Media Release 17 February 2024
Right to Life calls upon the Human Rights Commission to defend the right to life of every New Zealander from conception to natural death. This Commission betrays our women and our unborn children, by failing to denounce the murder of the unborn and the violence of abortion inflicted on women. This is a violation of human rights and a crime against humanity and is the paramount human rights issue facing New Zealand today and is an unbearable burden on the conscience of our nation.
The United Nations Human Rights Council will conduct its fourth 5 yearly universal periodic review [UPR] of New Zealand’s compliance with its human rights obligations. The review will take place on 29th April in Geneva, Switzerland.
Please don’t celebrate or promote the murder of our precious unborn as a human right, as it is not a human right.
The UPR is a state-driven process, which provides the opportunity for each state to declare what actions they have taken to improve the human rights situations in their countries and to fulfil their human rights obligations.
New Zealand has a status of “A” with the United Nations and is ranked 9th out of 102 countries in its protection of human rights.
Right to Life questions our very high status. Since our first UN human rights review in 2009, more than 180,000 defenceless unborn children have been murdered in New Zealand, authorised and funded by the state.
Right to Life asks: why has the Commission remained silent at this appalling violation of our human rights?
The Commission has actually supported this violation by asserting that abortion was a human right and pressured the government to decriminalise abortion in 2020!
Dr Karanina Sumeo, acting Human Rights Commissioner, in a statement at the pre-session on, Tuesday 13 Feb, celebrated and spoke to the positive developments, which align with recommendations made at the last review in 2019, such as introducing a national strategy to eliminate family and sexual violence, decriminalising abortion and making abortion much more accessible.
The Human Rights Commission commends Jacinda Ardern’s government for decriminalising the killing of unborn children with the passing of the Abortion Legislation Act in 2020. The Commission believes that It is no longer a crime to kill an unborn child up to birth, because it is not a human being. At birth it becomes a human being with a right to life.
Right to Life asks why should our community have confidence in the Commission to defend our human rights, when they -
• refuse to defend the right to life of unborn children from the plague of abortion
• refuse to protect their mothers from the violence of abortion
• refuse to protect the lives of vulnerable people from being killed by their doctor or assisted in their suicide
Ken Orr,
Spokesperson,
Right to Life New Zealand Inc.