Media Release 25 September 2021
Justice Rebecca Ellis, in the case of the NZ Health Professionals Alliance v the Attorney General rejected the case of the Alliance that the Abortion Legislation Act 2020 sections 14 & 15 were coercive. The Alliance were opposed to being involved in the killing of unborn children on conscience grounds. The law requires doctors who are not prepared to kill the child to refer a woman seeking an abortion to the nearest provider, this was not a requirement prior to 2020.
Right to Life commends the Alliance for its integrity in defending the supremacy of conscience in medicine for the protection of patients especially the unborn, the weakest and most defenceless members of our human family and their mothers. The Alliance deserves the wholehearted support of the community.
The Judge ruled that doctors should not allow their conscience to prevent them from referring the woman to an abortion provider. The Abortion Legislation Act 2020 allows an unborn child to be killed for any reason up to 20 weeks gestation. From 20 weeks to birth, the baby may be killed if the abortionist believes it is “appropriate” and has “consulted another doctor”.
The doctor consulted is not required to agree that the killing is “appropriate”.
The Justice ruled that no rights are infringed by the abortion law, ignoring the fact that the right to life of the unborn child is violently violated and the right of the mother to be given the love and help that she needs to choose life for her precious child.
The Attorney General represented the government of Jacinda Ardern. The Prime Minister was the architect of this Abortion legislation and will be delighted that Justice Ellis has upheld her legislation that prohibits doctors from trying to protect the life of their tiny defenceless patient, the unborn child, by refusing to refer them to an abortionist.
This decision is critical for the practice of medicine in New Zealand. For more than 2,000 years medicine has been practised in accordance with the informed conscience of health professionals who are committed to uphold the sanctity of life of every human being from conception. Doctors providing care to a pregnant woman know that they are caring for two precious patients.
At the Nuremburg trials in 1946 of Nazi doctors who were charged with crimes against humanity, they claimed that they were just following orders, however this defence was dismissed by the Court who stated that the doctors had a duty to follow their informed conscience.
Right to Life believes that there is now no place in medicine for doctors who wish to practise medicine with a conscience that recognises the right to life of every individual from conception to natural death.
The government demands that doctors become agents of the state, follow orders and implement the killing of the unborn under the guise of it being a health service.
In the words of our Prime Minister, it is now “a reproductive choice for women”. She has decreed in her legislation that the unborn child is not a human being endowed with a right to life until it is born. In killing an unborn child we do no harm because it is not a human being.
Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
Right to Life believes that It is time for the members of our community to rise up and protest at the destruction by this government of conscience directed medicine.
Ken Orr,
Secretary,
Right to Life