(no subject)

[labellementeuse]

Fucking what now? The review of the Abortion Supervisory Committee (conducted under pressure from Right to Life NZ) has led Justice Forrest Miller to say that the legality of many abortions in NZ is questionable.

Fucking christ. I'm giving money to Women's National Abortion Campaign right now. This is such a big deal, people. D: D: D:

Comments

[sixth-light.livejournal.com]

Or did it just take them this long to decide (or get themselves sufficiently together) to mount a formal judicial challenge?

That'd be my guess. In some ways I'm surprised it's taken this long.


What I'd like to know is why these sorts of things always get shilled off as a conscience vote. I've never been happy with it. It must be very hard for a voter who feels strongly about reproductive rights (or for that matter prostitution law reform or civil unions) to decide which party to vote for on that basis, because the parties don't publish manifestos saying how each of their individual MPs will vote in these circumstances.

I think it was the pro-choice lady on the radio this morning who said that conscience votes are dumb because they're just an excuse for MPs to break party lines and get away with it. I kind of agree. If your party can have a solid opinion on every other policy (and mostly people _don't_ break party lines for conscience votes) they can have one for things like abortion. The "will of the people" thing is bullshit; unless you're gonna go to your electorate and have a referendum on the issue, you're voting either a) what you feel like or b) what people lobbying you have made you think your electorate feels like, neither of which is actually reflecting your electorate's opinion. If you have one. If you don't....you were voted in as part of your party; have a party line and follow it.

[amarynth.livejournal.com]

You're absolutely right re: MPs, but it's even more of a blinder with List MPs in the mix.

Unfortunately there's no way to make parties enforce party discipline, and ultimately MPs who feel strongly may evade it anyway. But I do wish the public would be a lot more sceptical about conscience votes. Sadly the media likes them, possibly because they allow a lot of frenetic speculation, and many lobby groups do as well, presumably because it basically sanctions their attempts to get to MPs directly rather than to go through the public. I always feel rather cold when I hear a lobby group calling for an issue to be made a conscience vote.

IMO the only situation in which a conscience vote could be justified is one in which some genuinely new, unique, unprecedented situation came up which party manifestos hadn't even peripherally addressed. Short of alien invasion, I can't think of one.

[sixth-light.livejournal.com]

IMO the only situation in which a conscience vote could be justified is one in which some genuinely new, unique, unprecedented situation came up which party manifestos hadn't even peripherally addressed. Short of alien invasion, I can't think of one.

And you can bet if there _was_ an alien invasion it would be party lines all the way on the grounds that it came under foreign policy. Or something.