Right to Life New Zealand

Right to Life Opposes Southland’s Kew Hospital Abortion Proposal

Admin — Thu, 17 May 2012 10:25:32 +0000

Editor,

Southland Times.

Dear Sir

Abortion Clinic Opposed

The proposal of the Southern District Health Board to establish abortion facilities in Invercargill should be opposed by the citizens and churches of Southland. It is always wrong to kill the innocent and we all have a duty to defend the right to life of every human being especially unborn children who are the weakest and most defenceless members of the human family. Abortion is not a genuine health service and there is no place for a culture of death in the Kew hospital which is dedicated to protecting the life and the health of patients. It is abhorrent that healthy babies in potentially normal pregnancies should be terminated in pseudo legal abortions in a hospital where heroic efforts are made to save premature babies. Abortion is also damaging to women’s health. It can result in a lifetime of sorrow and regret for the mother, sterility and premature deliveries in subsequent pregnancies. Women who face an unplanned pregnancy deserve compassion and help in bringing their child to birth. Doctors and nurses at the Kew Hospital should seek the protection of section 46 of the Contraception Sterilisation and Abortion Act and refuse on conscience grounds to be involved in abortion.

Yours faithfully

Ken Orr

Spokesperson

Debunking the ‘Abortion Ban Increases Maternal Mortality Myth’

Admin — Tue, 15 May 2012 09:56:05 +0000

The Pro-abortion lobby have always claimed that banning abortion results in increased maternal mortality.

The following recent study from Chile gives the lie to this long standing belief that has somehow become embedded as a ‘fact’ in our culture.

The ramifications of this study are enormous and should cause a major rethink to one of the principal rationales to legal abortion worldwide.

A well known symbol of this widely distributed symbol of this fallacious belief “the coat-hanger” is often used by Pro-abortion groups in New Zealand and world-wide. Perhaps it is time they removed it.

Right to Life Questions Paula Bennett on DPB Contraception

Admin — Mon, 14 May 2012 08:26:19 +0000

Hon Paula Bennett,

Minister of Social Welfare,

Dear Ms Bennett

Re: Free Long Term Reversible Contraception for Women on DPB

Right to Life supports your government’s objective of reducing welfare dependency and discouraging women on the benefit from having further children while on the DPB.

Right to Life however is disappointed that your government is introducing free long term contraception for women on the DPB and their daughters over the age of 16. We are opposed to this strategy for the following reasons:

Contraception violates the natural law, is intrinsically evil and is part of a culture of death that has given us abortion the killing of an unborn child as a backup for failed contraception.
The contraception programme upholds the government’s failed Family Planning style comprehensive school sex education and its so called “safe sex”programme that promotes sexual activity outside of marriage.
Offering free contraceptives to the daughters of those on the DPB is giving the false message to young girls that being promiscuous is acceptable.
Contraception is bad and dangerous medicine. The contraceptive Depo Provera increases the risk of breast cancer and the long term effects of filling women’s bodies with powerful hormones contained in implants is unknown.

We believe that women on the DPB who are courageously raising children and women who heroically choose life for their child in the face of pressure to abort their child deserve the admiration and support of the community. The vast majority of women simply want to have a loving and faithful husband and father for their children. It is a great tragedy for women and society that today we have so many women who refuse to accept responsibility for the children that they have fathered. We believe that contraception has given many men the false belief that they can have sex without taking responsibility for the children that might result from an unplanned pregnancy. It is understood that 30 per cent of children in New Zealand are living in a home where the mother is alone. The abandonment of women and their children is a major social problem.

Our Society is also opposed to the proposal of having Income Support case managers raising the issue of contraception with clients on the DPB. This is not a matter for case managers to raise with clients as it is a breach of the clients privacy and could also be construed as intimidation. It is understood that it was the recommendation of the Welfare Working Group that the government make it a requirement for a woman applying for a DPB that she agree to accept long term contraception. This is a disturbing recommendation that raises several important questions:

What is your personal view on the recommendation?

