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Paula Penfold is a senior reporter with the Stuff Circuit investigative team.
OPINION: A story this week by my colleague Hamish McNeilly had the attention-grabbing headline, “Big win for Dunedin’s ‘dicks guy’”.
It detailed how Sam Sharpe, who has staged a counter-demonstration against abortion protesters near a clinic at Dunedin Hospital every Friday for nearly 10 years, might soon be out of a gig.
The hospital’s abortion service is one of six locations that will become the country’s first designated safe areas from later this month, meaning certain behaviours that “could be considered distressing to a person accessing or providing abortion services” are prohibited within 150 metres of the site.
McNeilly’s story caught my eye because in 2019 Stuff Circuit’s documentary Big Decision examined abortion laws in light of proposed law reform, and in the process, we met ‘dicks guy’.
We were filming protestors Des and Pauline (whose placard read “Abortion Stops a Beating Heart”) outside Dunedin Hospital.
“We’re talking about the beating heart of the baby,” Pauline explained, “and we’re standing here while these babies are dying”.
And then the camera pans across to a guy with his own sign.
“Dicks”, it says, simply, with a phallic arrow pointing towards Des and Pauline.
Hamish McNeilly/Stuff
Sam Sharpe led a counter-protest against anti-abortion protesters outside Dunedin Hospital over a decade.
Catchy.
Sam Sharpe had a personal motivation for protesting the protesters: His great-grandmother died after an illegal, botched abortion. His own girlfriend, years later, had been more fortunate. “Her body, her choice.”
So Sharpe was “offended” when he saw the protesters and their signs where “women – and girls – have to walk past this group of people.”
“It upset me to the point where I wanted to do something.”
And he did, nearly every Friday, for nearly 10 years.
On the Friday we were filming, the protesters were joined by retired Catholic bishop Colin Campbell. Of Sharpe’s counter-demonstration, he said: “He might be going along with the modern idea of a woman’s right. Without thinking about that there’s another person involved here.”
The modern idea of a woman’s right.
It galled me it might be considered a fanciful and presumably unnecessary modern invention.
I had my reasons.
For that documentary, I went public with my own decision, many years ago, to have an abortion. It was relevant because one of the subjects up for legislative debate was the requirement for two “certifying consultants” to approve the procedure.
Jason Dorday/Stuff
Anyone who values reproductive rights should watch politics closely, says Paula Penfold.
Within two minutes of my arrival in the small, brown office in a provincial family medical centre, after briefly inquiring about my family medical history and without asking me why I wanted an abortion, the certifying consultant told me I didn’t meet the criteria. “This is not, and should not be, an abortion-on-demand society.”
When Big Decision was published, my inbox was flooded with others’ abortion stories – and with toxic messages from those who disapproved of my decision, some of whom called me a murderer. (Ah, the innocent old days of 2019. Now, the haters are more likely to want to kill you than accuse you of being a killer.)
Then I forgot about it all, until, three years later, I had a message via Instagram one morning, from a young woman.
“Hi Paula,” she wrote, “I was just reading your article on the abortion you were denied by a certain doctor. Thank you. I am due to get mine today so I’m looking for reassurance. It helped.”
I asked how she was.
“I’m doing OK, thank you. It’s a hard thing to do, but I’m so grateful we have options.”
We do. Improved options.
Changes made to New Zealand legislation from 2019 not only saw the safe zones introduced (on a case-by-case basis), but also abortion decriminalised (yes, previously it was in the Crimes Act), and women able to choose a termination up to 20 weeks into a pregnancy.
No more certifying consultants. The most significant changes to reproductive rights laws in 40 years.
But celebrations (if there were any, it’s not really the kind of thing you pop a Prosecco over) were short-lived.
In 2022, millions of Americans lost their constitutional right to abortion after the US Supreme Court overturned the landmark Roe v Wade legislation. A postcode-lottery of which state someone lives in now dictates whether they can access abortion services.
If a 50-year-old constitutional right can be overturned in the US, of course there are implications for a law in its infancy here. Our newfound abortion rights are not remotely set in stone; they remain subject to change by the government of the day.
Will it be an election issue? Probably not. It’s not exactly a vote-winner, on either side of the debate.
But anyone who values reproductive rights should watch closely.
And to Sam Sharpe: thank you for your service, this past decade.
Please don’t hang up your dicks sign yet, just in case.
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