NZ Ministry of Health Shockingly Supports the Killing of the Unborn Child to be no longer a Crime

Media Release 14th July 2018

Right to Life is disappointed that the Ministry of Health in its submission to the Law Commission on its review of the abortion laws, supports the government’s proposal “that abortion be a reproductive health choice for women”. The Ministry claims; “Legal termination of pregnancy is much safer for women than giving birth.”  This is simply nonsense and the fact that it is coming from the Ministry is nothing less than abominable.

The submission signed by Ashley Bloomfield, CEO of the Ministry of Health [pictured here] sadly supports a culture of death in place of a culture of life which should pervade health services in New Zealand. The submission presents a sad reflection on an increasing culture of death which pervades the Ministry. Since 1977 the Ministry has classified the killing of children before birth as a core health service. It has established killing centres in 20 Public Hospitals where more than 500,000 unborn children have been violently killed. 

The unborn child is a patient who is entitled to special care and protection. The Ministry refuses to acknowledge that when they are caring for a woman with child, that they have the privilege and duty to care for two patients, the mother and the child.

The submission denies the stark reality that abortion kills an innocent and defenceless unborn child. It seeks to dehumanise the unborn child. It states that the child should be called a fetus and never a child and it denies that the unborn child has right to life. The Ministry insists that we do not use the term abortion and instead use the term termination of pregnancy service. The submission advises that staff at District Health Boards have been instructed to use these terms. Right to Life believes that this is to hide the reality that abortion kills an innocent human being and to attempt to remove the stigma that is associated with killing children in the womb.

The submission claims that abortion is safer than allowing a child to be born, ignoring the stark reality that in every abortion a child is violently killed; It claims that complications are very rare and that there is no link between abortion and breast cancer. International research debunks these assertions.

The Ministry is opposed to health professionals having a legal right to exercise their conscience in refusing to facilitate or participate in the killing of an unborn patient. The Ministry calls this exercise of conscience, “gender based discrimination.” Conscience rights are at the heart of the right to freedom of speech and the practice of ethical medicine and we remove them at our peril.

Right to Life fully supports the continued legal protection of the conscience rights of doctors and nurses, anything less means we are moving towards tyranny. Right to Life believes that the removal of conscience rights would ultimately result in doctors and nurses who refuse to be involved with the killing of unborn patients being driven from their professions.

Right to Life requests that the Minister of Health, the Hon Dr. David Clark, take urgent steps to take action against an executive that is not just anti-life but which seeks to remove our most cherished and basic freedoms. We seek this action to ensure that our health services have the utmost respect for our health professionals and the right to life of all patients, both born and unborn.

Ken Orr

Spokesperson,

Right to Life.