NZNO’s rainbow nurses and kaiāwhina are calling on the nursing workforce to stand firm in support of Aotearoa’s transgender communities in the face of Government attempts to “erase” them.
“Our professional duty is to care with evidence, compassion and Te Tiriti-based equity and that means standing against laws that erase trans and intersex people.”
A New Zealand First bill to “define” men and women biologically passed its first reading in Parliament on Wednesday, with the support of National and ACT. It can now go before Parliament’s select committee process which usually takes several months. The Bill states it would come into force the day shortly after it is passed.
‘No legislation can erase the reality that you have always existed and always will.’
The legislation (Definitions of Woman and Man) Amendment Bill‘ would legally define women as “an adult human biological female” and a man as an “adult human biological male”.
New Zealand First MP Jenny Marcroft, whose lodged the members’ bill, told Parliament it would bring clarity after “progressive politics” had prioritised ideology over biology.
But NZNO’s rainbow group say the move will legitimise discrimination and harm takatāpui, trans, intersex, non-binary and MVPFAFF+ communities. MVPFAFF+ is an acronym for rainbow and gender-diverse communities across the Pacific region.
It also failed to reflect intersex people who could have up to 40 variations on their sexual characteristics, said the nurses/kaiāwhina. The group is calling on the wider health/nursing workforce to stand up against the move and support the trans community in their clinical practice, workplaces and professional networks.
“Nurses have a clear professional responsibility to provide safe, respectful, culturally-responsive and evidence-informed care to every person.”
The Nursing Council’s code of conduct required nurses to care for people “based on best-available evidence and practise in a way that does not discriminate based on gender or sexual orientation”, the nurses said. It also obliged nurses to respect people’s identity, maintain trust, protect vulnerable people from harm and intervene when there was unsafe, unethical or discriminatory practice.
‘This bill exists exclusively to further marginalise trans people and will also have a significant impact on people across the country with variations of sexual characteristics.’
Te Tiriti-guided care, also required by the Nursing Council, must also actively protect Māori including those who were trans, intersex or takatāpui.
“Health equity cannot be achieved if laws and language erase the diversity of the people nurses care for.”
“We send our deepest aroha and support to our takatāpui, MVPFAFF+, trans, non-binary and intersex whānau across Aotearoa. We see you, we stand with you and we affirm your dignity, identity, and right to live safely and fully as yourselves. No legislation can erase the reality that you have always existed and always will.”
‘Politics of division’
Youth health nurse practitioner Michael Brenndorfer — who works in gender-affirming care — described the bill as “politics of division” and waste of tax-payers’ money to solve a problem that didn’t exist.
“This bill exists exclusively to further marginalise trans people and will also have a significant impact on people across the country with variations of sexual characteristics caught in the crosshairs of attempts to rigidly define these terms.”
It ignored the biological realities of many intersex people born with a range of sex characteristics — and the psychosocial realities of gender identity and expression, Brenndorfer said.
“The irony that the parties bringing this forward are claiming to be doing so to protect women’s rights while also being the parties voting against gender pay equity claims and abortion access should tell us everything we need to know about their motives here.”
Brenndorfer was referring to an incoming new citizens’ test for migrants to ensure they understood New Zealand’s human rights laws; last year’s shock mass-dumping of pay equity claims for women-dominated workforces; and the voting record of New Zealand First leader Winston Peters and Minister of Health Simeon Brown on the 2020 decriminalising of abortion.
Marcroft claimed the proposed law change would enshrine gender rights for women and girls and followed a Supreme Court decision in the United Kingdom last year which ruled the term woman referred to biological sex.
Labour’s Camilla Belich said the bill was “problematic” and harmful, while Green Party co-leader Chloe Swarbrick described it as a “time warp” back to a time when women were defined by body parts alone.