God’s precious infants born alive from abortion denied care and abandoned!

Media Release 5 November 2025

Right to Life calls on the Ministry of Health to urgently ensure that appropriate palliative care for babies born alive following an abortion is provided. Every child is a unique and unrepeatable miracle of God’s loving creation, endowed by its Creator with an inalienable right to life. Right to Life asks the Ministry of Health: why then are babies born alive from an abortion being abandoned, denied care and being left to die?

In response to an Official Information Act request from Family First, Health New Zealand recently advised that since the beginning of 2020, approximately 80 attempted abortions in New Zealand resulted in a child being born alive, but not provided with life-sustaining care.

The gestational ages of these children were from 20 to 30 weeks.

Children at 22 weeks gestation now have a survival rate of 41%.

In 2021, the number of babies born alive after an attempted abortion in New Zealand was the subject of an Official Information Act (OIA) request by Right to Life. The Ministry of Health advised, in response to our request, that they had no reports of children being born alive from an abortion in New Zealand. They advised that feticide was mandatory for abortions for pregnancies of 22 weeks gestation. The object of feticide is to ensure that the baby is killed before it is expelled from its mother’s womb. The Ministry is committed to successful “safe” abortions that result in a dead baby. In their view, the birth of a live baby following an attempted

abortion is a failure that should be avoided.

The feticide abortion procedure is performed by injecting substances such as potassium chloride or lignocaine into the foetal heart to stop it beating.

The Ministry of Health funds, promotes and presides over the multi-million dollar abortion” industry” in New Zealand, and has a duty to ensure that health professionals comply with current legislation. The Royal Australian & New Zealand College of Obstetricians & Gynaecologists state that health professionals already owe a duty of care to all their patients, including babies born alive, whether this happens following an abortion or otherwise. There are well-established guidelines and professional standards to guide clinical practice in this area. Further legal regulation will be confusing and unhelpful. Right to Life asks if health professionals already have a duty of care to babies born alive, then why are babies that are born alive following attempted abortions being denied care and being abandoned?

Right to Life supports Family First’s call for the government to immediately pass legislation which requires life-sustaining care of any child born alive after an attempted abortion.

Right to Life also strongly supports in the light of today’s shocking developments, Voice For Life’s calling for an urgent change to require the Ministry of Health to include the following details in all future annual abortion reports:

• The exact number of born alive following attempted abortion incidents which have occurred in the reporting period.

• The gestational age of the children involved in each of these incidents.

• Details about any life-sustaining care provided to the children involved.

• If death occurs, details about the duration of time it took for the child to pass.

• Regional data about where all of these incidents occurred.

Right to Life reaffirms its total opposition to the abominable murder of the unborn and the wounding of their mothers.

We will not rest until the Abortion Legislation Act 2020 is repealed and the murder of the unborn outlawed as a violation of God’s fifth commandment, “Thou shalt not kill.”

Ken Orr,

Spokesperson,

Right to Life New Zealand Inc.