Why NZ won’t follow US lead on abortion
New Zealand’s response to the shocking US Supreme Court decision removing constitutional protections for abortion has been a fascinating tale of two countries.
With conservative politicians like Christopher Luxon and David Seymour coming out in support of our population’s strong pro-choice leaning, and framing of abortion as a health issue, not a criminal one, the trajectory of Aotearoa’s abortion narrative remains on the same track as almost all European countries.
Meanwhile, as the US marks Independence Day, it finds itself an outlier.
The diverging pathways on abortion rights in my adopted New Zealand and native America are explained in part by a key cultural difference – the prevalence of conservative Christianity.
Home to the largest Christian population in the world, America’s historical and everyday relationship with the religion is explicit. From the motto ‘‘In God We Trust’’ on its coins and daily utterances of ‘‘one nation under God’’ by millions of schoolkids in The Pledge of Allegiance, to outwardly Christian politicians and community leaders, and church-based activist groups, God is everywhere. And often, it seems, in places that hold power.
More than half of Kiwis practise no religion, compared to 75% of Americans who identify as Christian. Without the political might of a predominant religion, the influence of antichoice religious groups is lessened here. Elevating the rights of an unborn foetus above that of a fully fledged person because it allegedly has a soul is not an argument that garners widespread political and moral backing in our less god-fearing country.
Federalism is another reason these countries are moving along such extraordinarily different roads. The design of federalism, where political power is shared by central, state and local governments, systematically encourages more marked differences in laws, behaviours and viewpoints.
These distinctions, together with vast spaces between regions and a huge population, breed a broad range of political views.
Compared to many countries, New Zealand’s size and unitary state create relative social and political homogeneity.
One study even found minimal regional variances in personality traits across regions. The values and lifestyle differences between Kiwis in, say, Gore and Remuera, are not nearly as vast as those of Americans living in Shelbyville, Kentucky, and Manhattan, New York.
It has been said that New Zealand’s entire range of political beliefs, from the Greens to ACT, might fit into the continuum of views in the US Democratic Party.
Despite our emerging ethnic and religious diversity, New Zealanders as a group have less extreme views and are more likely to agree on a host of issues, such as state-funded healthcare, gun control, and – as 77% of us do – the right to terminate a pregnancy.
Then there’s the status of the abortion rights discussion. It’s hard to overstate the centrality of the role a person’s views on abortion plays in the US. They are a defining signal in our assessment of our fellow citizens. Americans’ views on abortion bellwether those on other political issues, such as homosexual law reform, social welfare and gun ownership. dentities and language reflect this. Americans might describe their political views as ‘‘fiscally conservative and socially liberal’’, code for low taxes and pro-choice. ‘‘Socially conservative’’ means antiabortion.
In New Zealand, if we debate openly about politics at all, we tend to focus on grumbles about the housing crisis, environmental issues or the price of milk.
And so it was that, as a ‘‘socially liberal’’ young American, I took part in the massive 1992 March for Women’s Lives in Washington, DC, lobbied politicians to vote against Illinois state law removing abortion funding for poor women, and later walked, swollen and sad, with my partner into an abortion clinic, the shame of youth and the guilt of God hovering in a cloud around us, to exert the right that I had long argued for.
Three kids and 30 years later, we continue to be grateful for the kaupapa of the feminist movement that debated, marched, sacrificed and negotiated for the health service we needed that day.
That movement remains strong, and influential in today’s Aotearoa New Zealand. Together with our comparatively similar views across regions, a politically marginalised far-right religious campaign, and a tendency to focus on issues other than abortion in political discourse, I believe that the arc of New Zealand’s abortion rights story will continue to bend in a different direction from America’s.
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