Has the government resolved to reject the recommendation as unacceptable for this term of Parliament.

What assurance can you give that this recommendation will not be pursued by a future National government?

In view of the fact that the government proposes to have case workers at Income Support raise the issue of long term contraception with clients on the DPB, in the event of a client having an unplanned pregnancy, is the case worker expected to support the birth of the child?

Yours sincerely

Ken Orr

Secretary

Contraceptive shot linked with memory loss–From our Archives

Admin — Mon, 14 May 2012 06:45:39 +0000

Back in November 2011 we posted the following article (Italics below)…and now we read our government wants to – recommendation of the Welfare Working Group – make contraception, including Depo Provera, a compulsory requirement for women to receive the DPB.

Days after posting an article on the probable role of an injectable birth control hormone in spreading AIDS, I read this week that the same stuff may be causing memory loss in middle-aged woman. As if we didn’t have enough trouble remembering things already!

How ironic, that the recommended method for women who can’t be relied on to remember to take a pill every day should be one that may actually impair their memory.

The synthetic hormone progestin medroxyprogesterone acetate (MPA) is widely used in hormone replacement therapy for menopausal women as well as in injectable contraceptives such as Depo Provera. Arizona State University researcher Heather Bimonte-Nelson and colleagues were doing a rat study on MPA when they discovered that it impaired memory in post-menopausal rodents. To read the entire article click the link at the top.

Why Beneficiaries are the Victims of Paula Bennetts Social Engineering Policies

Admin — Sat, 12 May 2012 11:18:06 +0000

Right to Life is disappointed that the government is victimising women on the Domestic Purposes Benefit. The Hon Paula Bennett has announced the introduction of free contraception for women on the DPB and for their daughters over the age of 16. The contraception comprises the intra uterine device, [IUD], Depo Provera and long term Jadell implants.

The contraceptive programme was included in the recommendations of the Welfare Working Group as being a compulsory requirement for women to receive the DPB. This would be a gross violation of the human rights of women. The community should vigorously oppose this programme. If today we accept this programme offered under the guise of choice, tomorrow it may become a compulsory requirement for women who seek the DPB to be subject to long term contraception to prevent them having further children while on the DPB. We are living in dangerous times when the government may in the future consider using contraception as a weapon to control the community. We could follow China with its one child family policy, with forced abortions and sterilisations. The government’s proposed programme is morally reprehensible:

Contraception is part of a culture of death, is contrary to the natural law, violates a woman’s body and is intrinsically evil.
The programme upholds the government’s failed Family Planning style comprehensive sex education and its so called “safe sex “programme that promotes sexual activity outside of marriage.
Offering free contraceptives to the daughters of those on the DPB is giving the message to young girls that being promiscuous is acceptable.
The Jadell long term implant releases the hormone levongestral into a woman’s body. The long term effects on a woman’s health are unknown.

The programme is insulting, discriminatory and demeaning to women. The introduction of this programme wrongly infers that women on the DPB are promiscuous and irresponsible. The truth is:

There are 112,000 persons on the DPB, the vast majority are women. Teenagers number only 1165, which is only 2.7 per cent of the total. Only 20 per cent of women on the DPB have additional children while on the benefit.
The government claims that the programme’s objective is to reduce benefit dependency. This is untrue, 67.7 per cent of women are on the DPB for four years or less, hardly a lifetime choice.
Women on the DPB are the most maligned sector of our community; it is often claimed that many are defrauding the government. This is untrue; in 2007 Social Welfare set up a special fraud intelligence unit to detect benefit fraud. The Department checked 29 million records and found that benefit fraud rate amounted to only 0.10 per cent (in plain terms one in a thousand) that showed that women receiving the DPB were exceedingly honest.

The Welfare Working Group has failed;

To address the plight of many women who have been abandoned by the fathers of their children.
To take into account he social and economic contribution that those who are on the DPB make to society in raising their children.
To recognise the limited availability of work for those on the DPB.
To acknowledge the extent of poverty among those on the DPB.
To address the availability of – and affordability of child care.

