Right to Life New Zealand

Upholding the sanctity of life in New Zealand and Standing Against the Killing

Newshub’s Jessie Mulligan “Surely not all those who (oppose oppose abortion decriminalisation) are “hard core religious types and weirdos”

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Jessie Mulligan

The Manager Media Works,

Dear Sir

Formal complaint.

I wish to lodge a formal complaint on behalf of Right to Life against an item on the decriminalisation of abortion that featured on the Project at 7 PM on 13 March, 2019. Note: Facebook link

My complaint is that the item breached the Broadcasting Standards Authority’s standards Standard 6 Discrimination and Denigration, Standard 8 Balance and Standard 9 Accuracy.

Standard 6 Discrimination. The presenter, Jessie Mulligan, made a statement and asked “surely not all those ‘who were opposed to the decriminalisation of abortion’ were “hard core religious types and weirdos.”

This statement denigrates those who are opposed to the killing of the unborn who are the weakest and most defenceless members of the human family. Why is it weird to defend the right to life of the voiceless? Why is it weird to recognise abortion as violence against women? There are many women who have had an abortion and who are now living a life of grief, sorrow and regret and who now seek to protect other women from the violence of abortion. The statement was discriminatory as it seeks to silence and deny the right of those who are opposed to abortion to be heard. Opposition to the violence of abortion is not a religious issue, one does not have to be religious to be opposed to violence against women and their unborn.

I believe that justice demands that Mr Mulligan now makes a public apology on the Project programme to the thousands of viewers who he has offended and insulted.

The most dangerous place for a New Zealander today is in the mother’s womb.The item confirms and perpetuates the ultimate discrimination against the unborn that only those who are wanted have a right to life and those who are classified as “unwanted”, may be killed.  

Standard 8 Balance. The item lacked balance as it was evident that the proposal to decriminalise abortion had the open support of all the presenters. It is contended that the ethics of the journalism profession requires that journalists adopt a neutral stance on contentious social issues.

A female presenter stated that she had terminated the life of her second child because it was unwanted and supported the decriminalisation of abortion. There are many women in our community who have had an abortion who regret it and are opposed to the decriminalisation of abortion. To achieve balance why was such a woman not interviewed?

The Minister of Justice, Andrew Little, was interviewed on his plans to present a bill to decriminalise abortion. To achieve balance, why was there no interview of an opposition MP to present a case to oppose decriminalisation?

The CEO of Family Planning, Jacki Edmund, was interviewed for 2 minutes and 14 seconds making claims that the current legislation violated human rights and should be taken out of the Crimes Act. Abortion is in the Crimes Act, Crimes against the person Part VIII. Section 182 Killing unborn child and is a crime to kill an unborn child. To achieve balance, why was there no person from the pro-life movement  interviewed to challenge the false statements made by Edmund? Why too did the presenters fail to ask Edmund to justify her contention that abortion should be taken out of the Crimes Act and for the killing of an unborn child to no longer be a crime? There is no United Nations convention or law in New Zealand that supports abortion as a human right. Why did the presenter fail to challenge Edmund on the accuracy of her statements?

The item lacked balance as the introduction to the item showed a small number of abortion supporters holding placards in support of abortion. To show balance why were there no shots showing the more that 1,200 people, young and old, who joyfully and peacefully marched on Parliament on Saturday 8th December 2018, defending life, supporting women and opposing the decriminalisation of abortion?

Standard 9 Accuracy. The item was misleading in that it promoted the proposition that abortion should not be in the Crimes Act without addressing why abortion is in the Crimes Act. The law recognises that the state has an interest and a duty to protect the lives of its future citizens. It also recognises in sections 182 and 183 that the unborn child has a right to be born. This protection has been there since 1856. The Crimes Act declares that it is a serious crime to kill an unborn child. There was no attempt in this programme to produce evidence to support the claim made by the Prime Minister and the Minister of Justice that abortion should not be a crime ie that it is no longer a crime to kill an unborn child. It should be known that the Prime Minister and the Minister of Justice when asked recently by Right to Life under the Official Information Act what evidence they had to support their claim that it was not a crime to kill an unborn child replied that they had no evidence and that it was just their opinion. 

