Parliament rejects petition of unborn to be accepted as human!

Media Release 20 March 2025

The legal recognition of the status of unborn children, as human beings from conception, endowed by God with an inalienable right to life, is the justice issue of this era. The silent scream of the 17,123 brutally murdered in their mother’s womb in 2024 funded by the government as health care will not be silenced.

Right to Life is appalled that its recent submission on behalf of women and unborn children to all 123 individual Members of Parliament has been blatantly ignored. The darkness of the culture of death pervades our Parliament. The submission requested support for legal recognition of defenceless unborn children as human beings endowed by their Creator with an inalienable right to life.

Right to Life makes no apology for being a voice for our precious unborn children who have no other voice than ours. Our Society’s first letter to MPs was sent in February 2025 with a follow up letter in March.

Right to Life was encouraged by parliament’s enthusiastic and unanimous support for passing legislation in January to recognise Mt Taranaki as a human person, that with the high number of Maori Members in parliament, there would be considerable support for also recognising pepe as human beings in accordance with Maori culture.

There were only three replies received by Right to Life to this submission. The Prime Minister, Christopher Luxon’s staff replied, “Thank you for sharing your views with Christopher.” A Green Party MP replied that he supported the Green’s abortion policy and would not support legislation upholding the humanity of the unborn. We received a very supportive response from a National MP, whose name we will withhold.

In its report to parliament in 1977, The Royal Commission on Contraception Sterilisation and Abortion advised that the Commission received advice from scientists around the world, who confirmed that human life began at conception. The Commission went on to say that there was no point in the nine months of pregnancy when the unborn child was not a human being. The Commission said that the unborn child was the weakest and most defenceless member of the human family and deserved respect and protection.

Justice Miller in the High Court in Wellington in 2009 in Right to Life v the Abortion Supervisory Committee stated in his judgment that Section 159 of the Crimes Act 1961 is a legal fiction and was not based on science. He made the following statement in his judgment:-

“The rule according human rights only at birth is founded on convenience rather than medical or moral grounds.”

“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, the abortion law rests on it.”

Right to Life has been campaigning for more than 40 years for parliament to recognise our unborn children as human beings, endowed with a right to life, we will not rest until the human rights of the unborn are recognised and protected in our legislation.

Ken Orr,

Spokesperson,

Right to Life New Zealand Inc