Another day, another story of an international student facing deportation for being pregnant. This is the most basic form of discrimination against women there is. And the government has made it a central plank of immigration policy.
As usual, there's no question of cost - the woman in question has health insurance, and her care is fully funded. And there's no question of citizenship, because Labour robbed her child of that right years ago. There is no reason for the state to care about her health at all.
What's the natural conclusion to draw from this? That New Zealand hates women. At the same time as we're touting for tourists and international students, we're telling half of them "don't fall in love, don't behave like a human being, and don't expect to be treated like an adult capable of making your own choices". According to the New Zealand government, you can be a tourist or a mother, a student or a mother - but never both (the ordinary struggles of hundreds of thousands of women notwithstanding).
This is simply a vile, discriminatory, misogynistic and fundamentally immoral policy. And its long past time we ended it.
