Still digging

Over the weekend, the US Supreme Court followed through on its threat, and overturned Roe v. Wade, effectively outlawing abortion in much of the United States. People were outraged, in America and around the world. And in Aotearoa, this meant a lot of sudden questions for the National Party, which is led by a fundamentalist anti-abortionist, stuffed with fundamentalist anti-abortionist MPs, and which tends to take its lead from whatever crack the US Republicans are smoking this week. While National's fundy backbenchers celebrated the imposition of forced birth in America, Christopher Luxon desperately tried to backpedal on his past views and reassure the public that National had no intention of changing the law. Except that today, he's doubling down on being anti-abortion:

When asked about his views on Monday, he told Newshub he still has a pro-life stance.

"I acknowledge I have a pro-life stance at a personal level," he said. "Simon has his own views as do others in our Caucus. They should be free to express that but in this case, it was actually being misinterpreted as the National Party position and therefore it wasn't appropriate."

When asked what he thought about people who chose to have an abortion, Luxon reiterated his pro-life stance.

"As I said I have a pro-life stance. It's a very difficult and a very agonising decision," he said.

He is yet to clarify whether he still believes abortion is tantamount to murder despite Newshub asking early Monday morning.

Which rather casts doubt on all those prior "reassurances", doesn't it? But the real problem for Luxon is that, given that US conservatives have literally perjured themselves to gain power to impose theocracy, we just can't trust anything he says. Sure, Luxon says he won't change anything - but so did Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett. And we know how that turned out. We should not make the same mistake here.