It is not beneficiaries who have failed society, it is the government which has failed beneficiaries. Offering free contraception to those on the DPB is not the solution, it is part of the problem. Women who have courageously chosen life for their children instead of abortion deserve our admiration and support.

Ken Orr

Spokesperson,

Right to Life.

What will decriminalizing euthanasia mean for you and our society?

Admin — Wed, 09 May 2012 08:45:27 +0000

The Coalition for Life is hosting a public meeting in Christchurch this Friday entitled’

What will decriminalizing euthanasia
mean for you and our society?

Details
Friday 11 May, 7:30pm, Lecture Theatre 2, College of Education,
Dovedale Ave, Ilam
Gold coin entry fee
Speaker
Paul Russell from HOPE: preventing euthanasia & assisted suicide Inc., Australia’s leading anti-euthanasia national network.
For more information email coalition4lifenz@gmail.com or phone Alexia Hoyt ph (03) 942-7833
About the speaker
Paul Russell is founder and director of HOPE: preventing euthanasia & assisted suicide Inc., Australia’s leading antieuthanasia national network. He is also vice chair of the International Euthanasia Prevention Coalition based in Canada. Paul has had more than 15 years experience fighting euthanasia bills, mainly in South Australia. Paul will talk about the euthanasia situation in Australia and elsewhere but focus mainly on why euthanasia & assisted suicide is a bad idea – with special reference to the coming private member’s bill in the New Zealand Parliament.

“You matter because you are you.
You matter to the last moment of your life,
and we will do all we can,
not only to help you die peacefully,
but also to live until you die.”
Dame Cicely Saunders
(founder of the world’s first purpose-built hospice)

Steralisation of Women

Admin — Tue, 08 May 2012 20:14:32 +0000

Secretary,

Abortion Supervisory Committee,

Dear Ms Cole

Re: Sterilisation of Women

It is noted that at the recent hearing before the Justice and Law Reform Parliamentary Select Committee that Dame Holloway expressed concern that the number of publicly-funded tubal ligations for long term contraception was decreasing.

Right to Life is committed to upholding the dignity of women and promoting their health and welfare. We are therefore opposed to the sterilisation of women by tubal ligation for the following reasons.

It undermines the nature and purpose of marriage and sexuality. It goes against the dignity of sexual relations as intended by our Creator. It prevents the total gift of self because it excludes the potential for fertility.
Tubal ligation is the mutilation of a woman’s body and a violation of her human rights. Women have a right to the protection of the State.
Tubal ligation is an assault on the integrity of a woman’s body.
It is bad medicine, pregnancy is not a disease. There is no disease for which ligation would be a treatment. It is a medical procedure which is intended to destroy healthy organs.

The female reproductive organs are not just for reproduction; they are an essential part of any woman’s body and interact with brain chemistry and other hormones. One of the most common side effects of female surgical sterilisation is Post Tubal Ligation Syndrome [PTLS] caused by a lack of blood flow to the fallopian tubes, which in turn may cause an interruption in progesterone levels . Symptoms of PTLS include loss of libido, weight gain, depression, anxiety, chronic fatigue, heavy clotting during menstrual periods, mood swings, hair loss and severe pre-menstrual syndrome.

Women who have a tubal ligation increase the risk of an ectopic pregnancy seven fold.

Our Society shares your desire to see a reduction in the number of children killed in the womb. We don’t however believe that the mutilation of a woman’s fallopian tubes is an acceptable practice. Our Society believes that your Committee’s support for tubal ligation raises several important questions:

Does the Committee believe that it has a statutory duty to encourage women to seek a tubal ligation?
What action does the Committee take to encourage women to seek a tubal ligation?

In conclusion our Society respectfully requests that your Committee, in the interest of the health and welfare of women, reconsiders its support for tubal ligation.

