“Cognitive dissonance” is the state of holding contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values. Many of the hot-button issues in the Culture Wars are characterised by profound cognitive dissonance.
For instance, groups preach about “tolerance” and “inclusion”, yet behave like bigots who viciously exclude anyone who disagrees with them. Our society regards suicide as a terrible calamity, a “plague”, yet increasingly embraces state-sanctioned suicide. Abortion-on-demand is touted as a fundamental women’s right – increasingly, up to or even beyond the point of birth. Yet, at the same time, intentionally or accidentally causing the death of an unborn child is being legally framed as “homicide”.
Other laws are also being passed which tacitly or explicitly recognise the unborn as persons.
New Zealand has become the second country to pass bereavement legislation allowing parents who lose a baby by means of stillbirth or miscarriage to take leave from work. The legislation permits mothers, their partners and parents who are planning to have a child through adoption or surrogacy to take three days of bereavement leave without being forced to use holiday or sick leave. The bill, brought forth by Labour MP Ginny Andersen, passed unanimously thus becoming law. The only other country to have such a law is India, which provides six weeks of leave for a woman if she miscarries a baby. The UK and Ontario, a province of Canada, also have provisions for paid leave in place in the case that a woman has a stillbirth.
Have you spotted the dissonance, yet?
What is intriguing about the passing of this bill in New Zealand is that, despite their proclivity to extreme abortion laws (extreme in the sense that they allow abortions to occur for practically any reason at any time of the pregnancy), New Zealand’s politicians have essentially acknowledged the lives of the unborn. In fact, they have practically recognized that these are no mere fetuses or clumps of cells, but human lives from conception.
At least two Australian states have passed “foetal homicide” laws that allow for people to be prosecuted if their actions cause the miscarriage of an unborn child. So, it would seem that unborn children are “persons” – with attendant rights. Unless they are aborted.
New Zealand’s laws are even more confused.
Under New Zealand’s Bereavement Leave law, a miscarriage is the loss of a baby in the first 20 weeks of a pregnancy, and a still-birth is the loss of a baby thereafter. The definitions also stipulate that one is only entitled to this bereavement leave if the baby passes before birth as a result of natural causes. They are not entitled to leave if they have an abortion.
What this implies is that abortion has no effect on women’s mental health. While many abortion proponents seem to regard abortion as no more problematic than squeezing a pimple, others argue – rightly enough, it seems on the evidence – that for many women, abortion is a difficult and weighty decision.
But New Zealand’s supposedly “kind” government apparently couldn’t care less.
First, it appears the New Zealand government has no concern for those who access abortion[…]there is an apparent lack of empathy on the part of the NZ government, but that should come as no surprise given their support for abortion.
Second, it would appear that the NZ government has recognized that unborn babies constitute human life. However, paradoxically, they still seem to be hung up on this, considering no leave is granted to those who have an abortion. So, it appears the government is at a crossroads of sorts, acknowledging unborn babies are human lives, but only in certain circumstances.
The Good Sauce
This isn’t to take issue with the idea of bereavement leave for miscarriage or stillbirth. Both, especially the latter, are devastating tragedies for parents.
But the New Zealand government has only highlighted the stark cognitive dissonance that is so common in dealing with abortion. At least both the on-demand, any time, pro-abortionist and the never, under any circumstance anti-abortionist can rightly claim an uncompromised, logically consistent worldview.
The New Zealand government is simply tying itself in cognitive knots in trying to justify two sets of beliefs that contradict each other.
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