Exploitation in all its forms must be stopped

TWO months ago Civis noted many similarities between the allegedly Christian Gloriavale cult and the brutal slaveowning plantation society of the preEmancipation southern US.

On May 10, the Employment Court ruled that those living and working there were not ‘‘volunteers’’ but effectively unpaid ‘‘employees’’, from the age of 6, not undertaking children’s ‘‘chores’’ as claimed by the sects leaders, but ‘‘work[ing] regularly and for long hours, primarily for the benefit of Gloriavale’s commercial operations . . . for the reward of the necessities of life and the ability to remain in the community. [Work] was subject to strict control . . . [was] performed over an extended period of time and . . . [was] strenuous, difficult, and sometimes dangerous’’. In a word, slavery.

A week earlier a draft majority opinion written by US Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, arguing in favour of overturning the 1973 Roe v Wade decision of the court which invalidated state legislation banning abortion, was leaked. He argues, from an ‘‘originalist’’ viewpoint, against the court ensuring women can make their own decisions about their bodies, on the grounds that the Constitution doesn’t mention abortion — hardly surprising considering it was written by men, and one of its drafters rejected his wife’s plea to remember women’s needs, asserting that only a masculine viewpoint was tenable.

So it’s probably inevitable that ‘‘originalist’’ interpretation of the US Constitution will reinforce patriarchy. But Justice Alito's quoting (from a 2008 report on the demand for adoption in the US), without demur, an argument against abortion rights in order to ensure a ‘‘domestic supply of infants’’ for adoption is patriarchy gone mad. That approach, inviting comparison with Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, would make it acceptable to force women with unwanted pregnancies into reproductive slavery to supply babies for an adoptive market (and reintroduce a sick meaning to the term ‘‘forced labour’’).

Some might wonder, in view of Justice Alito’s apparent acceptance that women with unwanted pregnancies might have to contribute to a baby market, whether he (at least subconsciously) sympathises with some aspects of preEmancipation southern slave states.

The Employment Court finding doesn’t immediately end Gloriavale slavery, nor the scandal that government agencies such as the Labour Inspectorate and Oranga Tamariki have, like the priest and Levite in Jesus parable of the Good Samaritan, averted their official eyes from the exploitation of both children and adults in that community, but it’s a start.

Some of Gloriavale’s customers are reviewing their contracts, and licensing bodies their product certification, because of its use of forced labour. If Oranga Tamariki and the Labour Inspectorate act decisively to protect children and adults living there (as well as reforming their own flawed processes) it may be possible to correct at least Gloriavale’s work abuses.

But in the US, where the Senate has rejected the Women’s Health Protection Bill, which would have codified abortion rights into federal law, some (particularly black) women face devastating health outcomes, widening existing healthcare inequalities, if Roe v Wade is overturned. Reproductive slavery will kill.

The US has the highest childbirth mortality rate of any wealthy nation, 14 times higher than for legal induced abortion. It’s estimated that a total abortion ban could increase pregnancyrelated deaths by 21% overall and by 33% for black women.

The Supreme Court case involves the state of Mississippi. Its maternal mortality is higher than the US average, and its black women almost three times more likely to die of pregnancyrelated causes than its vaguelypinkish women. That’s without counting those who, in despair, will seek illegal abortions, a leading cause of maternal mortality and morbidity worldwide.

The Mississippi law bans abortions after 15 weeks, but many states want to ban all abortions (some define a fertilised egg as an unborn child, criminalising intrauterine contraceptive devices and the morningafter pill). If Roe v Wade is overturned they, the Supreme Court majority, and half the Senate, will have women’s blood on their hands.