A Dodgy Media ‘Fact Check’ Backfires & Exposes How Extreme NZ’s Abortion Law Has Become
Brendan Malone from Lifenet wrote a response to Paula Penfold’s article about Elizabeth Mundt’s comments on New Zealand’s abortion law.
We appreciate his response and thought you would too.
From Brendan…
Late this afternoon, Stuff NZ published a ‘fact check’ of social media statements made by NZ First candidate Elizabeth Mundt about the Abortion Legislation Act that was introduced and passed under the Ardern Labour Government in early 2020.
It’s a rather strange piece by Paula Penfold, and I can’t help but suspect that the intention here was to try and discredit or ridicule Mundt for her public statements highlighting the extreme nature of our current abortion laws.
The irony is that, in factchecking Elizabeth Mundt’s claims, they’ve actually ended up showing that she was essentially correct in what she has said, and that we do indeed have an extreme abortion law in NZ now.
Here’s the key quotes from Penfold’s article and my responses to each:
“I asked Mundt for an interview.
She did not reply. Instead, she posted a video in which she said her original Facebook post had “surprisingly … just disappeared”…
“Next minute,” Mundt continued, “I have an email from Paula Penfold. You remember the lady? She was the one who did the Fire and Fury documentary, where she was telling New Zealanders to be concerned around little blonde braided girls and mothers that cook sourdough at home and do knitting.”
She was right about one detail. I was involved in making Fire and Fury, a 2022 Stuff Circuit documentary that examined the spread of disinformation and violent rhetoric surrounding the occupation of Parliament.
I checked the script. There is no mention of blonde girls or mothers making sourdough. It does mention that one of the founders of Voices for Freedom was a former lawyer who subsequently became a knitting-pattern designer.”
For someone so involved in the COVID disinformation scare (as Penfold states above, she produced a high profile documentary on this matter), you would think that Penfold would be aware of what Mundt is referring to here, and that she has simply confused two different high profile New Zealand documentaries on the same topic.
What Mundt is actually referring to are claims that were featured in the TVNZ documentary, also about the COVID disinformation scare, called Web of Chaos - which was also broadcast in 2022, just weeks after Fire and Fury was.
In Web of Chaos, interviewee Kate Hannah - who also featured heavily in Fire and Fury - claimed that seemingly innocent things could actually be a front for extremism, warning viewers: “If you see a very beautiful, fair skinned, blonde or red haired child with beautiful braiding in her hair and some flowers, just step back a little bit.”
It is an innocuous and completely understandable mistake for Mundt to have confused these two documentaries, and Penfold’s decision to even highlight such an innocent gaffe is a sign of how superficial and petty the rest of her ‘fact checking’ of Mundt is going to be.
“Fact check #1 – Was there a “full-term abortion bill” and was it passed while the country was distracted?
No. There was – and is – no legislation called the “full-term abortion bill”.
The legislation Mundt was likely referring to was officially called the Abortion Legislation Bill, which became law in March 2020, amending the Contraception, Sterilisation, and Abortion Act 1977.
It is true that the bill passed its third reading on March 18, 2020, exactly one week before New Zealand entered its first nationwide Covid-19 lockdown.
But work reforming the law had begun two years earlier.”
Penfold is being disingenuous, and as a result she has misled her readers here.
Anyone with half an ounce of common sense would rightly discern that when Mundt uses the phrase “the full-term abortion bill”, she is almost certainly speaking about the outcome of the legislation rather than its specific title - in other words, what she is describing is its practical effect (allowing abortions right up to birth), rather than it’s technical name.
Yet Penfold has decided to factcheck Mundt as if it was the other way round.
It’s also absurd to try and pick holes (as Penfold does here) in Mundt’s statement about the bill being passed into law while the country was distracted, because there is nothing at all false about this statement.
The Abortion Legislation Act was passed into law precisely when the nation was distracted by both COVID, and also the looming one year anniversary of the Christchurch mosque killings.
I can’t see any valid reason for Penfold to have done this, and it just comes off as a vindictive attempt to ridicule someone based on minor technicalities that distract attention from the far more important substantive points she has made.
Or perhaps that was the whole purpose of this exercise?
“Fact check #2 – Did NZ First MPs vote against the bill and support fetal pain relief?
Partly.
The bill’s third reading was a personal vote, often called a conscience vote. The bill passed by 68 votes to 51. Seven of NZ First’s nine MPs voted against it. Tracey Martin and Jenny Marcroft voted in favour.
Mundt also said an amendment requiring pain relief for a fetus had been “removed”.
It was never part of the bill. National MP Agnes Loheni proposed an amendment that would have required a fetus, for an abortion after 20 weeks, to be under the influence of a “general or local anaesthetic, or an analgesic that is sufficient to prevent the fetus from feeling pain”.
The amendment was defeated by 76 votes to 43.
All nine NZ first MPs, including Winston Peters, voted against it.”
Again, what we see here from Penfold is yet more of the same nitpicking of minor technicalities which have no meaningful bearing on the essential facts that Mundt has highlighted in her video.
Most importantly here is that there was actually an amendment to require pain relief to be administered to unborn children older than 20 weeks (prior to an abortion), that it was put to a vote, and that it was rejected by the majority of MPs in Parliament at the time.
One point that Penfold has obfuscated here is that Winston Peters voted against the legislation in its entirety - making his refusal to vote in favour of the post 20 week pain relief amendment moot.
