Simon Bridges – “Abortion is rare, safe and legal”

Media Release 2nd June 2018

The leader of the National Party stated on TVNZ 1’s Breakfast programme on Thursday 31 May, that he would “be loath to” remove abortion from New Zealand’s Crimes Act, saying the law as it stands is working. “Practically speaking, we have several thousand abortions per year here. “I would argue actually, in reality, it is rare, safe and legal.”… “ My argument is .. what’s wrong with the law as it’s working today?”                       

Right to Life commends Simon Bridges for opposing abortion being taken out of the Crimes Act as is planned by the Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. Supporting abortion as rare, safe and legal however is not a pro-life or pro-women position. Rather it is an illusion and a subterfuge that is used by many politicians to avoid opposing the violence against women and the killing of our innocent and defenceless unborn children. We cannot placate the pro-death movement by accepting the killing of any child before birth. 

Parliament is ultimately responsible for the performance of the abortion laws in New Zealand. How can any Member say with a clear conscience, “what’s wrong with the law as it is working today” when 12,000 children are being violently murdered each year, totalling more than 500,000 since 1978?

One baby is killed for every four that are born.  This is genocide and a crime against humanity.

Abortion is not safe for the child which is violently dismembered in its mother’s womb. Nor is it safe for the mother who is often left with a lifetime of regret, sorrow, pain potential infertility, and an increased risk of breast cancer and in future pregnancies, miscarriages and premature deliveries.

The lawfulness of abortions in New Zealand is questioned. In a review of the workings of the Abortion Supervisory Committee, initiated by Right To Life New Zealand, Justice Forrest Miller in the High Court in Wellington in 2008 stated that, “there was a reason to doubt the lawfulness of many abortions in New Zealand.”  Dr Christine Forster formerly Chairperson of the Abortion Supervisory Committee in a review in Parliament by the Justice Select Committee in 1995, is on record as having stated that, certifying consultants were using mental health grounds to provide abortion on demand.

The Abortion Supervisory Committee in its report to Parliament in 1988 stated:

“If abortion is abhorrent to the majority of our thinking population, then the emphasis should be on education aimed at achieving a higher proportion of planned pregnancies than perpetuating the present unwieldy system of authorising termination of potentially normal pregnancies on pseudo-legal grounds.”

New Zealand needs statesman who are committed to the next generation and not politicians who are committed to the next election. Right to Life requests that the leader of the National Party adopt an authentic pro-women and pro- life position that is committed to having:-

• The abortion law as passed by Parliament in 1977 upheld and complied with.

• A national campaign to promote adoption, the loving option.

• Legislation that recognises the unborn child as a human being endowed with human rights, the foundation right being a right to life.

The killing of the unborn is a crime against humanity and this is the justice issue of our era.

Ken Orr

Spokesperson,

Right to Life.