Media Release 27 November 2024
Right to Life believes that Pharmac should promote a culture of life, by only funding drugs which are going to protect the health and lives of every member of the community from conception to natural death.
Right to Life is disappointed that the government drug purchasing agency Pharmac, has recently announced the funding of a urine test kit to enable women to confirm that their unborn child has been successfully killed by poisoning and expelled from her womb following an early medical abortion [EMA].
Right to Life commends Pharmac for its passionate commitment to the purchase of medicines to protect the health of New Zealanders. Pregnancy is not a disease and abortion is not health care. Every child conceived, regardless of the circumstances of their conception, is a unique and unrepeatable miracle of God’s loving creation, endowed with an inalienable right to life. Pharmac is sadly deluded in believing that the poisoning of a child before birth is health care.
Right to Life is appalled that Pharmac uses the adjective “successful” with apparent pleasure to celebrate the killing of a defenceless unborn child, in an EMA, shame on them.
It is deplorable that Pharmac funds the purchase of the abortion drugs Mifepristone & Misoprostol, which are used to poison defenceless unborn children in the first ten weeks of life and continues to fund the killing of unborn children as a health service.
The urine test kit and abortion drugs are purchased from Istar Ltd, a company founded in 1999 by abortionists, Dame Margaret Sparrow, the late Dr Diana Edwards and Dr Carol Shand, to import Mifepristone from the French manufacturer, because of pressure from the pro-life movement in New Zealand no drug company in New Zealand was prepared to import it. The current directors are Dr Shand, Dr Allison Knowles, Dr Gillian Gibson and Simon Ogden, a locum self employed pharmacist from Masterton.
The urine test, named Checktop, will be available free of charge from doctors from 1st December 2024. Pharmac anticipates that it will be used by more than 9,000 women who will have experienced a medical abortion in 2025.
The Ministry of Health has recently advised Right to Life, in response to an Official Information Act request, that there were provisionally 10,047 early medical abortions [EMA] in 2023. The abortion drugs for these abortions were funded by Pharmac. They have the blood of innocent children on their hands.
Pharmac in 2024 was funded by the government with an extra $604 million over four years to purchase 54 new medicines, including 26 to treat cancer. Right to Life questions Pharmac giving priority to funding these test kits when the funding should have been invested in providing urgently needed drugs to save lives.
Ken Orr,
Spokesperson,
Right to Life New Zealand Inc.