“Fact check #3 – Can two practitioners agree a baby “can be killed” right up to the day of birth?
Not as Mundt describes it.
New Zealand law does not set a maximum number of weeks at which an abortion can be performed.
In other words: Mundt was telling the truth and unborn children can definitely be aborted right up to birth under the Ardern Labour government’s Abortion Legislation Act (2020).
After 20 weeks, however, a statutory clinical test applies: a qualified health practitioner can provide abortion services only if they reasonably believe the abortion is clinically appropriate.
The phrase ‘clinically appropriate’ (which is the exact wording of the legislation) does not have an objective legal definition, and therefore it does not actually create a meaningful restraint upon late term abortions in New Zealand.
Also, the old law required these abortions to be carried out by a doctor, but this was changed by the Ardern Labour government to a ‘qualified health practitioner’ - which is a much looser criteria that can include nurses, midwives, and others.
They must consult at least one other qualified health practitioner. Contrary to Mundt’s claim, the second practitioner does not have to “agree” with or approve the decision.
In other words, the current law is even more extreme than Mundt actually believes it to be, as the abortionist doesn’t actually need to get a second approval before carrying out a late term abortion. They simply need to ‘consult’ with another ‘qualified health practitioner’ before aborting a child older than 20 weeks.
Very few abortions occur after 20 weeks.
This is a red herring commonly used by supporters of our extreme abortion law, but the fact that the number of unborn children killed by abortions after 20 weeks is lesser than the number of unborn children killed by abortion earlier in pregnancy is not relevant.
The essential issue here is the fact that this is even legally allowed in the first place.
This sort of red herring would be similar to someone trying to defend a law that permitted slavery by saying “the number of people owned as slaves is actually quite small when compared to the number of people who are not slaves in our country.”
One very pertinent fact that Penfold has failed to disclose to her readers here is that the number of late term abortions in New Zealand has almost doubled since the passing of this act in 2020.
“Fact check #4 – Are babies born alive and left in sluice rooms to die?
Stuff could find no evidence that this is current practice in New Zealand.
The Ministry of Health says that from 22 weeks, best clinical practice is for feticide – an injection to stop the fetal heart – to take place before an abortion. In a 2024 OIA response, the Ministry said this meant a live birth following an intended abortion was “very unlikely”.
But not impossible.
…
[Dr Helen Paterson of Otago University’s Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology] said there was a historical basis for accounts of fetuses showing signs of life following abortions or who were not going to survive for other reasons such as being too premature, being removed to sluice or utility rooms.
She said that was no longer the case.
“The sluice is not acceptable,” she said. “If you looked back in time and said, ‘Are there times when that’s happened?’ Absolutely. But it has not been considered best practice for many, many years.”
In other words, we have yet more of the same nitpicking of Mundt dressed up for the public as if this is serious and essential factchecking.
One also has to ask how much research Penfold actually did before writing this part of her ‘fact check’, because earlier this year Voice For Life NZ published an account from a New Zealand midwife about a failed abortion that left a baby born alive and ‘gasping for hours’ before dying.
Back in June 2021 they also published another account, based on a sworn affidavit from an eyewitness, about a New Zealand baby that took two hours to die while the hospital withheld medical assistance after a late term abortion.
“Fact check #5 – Why are babies not allowed to be “put to sleep once birthed”?
Stuff asked Mundt what she meant by this statement but she did not respond.
If she means intentionally ending the life of a baby born alive, that would be homicide.
A baby born alive following an abortion has the same legal status and protections as any other baby.
Under the Crimes Act, deliberately killing it would potentially constitute homicide.”
Yes, Mundt has certainly phrased this statement in a very confusing way, but there is a perverse irony in Penfold highlighting the grave immorality of killing a child just moments after it has been born as the result of a failed attempt to kill it in the womb (assuming that this is what Mundt intended).
“Fact check #6 – Can school staff take teenagers for abortions without their parents knowing?
Yes, that could happen, but not because school staff have any special legal authority.
Section 38 of the Care of Children Act 2004 says a young person’s consent to, or refusal of, an abortion has the same effect as if they were an adult. Parental consent is not required.
…
Depending on the circumstances and the school’s policies, a teacher, counsellor, nurse or other trusted adult could accompany or transport a student at the student’s request.
But section 38 says nothing about schools, school staff, transport or removing students from school. Any staff member would be acting as a support person, not exercising a special power under abortion law.”
In other words, once again, Mundt was correct in what she stated, and Penfold is yet again engaging in completely pointless nitpicking.
Considering the fact that Mundt has not made a single substantial false claim in her Facebook post, and that this so-called ‘fact check’ has actually ended up verifying all of her key claims, and only finding innocuous secondary issues to nitpick, I find myself asking why Penfold actually wrote it, and why the editors at Stuff even allowed it to be published on their platform?
This entire article looks like little more than a hit piece motivated by ideological bias, and which, ironically, considering it is labeled as ‘fact checking’, misleads and creates confusion in the minds of the general public about the truthfulness of Mundt’s opposition to New Zealand’s abortion laws.
The fact that this was published, let alone written in the first place, is a sad indictment on all involved. One really has to wonder about the culture and standards currently governing journalistic practices at Stuff.
If this is what qualifies as journalism, and in the public interest, then I really have to wonder if the terms ‘journalism’ and ‘public interest’ actually have any serious meaning anymore.
To read more of Brendan’s work, visit The Dispatches.