Anti Family Planning Advocacy

WHAT’S HAPPENING IN HAMILTON, PART II

As readers of this blog know, anti-abortion groups have been campaigning hard against Family Planning’s proposal to provide early medical abortions, starting with its Hamilton clinic. So far, three protests have been held, in Hamilton on 23 October, in Christchurch on 6 November and in Wellington on 27 November.

Turnout has been small – about a dozen in Hamilton, 10 or so in Christchurch and around 20 in Wellington. (You can see photos of the protests on the “Stop Family Planning” Web site.)

ATTACKS ON FUNDING

The groups organizing against Family Planning appear to be following in the footsteps of the Stop Planned Parenthood campaign in the United States, including in particular going after FP’s funding. In New Zealand, the Right to Life spokesman Ken Orr has written to the Minister of Health in an effort to prevent any public money being spent on Family Planning and called for a boycott of Telecom over grant money it gives to FP. (“Right to Life Seeks Boycott of Telecom New Zealand in Response to Telecom support of Killing of Unborn Children.” (Click here to read it.)) Telecom has told Mr. Orr, according to a recent posting on his Web site, that “they were not prepared to enter into a debate on the issues that we raised”.

Meanwhile, over at the Family Life NZ blog, Brendan Malone is also taking aim FP’s funding, challenging project grants by Merck Sharpe & Dohme as representing a conflict of interest, as well as suggesting FP has a population control agenda. (Details of FP’s income are included in its annual reports, a transparency we can’t say is matched by many of those lined up against FP.)

For example, we’d love to know the sources of the Family Life’s $698,000 in donations and bequests for the year ending 31 March 2009, (this figure is available on the Charities Commission site though there’s no breakdown of where the money comes from), as well as the roughly $26,000 Right to Life reported in donations in 2008.

And speaking of tax-payer money, how does FLI-NZ’s role in campaigns against abortion and against Family Planning gel with the FLI Trust’s charitable, tax-exempt status? (Right to Life doesn't have that status, having reported in its Footprints magazine that in February 2009 the Charities Commission "advised our Society that the aims and objectives of our society laid down in our constitution disqualified us from being a registered charity".) 

The Charities Commission considers two kinds of advocacy, one charitable, the other less so. “Political advocacy – advocacy for political change, for a political party, for a law change or enforcement of a particular law has ... been regarded by the courts as non-charitable”, it says on its Web site, while “personal and representational advocacy – for example, helping people access benefits as part of your charitable work” is generally OK. You decide!

To quote Mr. Malone’s own blog entry about FP funding: “I keenly await some answers (but I won’t be holding my breath for any!)”

MEANWHILE, BACK IN THE U.S.

In the United States, meanwhile, the STOPP (Stop Planned Parenthood) campaign (which argues, among other things that “Planned Parenthood's top goal for the next 25 years is to push its agenda of promiscuous sex everywhere in our society”) provides a detailed “plan for defeating Planned Parenthood”. This plan outlines the steps groups should take against PP (or FP in our case), which starts with convincing the local clergy, and moves on to targeting PP’s funding, setting up groups  (“You should call the group "Concerned Citizens of _____" or "STOPP [Stop Planned Parenthood] of _____" or any name you feel appropriate”), holding rallies, writing letters to the editor, running petitions, contacting local businesses, holding regular pickets and “ALWAYS ‘Rely on God to direct your efforts’”.

Much of this is just standard campaigning, of course, and the anti-FP campaign has been essentially following that playbook (petition: check; rallies: check; target funding: check; letters to the editor: check; contact businesses/politicians: check, etc.)

HISTORY REPEATS

Attacks like these aren’t anything new for Family Planning. Helen Smyth’s excellent history of the organisation, “Rocking the Cradle: Contraception, Sex and Politics in New Zealand" (Steele Roberts, 2000), details the long decades of opposition FP has faced about pretty much everything it has ever tried to do to improve Kiwis’ reproductive health and freedoms.

The Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child (the precursor group to Voice for Life and Right to Life) frequently targeted FP in the 1970s and 80s.  And in 1982, according to FP’s president at the time, Christine Taylor, the church seized on the occasion of a government review of health services to urge congregations to take action against FP. Ms. Taylor described to Helen Smyth the church response:

“As the parishioners filed out, the parish priest was standing at the door with a pro-forma letter for them to take and send off to their MPs asking them to get rid of this awful organisation Family Planning. We heard that hundreds of these letters were being received by individual MPs.”

The anti-FP campaign recently reported that New Zealand's Catholic bishops were writing to government ministers "to oppose and express their concern about the possible granting of a licence to dispense Mifepristone (Mifegyne® RU 486) with Misoprostol for the purpose of procuring Early Medical Abortions (EMA)".  

Yes, the church is still trying to impose its moral code on the state, this time opposing the expansion of a legal medical procedure. The more things change, etc....

SUPPORT FAMILY PLANNING

We hope readers, who know how invaluable Family Planning is to New Zealanders, will express their support for FP however they can. You can find out more about FP on their, Web site, where they also have a useful fact sheet on early medical abortion.

And please let us know if you see any fresh assaults headed their way.

You can contact Alranz at: safeandlegal(at)gmail.com

You can comment on this blog. Because comments are moderated, they may take a while to appear. We appreciate your understanding.

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