3 November 2010

Media Release

High Court Challenge to Medical Council Guidelines

Right to Life welcomes the challenge in the High Court in Wellington to the proposed guidelines of the Medical Council dealing with abortion. The challenge to the guidelines is being made by a group of pro-life doctors.

The guidelines are contained in the controversial draft document "Beliefs and Medical Practice" The guidelines require a doctor to inform a woman who is concerned about her pregnancy that the killing of the unborn child is an option. In the event that the doctor is opposed to the killing of unborn children the doctor is obliged to refer the woman to a doctor who would be prepared to discuss the option of abortion and to arrange it if requested. The Medical Council should be promoting a culture of life, why is it promoting a culture of death?

Many women in the first trimester of their pregnancy are ambivalent. These women need compassion and reassurance, not information on the destruction of their child.

The abortion guidelines are an assault on the conscience of medical practitioners. The upholding of the sanctity of an informed conscience of medical practitioners is absolutely essential for the protection of the medical profession and for society. We should remember that freedom is a condition of the exercise of medicine and of the conscience that was affirmed with force during the Nuremburg trials; it is important to remember this lest we again endure the violation of human rights and crimes against humanity inflicted on Europe by the Nazi regime during the Second World War.

Right to Life challenges the Medical Council's assertion that the guidelines were developed in pursuit of the statutory purpose to protect the health and safety of the public. The Council should be well aware that 98 per cent of abortion are authorised on the grounds of mental health. Dr Christine Forster, previously a chairman of the Abortion Supervisory Committee stated publicly in 2002, that she did not believe that all these women had a mental health problem and that certifying consultants were just fitting the grounds to provide abortion on demand.

The unborn child is the weakest and most defenceless member of the human family. Right to Life asks what is the Medical Council doing to protect mothers and their unborn children from the abortion holocaust that operates in New Zealand. Right to life requests that the Medical Council amends its guidelines to uphold the conscience of medical practitioners.

Ken Orr Spokesperson.

© Scoop Media