Yours sincerely

Ken Orr

Secretary

Legal euthanasia kills justice for all

Admin — Tue, 08 May 2012 10:31:50 +0000

John Kleinsman, the spokesperson for the Nathaniel Centre – the NZ Catholic Churches bioethics centre -was featured in last Sundays (6th May 2012) Sunday Star times writing on the issue of Euthanasia.

We believe the points he raises in his article were insightful and very pertinent given the current situation here in NZ where for the third time we face a New Zealand MP trying to push an agenda of death on our country’s elderly and unwell.

The article speaks for itself.

Of utmost importance in this debate is his statement in the article that even the proponent of the latest Euthanasia bill, Maryan Street acknowledges that no amount of safeguards can be put in place to stop the law being abused. This is the crux. If Euthanasia is decriminalised in New Zealand then be prepared for the long slippery slope.

Dr Gill Greer and her push to support Global Family Planning will Cost Lives–not Save Them

Admin — Mon, 07 May 2012 09:41:32 +0000

The Abortion Law Reform Association issued a media release following its recent AGM. Dr Gill Greer, a former Director General of the International Planned Parenthood Federation [IPPF] claimed that it was necessary to put family planning back on the world’s agenda which could reduce maternal and child mortality by 70 per cent, saving the lives of hundreds of thousands of women and children.

Women in developing countries die in childbirth not because they do not have access to contraceptives and “safe abortion”, but mostly because they do not have access to proper health care during pregnancy. Every day 1,000 girls and women die in pregnancy or childbirth. The underlying cause is poverty. In the last 30 years the developed nations led by the United States and encouraged by the IPPF have spent $100 billion on population control. This money should have been spent on providing proper health services for women and their babies, immunizations against disease, clean water and proper child nutrition programmes.

The IPPF and its affiliate the Family Planning Association promote a culture of death. This destructive culture comprises contraception, sterilisation and abortion. All three are intrinsically evil, they destroy individuals, families and societies. Europe has a birth rate of less than 2.1 per couple, which is below replacement level. Europe is now firmly in the destructive grip of this culture of death that is contributing to a devastating demographic decline.

Planned Parenthood claims to support a woman’ right to choose. This is untrue; IPPF and by implication the New Zealand Family Planning Association, support China’s One-Child policy. The China Family Planning Association has been a full member of the IPPF since 1983. IPPF’s website states that “the China Family Planning Association plays a very important role in China’s family planning,” and that it “. . . supports the present family planning policy of the government, which is appropriate for the present national situation.” That policy, of course, is the ‘One-Child policy’, which states that women who conceive after already giving birth once, must abort their subsequent children, and those women who resist will be forced to comply. Additionally women who have forced abortions are sterilized against their will. These women have been attacked, fined, and stripped of everything they have as punishment for not adhering to the policy. Quite simply, the women who already have one child have no choice. Yet it is one of IPPF’s founding principles that woman must have choice? Why does the IPPF and the NZFPA support forced abortion? Surely this is a violation of human rights?

Dr Healey supports a woman’s right to choose to kill her child, but objects to doctors having a right to choose not to be involved in the killing of the child

Dr Healey the President of ALRANZ expressed concern at the expansion of so-called “conscientious objection” upheld by the High Court for doctors who were opposed on moral grounds for referring women seeking an abortion. Dr Healey supports a woman’s right to choose to kill her child, but objects to doctors having a right to choose not to be involved in the killing of the child. The opposition of ALRANZ is a threat to the right and duty of doctors to protect mothers and their unborn child. We should remember what happened in Nazi Germany when doctors were required to subvert their conscience and follow orders. ALRANZ is a threat to the welfare of women and the lives of their unborn children.

Ken Orr

Screening for Down syndrome – A community perspective

Admin — Sun, 06 May 2012 08:43:44 +0000

Screening for Down syndrome – A community perspective

Saving Downs are a New Zealand based group of parents and siblings of people with Down syndrome. Thye have formed in response to the New Zealand Government’s new state funded eugenic antenatal screening programme that targets and identifies unborn children with Down syndrome for selective abortion. They have recently produced the following resource for Health Professionals.

