Nelson Hospital betrays women and unborn – seeks safe area!

Media Release 31 August 2025

The imposition of a safe area designation on the Nelson Hospital on 24 September 2025 will be an escalation of the abandonment of women and their unborn children. It will also be a day of shame, humiliation and a violation of free speech and assembly. The safe area extends for 150 metres around the Nelson Hospital. There are now 16 designated “safe areas” in New Zealand.

Right to Life weeps for the women of Nelson and their unborn, who have been betrayed by the intensified war against women and their precious unborn children.

Right to Life believes that safe areas should be designated a bloody and violent crime scene. Safe areas around hospitals which allow for the killing of the unborn, do not provide any safety for women, who are violently assaulted, wounded, spiritually, psychologically, emotionally and physically. Their precious unborn children are violently murdered under the pretence that this is a health service.

There were 16,277 unborn children killed before birth in New Zealand in 2023, with 225 of these being killed at the Nelson Hospital. They were poisoned, scraped out of their mother’s womb or dismembered. This crime scene is now to be designated from 24th September as a “safe area.”

Each one of these precious children was a unique and unrepeatable miracle of God’s loving creation, endowed with an inalienable right to life. Their killing was a violation of human rights and a crime against humanity.

Right to Life is disappointed that it is the intention of the Nelson Hospital, in the near future, to increase the number of children killed, by increasing the gestational age of children eligible to be killed from 13 weeks currently, presumably up to full term.

In anticipation of “intimidation and harassment” that might follow the increase in the number of children killed, Nelson Hospital made an application to the Ministry of Health, for a “safe area” around their facilities. This application was approved and the designation commences on 24 September 2025. The Ministry of Health believes that women accessing “abortion health care” at the Nelson Hospital should receive protection for their “safety, dignity and privacy.”

It will be unlawful for any person to enter this area to offer care and help to any woman seeking an abortion. A caring person offering help to a woman could be arrested by the police, charged in court and fined up to $1,000.

The despairing message that the government is giving to women entering these so called safe areas, is that this is a safe area to have your baby killed, with respect for your privacy and dignity.

Any woman entering a safe area alone, with nobody to love and help her, often abandoned and coerced by others, could be traumatised in the knowledge that it is now unlawful to offer her help to choose life for her baby.

Right to Life accepted the report of the Law Commission to the Minister of Health, that it did not recommend safe area legislation, as it was not considered necessary, as the Summary Offences Act was appropriate in dealing with any alleged harassment and intimidation of women. It was also the opinion of abortion providers and staff that safe area legislation was not necessary.

Right to Life believes that the government’s real objectives in passing this legislation were to:-

• normalise the killing of unborn children as “health care”.

• demonise and harass peaceful law-abiding citizens, who are opposed to the war against women and the killing of the unborn.

• distract attention away from the real intimidation and violence that is inflicted on women and their unborn in the abortion facility.

• protect the abortion industry by preventing the presence of persons within a safe area offering help to a woman to choose life for her child.

Right to Life will not rest until this oppressive safe area legislation and the extremist Abortion Legislation Act 2020 is repealed.

Ken Orr,

Spokesperson,

Right to Life New Zealand Inc.