Copy Cats

Anti-choice activity continues to bubble along, with more anti-Family Planning efforts being organized (including another march in Wellington). As we’ve noted on this blog, many of the ideas (and probably a lot of the money) come from the U.S., where Stop Planned Parenthood looks a lot like Stop Family Planning. But we recently found an even more direct U.S.-NZ link in a Kiwi Party press release. As Fox likes to say, "we report, you decide":

On 27 January, the Kiwi Party issued a press release about the latest abortion-breast cancer study to excite anti-abortion advocates in the U.S. The Kiwi Party’s statement (which includes claims of an “admission” from researcher Louise Brinton) is a lot like a story doing the rounds a few weeks earlier in the U.S. Indeed, one line is, um, strikingly similar to part of a press statement from an outfit called “the Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer” (who themselves may have lifted it, since it’s been around the Web for a while now):

1. From Kiwi Party statement (available at Scoop)

It is interesting to note that Brinton was the chief organizer of the 2003 NCI workshop on the abortion-breast cancer link which falsely assured women that the non-existence of the link was “well established”.

2. A/BC Press statement (from 6 Jan.) which went out on a few of the right-wing sites and news services, and is available here:

Brinton was the chief organizer of the 2003 NCI workshop on the abortion-breast cancer link, which falsely assured women that the non-existence of the link was "well established."

(By the way, the link claim as well as there being an “admission” by Brinton has been debunked on RHReality Check.)

Couldn’t the Kiwi Party at least write its own press statements?

The rise of the right in the U.S. is of more than passing interest for Kiwis – it has so much money and influence; in the anti-choice movement, for example, tactics that work there will more than likely be tried here, though they don’t always take hold. Operation Rescue, which arrived in the 1980s, fizzled out relatively quickly, as Kiwis tended to be turned off by their harsh tactics. 

But if we want to be forewarned and forearmed, it's worth keeping an eye on our American friends.