Media Release Tuesday April 18th 2017
Right to Life is disappointed that Parliament has granted personhood status to the Whanganui river in a move that is internationally unprecedented and highly questionable. Our Parliament to its shame continues to deny personhood status to the unborn child. This is a grave injustice to unborn children and a violation of the human rights of the unborn.
Personhood is endowed by our Creator on human beings at the moment of conception who are made in the image and likeness of God It is Parliament’s solemn duty to recognise the personhood of unborn children endowed by their Creator with human rights the foundation right being an inalienable right to life.
It is an appalling injustice and a crime against humanity that our Parliament cares more for a river than our own precious unborn.
It is a cruel farce to grant Personhood to a river. It is an affront to our unborn children who are denied the status of personhood. Will Parliament now consider granting personhood to lakes, mountains, snails? Parliament has seen fit to appoint two advocates for the rights of the river, one Maori and one appointed by the Crown. In contrast Parliament has appointed no advocate for the protection of our precious unborn. However it has appointed the Abortion Supervisory Committee to supervise the abortion industry and the efficient killing of the unborn deemed to be unwanted, in violation of their inalienable right to life.
Section 159 of the Crimes Act states that an unborn child does not become a human being until it is born. This born alive rule was challenged in the High Court in Right to Life v Abortion Supervisory Committee in 2008. Justice Miller stated in his judgment that; “The rule according human rights only at birth is founded on convenience rather than medical or moral grounds.” He also said that ‘A legal right to life would be incongruous in such a law, for it would treat the unborn child as a separate legal person, possessing a status fundamentally incompatible with induced abortion, far from modifying the born alive rule (Section 159 of the Crimes Act 1961), the abortion law rests on it.”
So, Parliament is fully aware that the denial of the personhood of the unborn child is necessary to allow for the murder each day in New Zealand of thirty-five unborn children.
The denial of the personhood of the unborn has allowed the murder of more than 500,000 children in the womb since the passing of the Contraception Sterilisation and Abortion Act in 1977.
A society that grants personhood and protection to a river while it denies the personhood of the unborn and its duty to protect the unborn is a society that has turned its back on God.
Ken Orr
Spokesperson,
Right to Life.
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