New research shows that our former abortion law prevented sex-selective abortions in New Zealand

Newsroom has published an important article today highlighting research which strongly indicates that our former abortion law protected girls in New Zealand from the practice of sex-selective abortion.

However, the researchers, Dr. Rachel Simon-Kumar and R. Janine Paynter, who also authored the Newsroom article, bend over backwards to try and avoid crediting the old law with being a force for good in this regard.

This offers a fascinating insight into the corrupting effect of abortion-choice ideology, and the way in which adherents tend to engage in mental gymnastics to protect abortion from scrutiny.

What their 2019 research found was that:

“On the face of it, there is no evidence of sex-selective abortion practised by Asian communities in New Zealand and, in this regard, we are clearly an anomaly when compared to other migrant-receiving countries.”

They then go on to discuss possible reasons for this anomaly, and in doing so make reference to the most commonsense conclusion that could be drawn from these findings:

“One [of the possible reasons for these findings] is New Zealand’s stringent pregnancy termination regimen of the past decades. Aside from layers of official deterrents to terminate pregnancy, legally, practitioners are not supposed to reveal the sex of the baby during the mandatory ultrasound.”

Instead of elaborating on this important fact, the corrupting influence of an ideology which feels the need to protect abortion kicks in and they start trying to direct attention away from the elephant in the room:

“But this alone might not be the reason because we might have still seen abnormal sex ratios if Asian couples decided to travel overseas to undertake abortions. But that has not shown up in our findings.”

Ah yes, the old chestnut of suggesting that people travel to other countries to obtain their illegal abortions.

It’s a very handy rhetorical device for attacking abortion restrictions and it’s an old favourite of those committed to protecting abortion.

You never have to actually prove that these alleged overseas abortions are even happening in meaningful enough numbers to be of any significance - merely making the claim allows you to maintain the myth that abortion regulations have no bearing on abortion choices.

They then go on to suggest that:

“It is also entirely possible that acculturation may have changed how communities’ value their sons and daughters. Children - regardless of their sex - are known to help new migrant families navigate their way as they settle into a new host country. They are often the future pathway through which they progress economically and socially.”

There is nothing in their research that would warrant them making such a claim.

This is pure speculation on their part, and it contains a glaringly obvious and fatal flaw.

If what they are suggesting here is true, then why would this change of ethical and cultural beliefs not have happened in most other Western countries as well?

As this research explicitly states, New Zealand is an anomaly in this regard, which once again points to the former abortion law as being the most likely reason.

It seems inescapable that the most obvious conclusion to be drawn from these research findings is that opponents of the Abortion Legislation Act were right when we said that our former abortion law protected girls in New Zealand from sex-selective abortions.

Dr. Rachel Simon-Kumar and R. Janine Paynter conclude their article by stating that: 

“…what might [be] more useful is to empower girl children from ethnic communities through educational and employment opportunities and raise their aspirations to aim high and achieve higher.

These productive approaches - rather than blame - might be the best way forward to end gender inequality in minority communities.”

To which we say; surely the most powerful thing our Parliament could have done to empower and aspire equal treatment for females in this country would have been to make it an offence to abort a child based solely on sex?

But Parliament failed to do that, instead they actually rejected an amendment to the Abortion Legislation Act which was specifically designed to create that very outcome.

This is because abortion-choice ideology has a longstanding problem of refusing to actively condemn or support laws banning sex-selective abortions. 

To do so would be to place something else above abortion choice, and to risk exposing the seedy underbelly of abortion to greater ethical scrutiny.

Instead of honestly critiquing this failure of governance on the part of NZ politicians, Simon-Kumar and Paynter actually chose to attack those who fought for such an amendment and then equivocate on how the old law protected New Zealand women.

In the end this is yet another example of people trying to insist that the emperor really does have the finest new clothes, and that those who say otherwise just don’t understand the sophisticated intricacies of invisible tailoring.