Ministry Of Health Submission Dehumanises Our Unborn Children

Hon, Dr David Clark…

19 July 2018.

Dear Minister,

Ministry of Health submission on Abortion law review.

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 untrue and ignores the fact that in every abortion an innocent and defenceless unborn child is violently killed.

The submission signed by Ashley Bloomfield, CEO of the Ministry of Health, 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 since 1978.

The Ministry, in its submission, refuses to acknowledge that 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, they have the privilege and duty to care for two patients, the mother and the child.

The Ministry  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 which is associated with killing children in the womb.

The Ministry claims that complications are very rare and that there is no link between abortion and breast cancer, international research debunks these assertions. It is accepted by the medical profession that following an abortion, a woman has more cancer prone cells in her breasts than she had before her abortion.

Right to Life is very concerned that 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 refusing to be involved with the killing of unborn patients being driven from their professions. We would then have a medical profession that was under the control of the state.

Right to Life asks:

• Are the proposals made by the Ministry of Health in accordance with government policy?

• Do you support the removal of conscience rights provided by section 46 of the Contraception Sterilisation and Abortion Act, which allow health professionals to refuse to authorise, participate in an abortion or refer the woman to another doctor who will perform the abortion ?
• Do you support the Ministry seeking to dehumanise the unborn child by changing the language to hide the fact that the unborn child is a human being endowed with human rights, the foundation right being a right to life?

• Do you support the Ministry’s denying that abortion entails the killing of another human being, is not a crime, should be removed from the Crimes Act and its killing made “a reproductive choice for women”?

In conclusion, Right to Life requests that you, take urgent steps to ensure that our unborn children who are the weakest and most defenceless members of the human family receive the utmost respect and protection. 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.

Yours sincerely,

Ken Orr,

Secretary.