not qualified any further, or given an official definition/interpretation (i.e. ‘clinically appropriate means…’, or: ‘the following criteria must be met’, etc.) anywhere in the Abortion Legislation Act.
This is extremely important when considering what the new late term abortion law permits in New Zealand, because the phrase ‘clinically appropriate’ is not the same thing as a more objective phrase like ‘medically necessary’.
A patient does not need to be facing any risk or danger for a procedure to be ‘clinically appropriate’ - unlike what the former NZ law mandated when it stipulated that late term abortions were only legal in order “to save the life of the woman or girl or to prevent serious permanent injury to her physical or mental health”.
It seems rather strange that AFP Fact Check would choose to publish only a partial section of Section 11, and that they would caption it with a misleading statement that falsely implies they have presented the entirety of Section 11.
False and misleading claims made by AFP Fact Check about disability abortions
At another point in the article, Thompson-Fuller claims that Right to Life UK has mislead the public with its claim that “The [Abortion Legislation Act] will allow: disability-selective abortion up to birth”.
Once again, this is a completely false claim from Thompson-Fuller.
Right to Life were correct - the ALA places no legal restrictions on disability-selective abortions, and, in fact, during the debate of the new law in the NZ Parliament, MPs specifically rejected amendments that would have placed limits on disability-selective abortions.
Thompson-Fuller tries to justify his claim that Right to Life UK has misled the public in this regard by quoting University of Otago Gynaecologist and Senior Lecturer, Dr Helen Paterson who states that:
“The way that [Right to Life UK] are framing it is that the restriction has been removed -- the reality is that it was never really there in the first place”
But AFP Fact Check then goes on to contradict itself, and the claims of Dr Helen Paterson, less than two paragraphs later when they quote from the The New Zealand Law Commission 2018 report on the old NZ abortion law, which stated that:
“Fetal abnormality is not in itself a ground for abortion after 20 weeks, so it is likely that the legal ground relied on in those cases would be to prevent serious permanent injury to the woman’s mental health”
In other words, contrary to what Thompson-Fuller has claimed, the old NZ did not allow disability-selective abortions, and the new law does allow them without any gestational limit.
So Right to Life UK is telling the truth, while AFP Fact Check is misleading the public.
False and misleading claims made by AFP Fact Check about partial-birth abortion
Later on in the article Thompson-Fuller claims that Right to Life UK has mislead the public with its claim that “The [Abortion Legislation Act] will allow: controversial [partial-birth] abortion methods”.
The only justification that Thompson-Fuller gives for his assertion that Right to Life UK is misleading the public is this statement here:
“According to Dr Janet Downs, the outlined “partial birth” procedure does not happen in New Zealand. “The so-called 'partial birth' process described in the 2nd & 3rd bullet points... is not performed in NZ (or, to my knowledge, elsewhere),” she said.”
Straight away you will notice that Dr. Janet Downs has not responded to the claim that the ALA allows partial-birth abortions, instead she has simply stated that it is not currently being practiced here in NZ.
The important point here is that this is not about what is currently happening in NZ, but what the new law actually does or does not permit when it comes to partial-birth abortion.
This was one of the dishonest sleight of hand talking points that advocates of the Abortion Legislation Act continually used during the debate about the new law - they kept referring to what was happening in NZ rather than what the ALA would actually legally permit to happen.
We have spoken to several lawyers on this point, and they are all clear that the new law definitely does legally allow partial-birth abortions in New Zealand. One barrister with experience as a Crown prosecutor was very explicit that the new allows abortion “up until and even during birth”.
These false and misleading claims from AFP Fact Check about New Zealand’s new abortion law comes at a time of growing global concern that many self-described ‘fact checking’ entities are no longer acting in a reliable, balanced or truthful way in their so-called ‘fact-checking’ activities.
