RODNEY HIDE: Checking the fact-checkers

Stuff’s Paula Penfold has published a long fact-check of NZ First candidate Elizabeth Mundt on abortion. If you only read the headline, Mundt sounds like a crank. Read past the nickname fights and the Covid calendar, though, and three points still stand. They are the ones that matter.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/politics/361030228/political-candidate-says-shes-been-haunted-topic-years-we-fact-check-her-claims

First: there is no upper limit — and the safeguard is weaker than Mundt said.

Mundt wrote that there is no upper limit to the age of a baby being aborted, and that if two practitioners agree, a baby can be killed right up to the day of birth.

Penfold agrees there is no maximum number of weeks. After 20 weeks, she notes, a practitioner must reasonably believe the abortion is “clinically appropriate,” and must consult at least one other qualified practitioner. But that second practitioner does not have to agree. Late abortions are not common — 164 of 17,785 in 2024.

So Mundt got the gate slightly wrong, and in a way that actually helped her critics for a moment. She said the two must “agree”. In law they need only “consult”. There is no veto. The post-20-week rule is therefore easier than she claimed, not harder. How often it happens is a different question from what the statute allows. She was talking about what the law permits. Penfold’s own correction leaves that standing.

Second: babies are born alive — and the reported care is wrap, hold, wait.

Mundt said babies that survive abortion are left in the sluice room to die, and that MPI is stricter about calving.

Penfold could find no evidence that sluice rooms are current practice. From 22 weeks, she reports, Ministry best practice is feticide first — an injection to stop the fetal heart — so a live birth is “very unlikely.” If one occurs, “appropriate care” is required. An Otago specialist said sluice stories have a historical basis, but that has not been best practice for many years.

Fair enough on the word “sluice.” Drop it. Keep your eye on the child.

Family First’s OIA work found in the order of eighty abortions have resulted in a child born alive since 2020.  None of them were given life-sustaining care although they were between 20 and 30 weeks.

I interviewed former midwife Judy Martin Hendrie on Reality Check Radio about this ([Born Alive, Left to Die](https://rcr.media/episodes/judy-martin-hendrie-born-alive-left-to-die-a-midwifes-shocking-testimony/)). She does not speak in slogans. One night she sat with a mother through a stillbirth at 24 weeks — a baby that mother would have done anything to keep. The next night the board listed a social termination at the same gestation: the baby was fine; the mother had chosen to end the pregnancy. Judy said she would not do it. Then an RN ran in; the woman was delivering and the assigned midwife could not be found. Judy had to go in. The aborted baby was born alive. Breathing. The mother held her baby for the two hours it took to die. Judy left the room to cry and to leave midwifery forever.

Family First reported stated practice for Canterbury Health Board: the baby is to be “wrapped in a blanket and held until it passes.”

They do not kill the baby. They wrap it. They hold it. They wait for it to die.  They simply deny the baby the care they could provide.  The cause of death is suffocation -- the little baby’s lungs are just not strong enough to sustain them at that age.  

That is not a Victorian ghost story. It is reported health-board language — and it matches what a midwife described from a night shift. Prefer feticide so the baby never breathes; if it does, do not treat it like a wanted premature child of the same age; wrap, hold, wait. MPI will fine you over a calf.

The fact checker said she could find no evidence of this happening. 

Third: “the same as any other baby” — on paper.

Mundt said survivors are not allowed to be “put to sleep” once born.

Penfold is right that intentionally ending the life of a baby born alive would be homicide, and that such a baby has the same legal status as any other.

That is exactly why the practice is so strange. They will not inject the newborn — that would be murder — so they wrap it and wait. Same outcome; different paperwork.

And no, it is not treated like any other baby as Penfold asserts. You could not leave any other baby to die. A wanted twenty-four-weeker is steered toward intensive care. An unwanted one of the same age gets a blanket and a wait. “Same legal status” is what the statute says. Practice is a blanket.

The fact check was a fail.  In any other job being that wrong would be career ending.  For journalists it's another day in the office.  Fact: babies are born breathing and are left to die.  One a month.

Rodney Hide is a former Minister and ACT Party leader