How Harete Hipango has exposed the Orwellian lying of the NZ media
Last week National MP Harete Hipango committed thoughtcrime and wrong-speak.
She dared to challenge the integrity of Jacinda Ardern and her pet project - the extreme new Abortion Legislation Act that was rushed into law in March this year.
Among other things, the Abortion Legislation Act has introduced abortion-on-demand up to 20 weeks and liberalised late term abortion (after 20 weeks) right up to birth.
Make no mistake about it, this was Ardern’s pet project.
In the lead up to the last election, during the Newshub leaders debate on Monday 4 September 2017, she declared to the nation that she would remove abortion from the Crimes Act if she was made prime minister.
In order to shield Ardern when she took power, her personal abortion expansion project was entrusted to Andrew Little to manage.
This endeavour was also dutifully aided by Labour’s Ruth Dyson, NZ First’s Tracey Martin, and National MP’s Amy Adams and Nikki Kaye.
This way Jacinda Ardern could see her wishes fulfilled without having to publicly dirty her hands and tarnish her vitally important ‘kindness’ brand by fronting an extreme new abortion law.
And no, it is not being being hyperbolic to call the Abortion Legislation Act ‘extreme’.
Multiple amendments were tabled in Parliament to try and curb the excesses of this Act, but all of them were rejected.
Notable among these was the amendment to make it a legal requirement for care to be given to any infant born alive after a botched abortion, and another one that would have banned sex-selective abortions in New Zealand.
Jacinda Ardern voted against both of these proposed changes to her new law.
So, not only did Ardern’s abortion project result in liberalised late term abortion in New Zealand, but it has also legalised sex selective abortion, and expressly rejected making it a legal requirement to care for babies born alive after botched abortions.
Which is precisely why National MP Harete Hipango publicly challenged the Prime Minister last week after Jacinda Ardern told the media that New Zealand needs to address our infant mortality problem.
To quote the Radio New Zealand article:
“Ardern said Parliament is looking into ways to better support people who have lost a baby, including providing bereavement leave for people who have experienced a miscarriage or stillbirth, with a report due back from Select Committee on Monday.”
In response to this Hipango posted the following on Facebook:
“For a PM who supports abortion to full term (yes that’s right a full term baby up until birth can be aborted- and for those who denounce and decry saying nonsense it would never occur, the fact is this PM supported this law being made - it is lawful, whether or not it is utilised) and other atrocious unnecessary violations of a human life in utero in amendments to the Abortion Act (where Abortion has for decades in NZ been lawful & treated as a health issue) - this recent stance by the PM is rank and riles me as a woman who is a mother and has also advocated for children’s welfare all my professional working life as a lawyer. The hypocrisy is astounding.”
If we were living in more sane times, Hipango’s comments would have simply sparked a vigorous but civil debate about the merits of her views and the nature of the Abortion Legislation Act.
We are not living in such times however, and within hours mainstream media journalists had concocted a cacophony of lies about the Abortion Legislation Act in order to try and falsely discredit Hipango.
It is one thing to see journalists pretending to be impartial reporters of events as they actively promote or defend their personal politics and ideologies.
It is another thing altogether when they are shamelessly publishing blatant and easily disprovable lies in their Orwellian endeavours to rewrite history and defend the party.
This began with Newshub reporter Zane Small, who published an article claiming that:
"Whanganui MP Hipango blasted Ardern in a Facebook post on Monday for supporting the Abortion Legislation Act 2020, a law change passed in March that brought abortion out of the Crimes Act.
It meant abortions for pregnancies of less than 20 weeks were decriminalised, provided that certain conditions were met, and that the abortion was authorised by two certifying consultants.”
This is a blatant falsehood on the part of Small and Newshub.
The Abortion Legislation Act did NOT "decriminalise" abortions prior to 20 weeks "provided that certain conditions were met, and that the abortion was authorised by two certifying consultants”.
That was the old law that Labour stuck down. The new law has legalised abortion-on-demand for any reason right up to 20 weeks and abolished certifying consultants altogether.