The Project team are commended  for producing a quality current affairs programme, it is disappointing that this item did not reach their normal high standard.

Yours sincerely

Ken Orr

Secretary

ken @righttolife.org.nz    

United Nations International Women’s Day – preventing violence against Women

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Media Release 8 M

Right to Life fully supports the International Women’s Day 8 March, to promote gender equality, and to oppose discrimination including violence against Women. We  commend the Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern for speaking out against violence against women. Violence against women and girls is an international problem of pandemic proportions. Violence against women is always a violation of human rights; it is always a crime and it as always unacceptable.

Right to Life asks the Prime Minister “how can you oppose violence against women and yet support the violence done in abortion against women and their precious unborn? How can you say you are opposed to violence against women and yet say that killing a woman in the womb is not a crime but a “reproductive health choice for women?”

Andrew Little on 27 October 2018 made the following comments on Newshub Nation, in response to concerns about the options put forward by the Law Commission. He said in regards to the potential lack of safeguards concerning sex-selection abortions, that women are “quite capable of making these judgements themselves. I don’t buy into this argument that we should start working through a checklist of potential things, reasons why women might seek an abortion.”

Right to Life believes that this statement by Little shows an appalling discrimination against women in the first nine months of their lives in the womb. What in effect he is saying, is that he believes gender should be a ground for abortion. We believe that the vast majority of New Zealanders would be shocked by a Miniser of Justice making such statements which may be construed as his support of sex selective abortion

The Police in New Zealand received over one hundred thousand in fact, 118,910 family violence calls to be exact, in 2017.  There were 13 women killed by their partner or ex partner in 2015. Violence against women takes many forms. It is disappointing that our community is in denial and refuses to recognise that abortion is violence against vulnerable women and their unborn child. An abortion entails an assault on the womb of a woman and a lethal assault on the life of her child.  Frequently it is because the father of the child wants the child killed because he refuses to accept responsibility for the child he has fathered, or for the care of the mother of his child. Nearly half of the children conceived yearly are female. What greater violence is there against women than to be killed in your mother’s womb?

It is thus disappointing that the government and Parliament actually continues to sanction and fund violence against women by financing the violence of abortion under the guise of health care. The government should not be surprised if New Zealand continues to be an increasingly violent society with the worst rate of family violence in the world

If we truly want to live in a society that respects women we must first protect mothers to be and their babies. The first step in achieving this is to ensure that our MP’s stand up against injustice and Jacinda Ardern’s attempts to decriminalise this awful and violent act.

Ken Orr
Spokesperson,
Right to Life New Zealand Inc.

Abortion Supervision Committee should be sacked

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ASC Committee pictured at the review of the ASC by the Justice Select Committee March 2018

Right to Life calls upon the Minister of Justice to dismiss the Abortion Supervisory Committee [ASC], that presides over the abortion industry. We call for it to be replaced with a Committee that will fulfil its statutory duties as laid out in section 14 of the Contraception Sterilisation Act 1977. [1] [a] To keep under review all the provisions of the abortion law, and the operation and effect of those provisions in practice.

Right to Life contends that the ASC is not fulfilling those duties. The Committee, which comprises, three persons two of whom are required to be medical practitioners should, in the opinion of Right to Life, be persons who actually recognise that the unborn child has a right to life as was legislated for in the long title of the Contraception, Steralisation and Abortion Act 1977. The long title of the Act states …

ASC Committee pictured at the review of the ASC by the Justice Select Committee March 2018.
“to provide for the circumstances and procedures under which abortions may be authorised after having full regard to the rights of the unborn child.”

