The guest speaker at a seminar on abortion last Tuesday, organised by Victoria pro-life group LifeChoice, denied his affiliation with religious groups when asked.
Malone, advertised as a New Zealand bioethics and life issues speaker, presented an hour-long talk on abortion and human rights, advocating its outlaw, including in cases of rape and where the mother’s health is in jeopardy.
LifeChoice is a non-profit, non-political and non-religious club affiliated to ProLife New Zealand and associated with VUWSA through club status.
Malone was not paid to appear, but when pressed was reluctant to provide details on who was financing his nationwide tour.
“It’s some individuals from Northland, and some from Christchurch. I’ll be covering some of the sundries out of my own pocket,” he said.
When asked if these individuals were affiliated with any religious groups, Malone assured Salient they were not.
However, Malone is a director of LifeNET—a company providing seminars, life coaching, and media training—whose website is registered through Mustard Seed Consultants Limited, an information communications technology company which according to their LinkedIn profile “focuses on providing services to the Catholic Church”.
In a guest column Malone wrote for the New Zealand Herald, he is identified as the media liaison officer for the Catholic pro-life organisation Family Life International; a position he held until October 2011.
During the seminar Malone compared abortion to the sinking of the Titanic; a mother eating her infant while trapped on an island; one conjoined twin poisoning another, and the storming and subsequent occupation of Stalingrad.
LifeChoice President Mary-Anne Evers was pleased with how the event had gone, and said it was “really good.”
Jessica, a student affiliated with LifeChoice, said the seminar was a “good evening [with] good discussion, fairly rational and non- emotional”.
But another LifeChoice member was concerned with the seminar’s presentation of women’s issues, and felt that female members of the audience who had undergone an abortion would have felt uncomfortable.
Isabella Whitfield, a pro-choice student, felt Malone was “dismissive of the more complex realities that women face in making the tough choice to have an abortion.”
Prior to the event, Evers said the group aimed to approach the issues with compassion, rather than condemnation.
“I would be really really angry if someone…that was associated with our club went and condemned a woman.”
LifeChoice received no money from either VUWSA or the University to host the event.
Earlier in 2012, LifeChoice distributed ‘Right to Know’ pamphlets, criticised for providing misleading health information on abortion.