Later in his article Small also stated that:
“Hipango accused the Prime Minister of supporting abortions to full-term, even though the law requires two doctors to agree an abortion is the right decision for women who are more than 20 weeks pregnant.”
This is also a blatant falsehood.
The Abortion Legislation Act does NOT require two doctors to approve abortions after 20 weeks.
What it actually says is that a "health practitioner" (does not need to be a doctor) simply has to "consult" (no approval is needed) another "health practitioner" (who also does not need to be a doctor).
NOWHERE does the Act state that they both have to agree before a late term abortion can be carried out in New Zealand.
To add to the Orwellian absurdity of all this, at some point after we publicly called out Zane Small and Newshub on social media for their dishonesty, these statements were quietly changed so that they now read:
“[The Act] meant abortions for pregnancies of less than 20 weeks were decriminalised and no longer require a medical test, while abortions more than 20 weeks must be authorised by two health practitioners.”
And:
“Hipango accused the Prime Minister of supporting abortions to full-term, even though the law requires two health practitioners to agree an abortion is the right decision for women who are more than 20 weeks pregnant.”
Despite the sneaky changes (which scrub the original dishonesty from the public record), both of these statements are still false.
Late term abortions do NOT have to be “authorised” by two health practitioners, and there is no requirement in the Act that the two health practitioners have to “agree” before a late term abortion can be carried out.
Just to ensure that this incident was rich with irony, Zane Small’s blatantly dishonest Newshub article had been titled “Jacinda Ardern asks for 'views based on fact'”.
Within hours of Newshub publishing these false statements, Radio New Zealand reporter Jo Moir had joined the fray with yet more lies.
She stated that:
“For an abortion to take place after 20 weeks, a number of criteria have to be met, and it has to be deemed necessary to save the woman’s life or prevent serious injury.”
This is yet another blatant and easily disprovable falsehood.
The Abortion Legislation Act does NOT say that late term abortions can only be carried out if they are deemed necessary to save the life of the mother or prevent serious harm - that was the legal requirement in the former NZ law that was abolished by Labour in March.
Just like the Newshub falsehoods, at some point after we publicly called out Jo Moir and Radio New Zealand on social media for their dishonesty, this statement was also quietly changed. It now reads:
“A woman who is more than 20 weeks pregnant can only have an abortion if a health practitioner reasonably believes that it is appropriate.”
This alteration to the original article is definitely a more accurate account of what the Abortion Legislation Act has legalised, that is, as long as an abortionist says ‘yes’, an abortion can now be performed for any reason right up to birth in New Zealand.
So, Harete Hipango was telling the truth all along, and Andrew Little was the one speaking falsely with his headline grabbing obfuscation that “there's no such thing as full-term abortion.”
You wouldn’t know this though, because the original media articles carried Little’s red herring claims along with the blatant lie that the Abortion Legislation Act contains strict controls on late term abortions.
When combined, the red herring and the media lies created a powerful Orwellian weapon of disinformation and discrediting, that was used to ridicule a brave MP simply because she told the truth and challenged the party.
There is so much that is wrong and extremely worrying about all of this.
Where did these reporters get their false information from?
Why did they not check what the Abortion Legislation Act actually says before they published their false claims about what it contains?
Why did none of their editors pick up such serious and easily disprovable falsehoods?
Most troublingly of all, why are media outlets simply allowed to make subsequent and major changes to factual claims in their online articles without having to make it clear to readers they have done this?
Surely this is nothing more than the ‘memory hole’, that is used by the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’s 1984, to alter and erase inconvenient truths from the public record as if they never happened.
Media commentary pieces criticising Harete Hipango are still being written, but we are still yet to see a single media commentator hold their own colleagues to account for the serious ethical failings they perpetrated last week.
Regardless of how you feel about the views expressed by Harete Hipango, surely we can all agree that the NZ media should not be allowed to falsely rewrite history about Labour’s Abortion Legislation Act, or the lies that they have told about it on the public record?