The ASC has failed to act in the best interest of vulnerable women and their precious unborn. Right to Life believes they have failed to uphold the legislative statutes and do not recognise the unborn child as a human being or the harm being done to women. The ASC comprises, Professor Dame Linda Holloway, Dr Tangimoana Habib  who were reappointed by the Governor General on 2 October 2015.  Ms Carolyn Mcilrath, the third member, was also appointed on that day. The CS & A Act stipulates that the appointment is for a term of three years. Their term is now complete, yet the Minister of Justice has failed to initiate the process to replace these members.

Right to Life should not have to be the watchdog to ensure this happens and we now request that the Minister of Justice begin this process. We also call for these members to be replaced by persons who recognise the humanity of the unborn and their right to life. Could the reason the Minister has not already made appointments be that he hopes that Jacinda Ardern’s proposal to remove Abortion from the Crimes Act will obviate the need for even having an Abortion Supervisory Committee?

The ASC which believes that, ” we should have legislation that enables women to make choices about their own bodies,”  responded to an Official Information Act request from Right to Life on 25 February and advised that the Committee did not have a policy to;-

  • Recognise that the unborn child had a right to life and a right to be born.
  • Recognise that the unborn child had a right to life and a right to be born.
  • Accept that it was a crime to kill an unborn child in contravention of the Crimes Act section 182 and 183.

Right to Life believes that it is totally unacceptable to have a Committee that does not recognise the humanity of the unborn child and its inalienable right to life and that its killing is a crime against humanity.

Why did we condemn Nazi Germany for its “final solution” for exterminating the Jews when we are now following its example with our state funded “final solution” to exterminate “unwanted” unborn children.

Ken Orr
Spokesperson,
Right to Life

Government in danger of breaching Treaty of Waitangi

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The Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern is to be commended for her moving words of love and concern for children expressed in her beautiful prayer at the Waitangi Day commemorations. She quoted Dame Whina Cooper,  “Take care of our children. Take care of what they hear. Take care of what they see. Take care of what they feel. For how the children grow so will be the shape of Aotearoa.” Referring to the principles of the Treaty she said, “Of course, we as a Government are trying to fill those not just in legislation, but in the policies and programmes that we roll out.”

Right to Life fully supports the principles of the Treaty and believe that we all have a responsibility to ensure that the Treaty rights of Maori are upheld. Right to Life believes that Article Three provides for the protection of the lives of Maori from conception to natural death. We ask the Prime Minster how can her government claim to uphold the Treaty when her Labour led government has plans to withdraw the protection of the Crown from Maori proclaimed in Article Three of the Treaty.

The Crimes Act section 182 Killing an unborn child states that the unborn child including Maori has a right to be born. This is a human right that is universal and inalienable. It is a serious crime to kill an unborn child including Maori and on conviction an offender may be imprisoned for up to 14 years. This protection has been there since 1856.

It is the intention of the Prime Minister and her government to withdraw this protection from women and the unborn including Maori. It is her intention to decriminalise abortion and to make the killing of the unborn “a reproductive choice for women.” Right to Life asks her, how can you uphold the principles of the Treaty by saying that it is no longer a crime to kill an unborn Maori child?

Right to Life believes that this proposed anti-life and anti-women legislation would be an unprecedented attack on the Treaty, a violation of human rights, and a betrayal of Maori.

Right to Life laments that the once great Labour Party of Michael Joseph Savage and Norman Kirk has departed from its founding principles to protect the weak and the marginalised in society. Today the unborn child is the weakest and most defenceless member of the human family and desperately needs effective legal protection for its right to life.

Right to Life requests that our Prime Minister, a caring woman and a loving mother, adopts the mantle of champion of women and their precious unborn by rejecting a culture of death with her ill-conceived proposal to decriminalise abortion. We urge her Instead to promote a culture of life by promoting adoption as a loving option for women with an unwanted pregnancy and women’s reproductive health with chastity before marriage and faithfulness within marriage.

Ken Orr
Spokesperson,
Right to Life

Why is the Prime Minister avoiding responding to the Official Information Act?

