New Zealand Conservative

This might cause a bit of embarrassment over here. AUCKLAND, New Zealand, July 4, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The Prosecutor at the International Criminal Court (ICC) has decided to launch an inquiry into a complaint against the New Zealand Government’s antenatal screening program for Down syndrome and other conditions. The complaint was filed with the ICC by SavingDowns, the Spina Bifida Association of New Zealand (SBNZ) and Right to Life New Zealand. SavingDowns is an organized group of parents with children with Down syndrome. The groups allege that the screening program, introduced nationally in February 2010 by the Ministry of Health, targets unborn children with Down syndrome and other conditions such as Spina Bifida for birth prevention. They also claim that such programs are eugenic, discriminatory and put parents under undue pressure to abort wanted babies. The irony being that abortion in NZ is only legal if it puts the mother's mental or physical health in danger. ...

Melinda Gates (Bill Gates' wife), wants to make contracption a priority so that "120 million more women access to contraceptives by 2020". You can watch the video above to see what she says, or check out the story in Newsweek . Some quotations from the story - As she revealed in an exclusive interview with Newsweek, she has decided to make family planning her signature issue and primary public health a priority. “My goal is to get this back on the global agenda,” she says. [...] Now the foundation, which is worth almost $34 billion, is putting her agenda into practice. In July it’s teaming up with the British government to cosponsor a summit of world leaders in London, to start raising the $4 billion the foundation says it will cost to get 120 million more women access to contraceptives by 2020. And in a move that could be hugely significant for American women, it is pouring money into the long-neglected field of contraceptive research, seeking entirely new meth...

Michael Laws made another pitch for the "Sterilize the poor" in the SST. The basic argument seems to be "we pay a fortunate in welfare so that poor people can feed their kids, but we all know that certain segments of poor people abuse kids, so it's cheaper to offer them a cash incentive to be sterilised." I don't like this idea for many reasons, but I'm going to stick to just one angle, because I don't have time for the whole debate. For that matter, I'm amazed I even have to articulate my other reasons. So in the spirit of a good rant, here's just one idea to consider:

ACT MP David Garrett has suggested offering abusive parents thousands of dollars in return for getting themselves sterilised. So let me get this straight. ACT MP Garrett (and this is not ACT policy thank goodness) wants to PAY people who are abusive to children in some kind of weird reward/incentive system? I can think of so many negative side effects to this, it would make a great blog post. But I don't have the time, so maybe our readers can help me out by making them in the comments :-)

Michael Laws has put forward the suggestion that if NZ gave $10,000 to "certain people" in order for that person to consent to voluntary sterilisation, then there would "be less dead children and less social problems." This is a typical liberal response to what comes down to a problem NZ has with immorality, which this insane sanctification of short term relationships by calling the individuals "partners". Not only "certain people" live like this, it's just that "certain people" cause more problems for society than other people. Marriage as an institution was created to protect women and children. As marriage unravels, as it is doing in NZ, then there will be increasing problems with single women raising children and having short-term relationships with undesirable men, and having children to those undesirable men. It's far easier to call for sterilisation of "certain people" than to ask everyone in society to lift t...