Wednesday, March 11, 2020

Labour are chickenshits on abortion

Last night, inattentive MPs caused a major fuckup on the Abortion Legislation Bill, with David Seymour's amendment to remove safe zones being passed on a voice vote without anyone noticing. It was a procedural error, and the government has multiple options to fix it. But do they want to? Of course not:
Justice Minister Andrew Little will not try to re-introduce "safe zones" into his abortion legalisation bill after a procedural snafu saw them removed on Wednesday night.

[...]

Little said in a statement he would not be attempting to re-insert the safe zones into the bill.

"The safe zone provision was always the most marginally supported," Little said.

He said it wasn't clear if Seymour's amendment actually had the numbers but he would not be pursuing further change as the "substance of the bill" remained.

Another example of the complete chickenshittedness of this government. Its too much effort to find out where Parliament actually stands (rather than sleeps) on this, so they won't bother. But hopefully, some other MP will step up to lead where Little is refusing to. And if not, its an obviously subject for a member's bill once the main bill is passed.