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child of 20 weeks

Abortion by Dismemberment up to two weeks past this stage of child development is what the government proposes.

Right to Life is concerned that the Prime Minister,Jacinda Ardern has declined to answer important questions on public policy sent to her by our Society on 15 January 2019.

The principle questions asked were:-

  • Is it still your policy to retain a restriction on abortions imposed at 20 weeks gestation in the Crimes Act section 187A in your proposed legislation to decriminalise abortion?
  • Is it your policy to accept dismemberment abortions that permit an abortionist to tear the arms, legs and head off an unborn child?

The new coalition government has specifically made a commitment to “strengthen New Zealand’s democracy by increasing public participation, openness, and transparency around official information”. Right to Life believes that the Prime Minister has a duty to lead by example.

The Crimes Act stipulates that the cut – off point for abortions is 20 weeks, The cut-off point in the legislation being drafted by the Minister of Justice is 22 weeks. Mike Munroe, Chief of Staff of the Prime Minister’s Office advised on 24 January that he was referring our Official Information Request to the Minister of Justice, as he was responsible for “alternative approaches on abortion law.”

At the Newstalk ZB’s Leader’s Breakfast just prior to the election Jacinda Ardern made the following statement:-

“Yes I think abortion should come out of the Crimes Act. That does not mean for a moment that I am proposing what has been claimed, that you should be able to have on-demand abortion to birth. No that is absolutely not what I am saying. We of course must regulate… We have time periods already set out in the law and I am not proposing changes to that. I am proposing it comes out of the Crimes Act.”

This is an important public policy statement concerning abortion. The public have an absolute right to ask the Prime Minister, who believes that killing an unborn child should not be a crime, is relentlessly driving a change in the abortion law to remove abortion from the Crimes Act and to make abortion a “reproductive choice for women”. Will she support retaining the 20 week cut off as she has publicly stated?

The minister of Justice at the direction of the Prime Minister is to bring a bill to Parliament to adopt the Law Commission’s Model C. Under this Model, there would be no statutory test until 22 weeks of a pregnancy.  After 22 weeks, the health practitioner who intends to perform an abortion would need to be satisfied that the abortion is appropriate in the circumstances, having regard to the woman’s physical and mental health and wellbeing. Everyone knows what this means, – effectively abortion on demand up to birth.

Curia Market Research an independent pollster released in January 2018, polling of 1,013 persons. Just 9% support the current legal limit for an abortion of 20 weeks. Only 4% believe it should be later than 20 weeks, including up to birth. 50% think the time limit should be shorter than the current 20 weeks, and a further 36% were unsure.

The median choice of those who did choose a time limit was 15 weeks.
Significantly, 56% of women think the time limit should be less than the current 20 weeks. Incredibly, 53% of those who generally support abortion think the time
limit should be less than the current 20 weeks – 29% of abortion supporters say 10 weeks or less.There is increasing opposition in the United States to the violence and suffering imposed on defenceless unborn children by dismemberment abortions. There are now ten states that have outlawed this horrific violence on the defenceless.

The public have a right to know if the Prime Minister who is herself a loving mother of a young child supports protecting the unborn from this dismemberment violence.

Ken Orr
Spokesperson,
Right to Life

Where Have All Our Children Gone?

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I'm a child not a choiceMedia Release Wednesday 30th Jan 2019

Nearly 61,000 5 year olds will commence their schooling this week, happy and laughing, full of the joy of life. Sadly around 13,200 children who would have been the same age are missing. What would have been their joy and laughter replaced by a deathly silence. This represents nearly 520 empty class rooms of children. What a loss to our nation! They join the ranks of the 500,000 children who have been murdered in their mother’s womb since 1977. These are the children who were considered of little worth and whose lives were terminated by abortion. These are the nameless and whose only record of existence is a cold statistic in the Abortion Supervisory Committee’s annual report to Parliament of 2014.

