Media Release 17 January 2024
Genocide is a violation of human rights and a crime against humanity. The New Zealand government is publicly opposed to genocide and is a signatory to the Genocide Prevention and Punishment Convention, which obligates it to prevent and punish genocide. Right to Life asks, why then is the government conducting a programme of genocide against God’s precious infants the unborn, which they initiated 45 years ago, and which it is committed to continue under the guise that it is health care?
There are many in the community who are rightly opposed to genocide, and who are demanding that our government support the South African government in its complaint at the International Criminal Court against Israel, for allegedly perpetrating genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.
Right to Life requests that our government should first recognise that they and their predecessors, since 1978, have presided over the government funded and authorised campaign of genocide, directed at the violent elimination of “unwanted” unborn New Zealanders. Right to Life believes that every political party in our parliament is guilty of facilitating this genocide by their actions or by their silence.
Right to Life asks why are many churches silent in defending the lives of God’s precious infants from this appalling genocide?
Why too are the media actively supporting this genocide and silencing those in our community seeking to end this violence against women and their unborn?
Right to Life believes that with currently more than 560,000 victims, our government directed genocide against the unborn should be ranked with other notorious genocides, including the Turkish genocide of Armenians in 1915 with 1.2 million victims, The Khmer Rouge Cambodian genocide of 1975 of 1.5 to 3 million victims, the Rwandan genocide of Tutsi tribal people in 1994 with 500,000 to 800,000 victims and the Nazi genocide of Jewish people from 1942-1945 with 6 million victims.
The government commenced the destruction of “unwanted” unborn children in 1977 with the passing of the Contraception Sterilisation and Abortion Act 1977.
The genocide was consolidated and was extended in 2020, with the passing of the Abortion Legislation Act 2020, which facilitates the killing of the unborn, by denying that they are human beings endowed by their Creator with an inalienable right to life at conception, and that it was no longer a crime to kill an unborn child up to birth.
The New Zealand government has also been vigorously conducting an organised campaign of genocide since 2010, against unborn children diagnosed with Down syndrome, euphemistically called a “quality improvement programme.”
Article II: In the present U.N. Genocide Prevention and Punishment Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Right to Life believes that the National government of John Key in 2010 adopted a screening programme which was expected to destroy the most persecuted group in New Zealand.
This programme of screening for Down syndrome and other disabilities was adopted by the government of Jacinda Ardern in 2017.
The National government instituted the “Antenatal Screening for Down Syndrome and other conditions - Quality Improvements” programme. This programme was introduced by the Ministry of Health following advice from the Ministry’s National Screening Unit [NSU] without public consultation.
Cabinet papers obtained under the Official Information Act, state that the outcome of the programme will be a reduction in the number of births of people with Down syndrome, with around 90 % of unborn children with the condition being aborted.
In 2020 71% of children of unborn children diagnosed with Down syndrome, were killed before birth.
Right to Life believes that the preventing of birth of this group of people falls within the definition of genocide under international law, as it: “seeks to impose measures intended to prevent births within the group."
Documentation obtained under the OIA from the Ministry of Health included the document Summary of Key Informant Interviews Antenatal Down Syndrome Screening Final Report which states :
“The programme will be cost beneficial for the population and the health system. The scan highlighted literature that supported the premise that the economic costs of screening outweigh the high costs associated with the long term care needs of an individual with Down syndrome”.
This programme discriminates against the disabled.
Right to Life believes that this screening programme constitutes genocide, under the definition above.
It is eugenics in promoting only the birth of the perfect and those that are “wanted.”
Ken Orr,
Spokesperson,
Right to Life New Zealand Inc.