Midwives and general practitioners have been invited to a series of nationwide workshops in May and June 2012 to further enhance skills, knowledge and understanding in relation to antenatal screening for Down syndrome & other conditions.

The Down syndrome community has been excluded from participation in the workshops and we are taking this opportunity to provide our perspective on the screening programme.

11 facts for Midwives, GPs and Parents to know; see below

1.Like all people, those with Down syndrome are defined by their basic human dignity and not by their genetic makeup. They are loved and valued members of our families and communities. They make positive contributions to our society.

2.Down syndrome is a naturally occurring chromosomal arrangement that has always been a part of the human condition.

3.In a recent Children’s Hospital Boston survey 99 percent of parents of children with Down syndrome reported that they loved their child, 97 percent were proud of their child, and 79 percent attributed a more positive outlook on life to their child.

4.The screening pathway is non-therapeutic . It imposes more harm than benefit to a mother’s unborn child, through miscarriage and morbidity due to diagnostic testing.

5.The screening pathway leads to maternal anxiety and foetal hazard . Interrupting the pregnancy has adverse mental health outcomes for the mother.

6.There is no evidence that babies with Down syndrome can have a better medical outcome due to screening and testing. Medical problems associated with Down syndrome can be detected by routine antenatal clinical care without a diagnosis.

7.For every 100 women who screen at high risk for Down syndrome, RANZCOG state that only between four and six of them will be carrying a baby with Down syndrome.

8.It costs around $70,000 to detect an unborn child with Down syndrome.

9.Before the 2010 quality improvements around 55% of all babies with Down syndrome were not born due to antenatal screening and intervention. When Denmark introduced the same “quality improvements” the impact was a further halving in births of children with Down syndrome . A similar trend here would result in around 80% of all births of children with Down syndrome being prevented. Many people recognise that this is eugenics .

10.The New Zealand Down Syndrome Association does not consider Down syndrome in itself a reason for termination of a pregnancy.

11.People with Down syndrome and their families are best placed to provide parents with a diagnosis with accurate information and knowledge based in direct experience.

Ethics and the Hippocratic Oath

The original Hippocratic Oath has been updated by the Declaration of Geneva . It has been adopted by the World Medical Association and reflects the dedication of medical professionals to the humanitarian goals of medical practice. It includes:

A commitment to the service of humanity. A duty to act with conscience and dignity.

A commitment to not allow a disability to intervene between ones duty and their patients. Upholding the utmost respect for human life.

Many people in the Down syndrome community consider the screening programme to be eugenics , as it targets this community for birth prevention based on their biological difference. Such practices offend medical ethics, human dignity and the basic principles of humanitarian justice and international law.

Midwives and general practitioners have a statutory right to refuse to participate in antenatal screening for disabilities under Section 174 of the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Act 2003. This provides for conscientious objection in relation to any reproductive health service.

Loving Every Child: Defying Eugenics

It is one of life’s great paradoxes that the most gentle, loving and enduring amongst us have always been the target of the eugenicists – those with Down syndrome: the very people who embrace those defining human qualities of unconditional love and compassion.

The Down syndrome community has witnessed with grave concern the return of eugenics in New Zealand under the guise of prenatal health care, reproductive choice and human rights. It is inflicting serious harm on our unborn children, parents and the Down syndrome community.

In response to this Family Life International NZ and SavingDowns are holding a one-day seminar “Loving Every Child: Defying Eugenics”. This will be held in Auckland on the 4th August 2012 at the Columba centre. This will be an opportunity for people to learn about the history of eugenics and its recent emergence into New Zealand society. The seminar will be looking to raise awareness around the issue and to map out a response towards restoring respect and dignity towards the Down syndrome community. Midwives and general practitioners have a commitment to the service of humanity and are particularly welcome to attend and participate in this seminar.

Please contact Mike Sullivan at mike.b.sullivan@xtra.co.nz for further information.