Their absence is mourned for they were created with many talents to enrich our society. They were formed in their mother’s wombs by their Creator with loving care. Our society is impoverished by their absence. We should also have deep compassion for their mothers who will be mourning the loss of their children. Many will suffer in painful and lonely silence having been told by Family Planning that what was aborted was just the contents of the uterus; that abortion is safe and that their grief is just their imagination. Mothers, who are so often coerced into an unwanted abortion, because of their abandonment by the father or because of pressure from family and friends. [Read more…]

ProLife Bulletin No 383

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Prolife Bulletin 383

Why is the life of a Kea worth more than that of an unborn child?

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totally unprotected.jpg

Right to Life asks why is the life of a Kea worth more than the life a Human Child.

It is a sad commentary on our society that the killing of a Kea incurs the full weight of the law and the wrath of the court and the community while a Wellington doctor who was responsible for killing thousands of innocent and defenceless unborn children was honoured by the Queen with a Knighthood for “services to women.”
A 46 year old construction worker, was sentenced to 150 hours community work by Judge Tony Zohrab in the Nelson District Court on 23 January for killing a kea, an endangered species in the Motueka Valley in July 2017. Juliette Irwin, the prosecuting lawyer for DOC sought a fine of between $10,000 and $15,000. She stated that, “this was a callous killing, we have an animal victim who is defenceless and unable to complain.”  The Judge accepted that the accused was unable to pay a fine.

Under the Wildlife Act 1953, the Kea is an absolutely protected species. Its killing is a serious crime, on conviction the offender may be fined up to $100,000, or imprisoned for up to two years. This crime was considered important news and was given extensive coverage by all the media in New Zealand.
But again we ask why is a Kea given absolute legal protection for its right to life, while the unborn child’s right to life is given no legal protection?

While we acknowledge that it is important that we have respect and have legislation protecting the right to life of endangered species, Right to Life questions why our nation is prepared to legislate for absolute protection for the right to life of endangered species, yet is not prepared to respect or provide any legal protection for the right to life of children in the womb.

At the same time an estimated 35 children in the womb are deprived of their life each day in New Zealand with the permission of Parliament, government and the community.

It is an appalling injustice that the Labour led government of Jacinda Ardern is committed to decriminalising abortion as they believe that it is not a crime to kill an unborn child. The government is of course committed to retaining the killing of a Kea as a crime.

Ken Orr
Spokesperson,
Right to Life

Relentlessly Call Abortion What It Really Is

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Death and Life are in the power of the tongue

The following article is a re-post of an article by Jon Bloom of the Desiring God website.

Abortion is rarely talked about.

I’m not talking about the word “abortion.” We hear this word a lot in the public square. But we rarely hear about it. Abortion almost always refers to something else. We hear that abortion is fundamentally about a woman’s right to reproductive freedom. Or abortion is a litmus test for judicial nominees. Or abortion is symptomatic of what’s wrong with the social discourse in America.

But none of those things is what abortion really is. Abortion is the intentional killing of unborn children.

Proverbs 18:21 says, “Death and life are in the power of the tongue.” Abortion is a clear example of this truth.

The killing of children can be tolerated and even championed as a social good so long as we don’t call it what it is. Call abortion an individual’s right to privacy and you can write it into the legal code. Call abortion a compassionate choice offered to a frightened girl to save her future or to save a child from an undesirable quality of life and you can swing popular opinion. Call abortion a liberation of women from the social and economic oppression of male dominance and passionate people will march on capitols chanting demands to preserve the human right of abortion on-demand.

“We have allowed legal child-killing on-demand for more than forty years because we’ve called it something else.”T

But you won’t hear the street marchers chant, “We will fight for the right to kill our children!” Because calling abortion what it is might awaken uneasy consciences out of a euphemistic stupor to realize that millions of the most defenseless human beings on the planet are being denied the self-evident, Creator-endowed human right to life.

