Right to Life Calls for Submissions to Protect Women and Their Unborn Children
We all have a sacred duty to defend the right to life of every member of our human family from conception to natural
death. The Law Commission on 4th April in a media release has invited members of the community to make submissions on
the review of the abortion laws in New Zealand directed by the Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern. It is her wish that
abortion be taken out of the Crimes Act and treated as a health issue. She believes that the killing of an unborn child
should not be a crime, but a human right. She believes the killing of an unborn child should be treated as an issue of
choice for women.
The Minister of Justice in a response of the 16th March to an Official Information Act request from Right to Life
confirmed that the government supported the born alive law contained in section 159 of the Crimes Act that an unborn
child does not become a human being until it is born. This is a legal fiction designed to differentiate
Jacinda Ardern is the driver for the Decriminalisation of abortion in New Zealand
between homicide and the killing of an unborn child. Prior to birth the child has no right to life nor a right to be
born. It has the same status as a slave and is the property of the mother. The claim of the Prime Minister that abortion
is a women’s right to choose is the same argument used by slave owners in the Southern States of America in the nineteenth century that it was there right to choose to own slaves.
It is the government’s intention to remove women and their unborn from the protection of the Crimes Act to facilitate
the killing of the unborn who are deemed to be unwanted under the guise of it being a health service. This is a violation of human rights and a crime against humanity. It is absolutely imperative that we retain the killing of the unborn as a crime in the Crimes Act.
Every citizen concerned for the protection of women and their unborn should make a submission to the Law Commission to
make the following points:-
• The killing of an unborn child is a justice issue, it is a crime it is not a health issue.
• The Crimes Act should be amended to recognise that from implantation the unborn child is a human being endowed with
human rights, the foundation right being an inalienable right to life.
• Section 183 of the Crimes Act recognises that abortion is violence against women and their defenceless unborn. The
State has since 1856 recognised that it has a duty under this section to provide effective legal protection for the
health of pregnant women and the lives of their unborn its future citizens, the State must not now abandon women and
their unborn.
• Right to Life believes that the Law Commission in conducting this review must consider the report of the Royal
Commission on Contraception Sterilisation and Abortion. The Minister of Justice has rejected Right to Life’s request
that the Commission consider this report. In its report to Parliament in 1975 the Royal Commission stated:-
“The unborn child as one of the weakest, the most vulnerable and most defenceless forms of humanity, should receive
protection. From a biological point of view there is no argument as to when life begins. Evidence was given to us by
eminent scientists from all over the world. None of them suggested that human life begins at any other time than at
conception”.
They went on to say, “From implantation to birth, changes which take place in the unborn child are of a developmental
nature only. There are no changes of a qualitative nature. The three events suggested as being of significance, namely
quickening, viability and brain development are no more than stages in that development and are not indicative of any
qualitative changes in the developing foetus which would make it non-human at one point of time and human at another.”
Submissions may be made to the Law Commission at,
Email address: alr@lawcom.govt.nz
Website: abortionlaw.lawcom.govt.nz