Strange Bedfellows

The Rising Voice of Conscience

The Greens have come out with an abortion policy they want to float before the electorate. This from Stuff:

The Greens have ratified a policy on abortion, which would get rid of a process a certified consultant says is "perfectly workable".  Abortion is a crime under the Crimes Act, and is legal only if two consultants agree that the pregnancy would seriously harm the woman's physical or mental health, or that there is a substantial risk the child would be born seriously disabled.  The Greens want abortion removed from the crime statutes, saying it would reduce stigma and judgment surrounding the procedure. This would mean a woman seeking one would not need external approval.

Just what this policy platform has to do with environmental concerns is not immediately obvious--unless the sub-text is that Greens are typically anti-human, seeing mankind as the biggest threat to the environment on the planet.  More abortions means less human beings: ergo, it's good for the environment.

Thankfully, however, notwithstanding the Greens misanthropy,  the abortion tally in New Zealand is dropping.
  At its peak, it was just short of 20,000 per year.  It has dropped down to 14, 745 (in 2012--the latest available stats).  We hope fervently that it falls to zero--and that as a society we terminate the legal practice of killing unborn children.

The place we have reached now appears to be that even many liberals now  have grave misgivings about the practice, but have no ideological ground upon which they can mount an argument to reject abortion.  So, former advocates have now become more cautious quibblers.  We cite David Farrar at Kiwiblog as an example.  Over the years he has assured us of his firm conviction that the unborn child is non-human.  Now however he tells us:

It’s good the [abortion] numbers are falling. My view is abortion should be legal, safe and rare.

That statement is about as confused and contradictory as one could imagine.  It's like saying that surgery to remove tumours should be "legal, safe, and rare".  Why rare?   Since in Farrar's view, the unborn child is nothing more than a tumour, why try to restrict the practice of abortion at all?  It makes no sense to hold this view, despite its condescending, quasi-piousness. 

Nevertheless, we are happy to have all the fellow-travellers we can get--no matter how contradictory or confused they may be--in the struggle to terminate the abortion of children in New Zealand.