Death is in the power of logic-contradicting, term-redefining, and deceptively-clinical tongues. We have allowed legal child-killing on-demand for 41 years because we’ve called it something else. Life Is in the Power of the Tongue.

That’s why Christians, “the salt of the earth” and “the light of the world” (Matthew 5:13–14) must keep speaking the truth about what abortion is with relentless clarity. “We destroy arguments” (2 Corinthians 10:5) by not yielding the ground of clear truth. Because life is in the power of truth-speaking tongues.

Therefore, we will keep saying:

Abortion kills children and we all know this.

Our legal code demonstrates that we know this because it grants an unborn child the rights of personhood in areas such as tort, criminal, and property law, making legalized abortion a schizophrenic, arbitrary, and tragically defective legal ruling.

“93% of all abortions in the United States are performed on healthy mothers, with healthy babies.”T

Abortion is mercilessly violent. Children with heartbeats, brainwaves, and a nervous system that allows them to feel pain are literally torn to pieces.

“93% of all abortions [in the United States] are performed on healthy mothers, with healthy babies. . . . Less than 1% are performed because of rape or incest.” (Abort73)

The number of children killed by abortion every year dwarfs the Holocaust and other homicidal horrors of history.

  • Approximately 3,300 children are killed by abortion every day in the United States. Americans kill 1.2 million unborn children every year.
  • The World Health Organization estimates between 40 and 50 million children are killed around the world by abortion, approximately 125,000 every day.

Unborn girls are killed at a higher rate than unborn boys. Estimates are as high as 163 million unborn girls have been intentionally killed since the 1970’s because they were girls, resulting in what some are now calling a “gendercide” (see Abuse of Discretion, 334).

And we will speak many, many more clear truths (here are 15 more) until abortion on-demand is ended.

Here’s the point: truthful tongues save lives. Legalized abortion is an evil that occurs and is tolerated because of deceptive words. And truthful words are required to clear the fatal fog with clarity.

Keep Speaking

I don’t know if our speaking truth will succeed in helping to change the abortion laws. World Magazine reports encouraging developments. But as John Piper says, “We are not called to win; we are called to witness.”

However, history does show that the faithful, relentless, prophetic witness of the saints over many years results in the remarkable spread of the gospel and the end of thousands of horrible social evils from the individual to the national levels.

So we must keep speaking. We must call abortion what it is: the killing of children and a vicious, established, legalized evil and injustice.

“Approximately 3,300 children are killed by abortion every day in the United States. 1.2 million every year.”T

Martin Luther King, Jr., whose birthday we just remembered because of his relentless truth-telling in the face of established, legalized, racial evil, once said, “He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it.”

We dare not be guilty of this. The Lord who said, “Rescue those who are being taken away to death” will not accept the excuse, “Behold, we did not know this” (Proverbs 24:11–12).

May life be in the power of our truthful tongues.Jon Bloom (@Bloom_Jon) serves as author, board chair, and co-founder of Desiring God. He is author of three books, Not by Sight, Things Not Seen, and Don’t Follow Your Heart. He and his wife have five children and make their home in the Twin Cities.

Why is the government proposing to disguise capital punishment for our unborn as “health care”?

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twins in wombRight to Life is opposed to the proposal of the Labour led government to decriminalise abortion and promote capital punishment for the unborn as “a reproductive choice for women.”

Capital Punishment and abortion have the manifest similarity that both concern the deliberate and state-sanctioned ending of life, which is why both are
controversial issues.

Capital punishment for murder was removed from the statute books in 1961, it has been retained only for treason. There was a total of 85 convicted criminals executed in New Zealand  between 1842 and 1957.  But New Zealand still retains the death penalty for its unwanted unborn children. Since 1977, the government has presided over the execution killing of more than 500,000 innocent and defenceless unborn children who were found guilty of being “unwanted.” Being an unwanted unborn child is a capital offence in New Zealand and such children are subject to the death penalty.

[Read more…]

This is the website of Right to Life NZ Inc.
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