Labour MP Ginny Anderson has introduced a Bill to amend the Holidays Act to allow parents bereaved through miscarriage or stillbirth to be given paid leave:
The Bill itself: http://www.legislation.govt.nz/bill/member/2019/0159/latest/LMS220706.html
This sounds like a good idea: a miscarriage or stillbirth involves the loss of a life to which the parents have usually become deeply attached.
However, Ms Anderson is also a strong supporter of abortion on demand (see Abortion Legislation Bill): https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=2138964062898856
I don’t see how it is rational to hold both positions, and Anderson really needs to decide where her head is at.
We all know that pro-lifers say an embryo/foetus is a human being while pro-choicers say it isn’t.
If it is, then there is something (someone, really) to mourn and bereavement makes sense, but equally abortion is therefore a homicide.
If it isn’t, then abortion is fine but there is no-one to mourn – no substantive loss, just the loss of a specific hope for the future.
The attempt in the Abortion Legislation Bill to pretend that abortion is a health issue, rather than an issue with serious moral content (a “conscience issue”, let’s say), does not affect this reasoning. Regardless of what the Bill says, the embryo/foetus is still there and it is still either a human life or not. A Bill can ignore facts, but it can’t change them.
Anyway, it seems to me that Anderson is in a non-viable position and needs to decide:
- human or not human?
- abort or mourn?
I can think of one way in which Anderson’s seemingly contradictory positions can be reconciled: “An embryo/foetus is a human life if, and only if, I want it”. In other words,
“I decide what a thing is and whether or not it has value”.
At any other time, this would be dismissed as a ludicrous degree of hubris. Now, though, it’s less remarkable. In fact, the narcissism that passes for virtue today – manifested in unhinged entitlement and the denial of reality that is not self-created – may naturally lead to this kind of ugly absurdity.
The above guest post is courtesy of averagethief.co.nz
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