Graham Adams: The great abortion beat-up

John Key was often accused of using the “dead cat” strategy when he was coming under intense pressure as Prime Minister. The ruse he used to successfully distract opponents’ attention was likened to throwing a dead cat onto the dining-room table. Suddenly, an uncomfortable conversation would be abandoned as everyone shouted: “Look! There’s a dead cat on the table!”

Deputy Prime Minister Grant Robertson has shown recently that he is every bit as adept as Key at the dead-cat maneuver as his government comes under sustained fire over its many failures.

They include, but are not limited to: the spiraling cost of living, a broken health system, insanely expensive housing, and crimped building supplies.

Barend Vlaardingerbroek: Are the right to an abortion and the right to life irreconcilable?

   

A woman’s right to procure the termination of an unwanted pregnancy is one of those social issues that polarises societies. As with most hotly contested social issues, both camps on either side of the divide are ‘right’ in the sense that their cases are rational and logical given their central premises. 

These premises, however, arise from ideology and values rather than from hard empirical considerations. Hence the twain can never meet, and the issue will remain a polarising one forever. Unless and until, that is, someone comes up with an alternative that satisfies the requirements inherent in the central premises of both opposing parties.