Why do we allow the killing of 18,000 unborn children in preference to adoption?

Media Release 9 April 2026

Right to Life believes that the killing of God’s precious infants gives great offence to our Creator and is a crime against humanity. Abortion is from the culture of death and the war against women and the family. Every woman considering an abortion in New Zealand should be fully informed on the life promoting options of parenting, adoption and fostering. Why aren’t they informed ?

Right to Life believes that the extremely small number of adoptions each year in New Zealand is not an indictment against women. It is in fact further significant evidence of the cruel victimisation of women, who are the second victim of abortion. Those who promote the killing of the unborn as "health care" seek to convince women that they have no other choice, and have a duty to choose abortion.

Abortion, the killing of her child, is never a solution, but it is violence imposed on the child, and their mother when she is coerced and deceived into believing that she has no other choice, but abortion.

I will never forget the pain of seeing a young weeping woman, lying like a wounded animal on the footpath outside the Lyndhurst abortion clinic in Christchurch. I was moved with compassion for her, and asked if I could help and her plaintive response was: ”nobody can help me,” No woman deserves this.

Right to Life is concerned at the dramatic fall in the number of stranger or non - family adoptions in New Zealand.

There were 17,785 abortions reported in New Zealand in 2024.

The Ministry for Children (Oranga Tamariki) advised that there were only 3 non-family adoptions in New Zealand in 2024. It is extraordinary that in N.Z. there was only one adoption for nearly every 6000 abortions, why is this? In the 1970s we were recording more than 4,000 non-family adoptions per year.

There are between 300 to 600 families in New Zealand on a waiting list for stranger adoptions at any one time. There are probably thousands of other families who would love to adopt a child, but despair of ever doing so. Since the 1970s, we now have open adoption, with the birth parents being encouraged to have a loving relationship with their child and adoptive parents.

The New Zealand multimillion dollar abortion industry demands dead babies, not live babies, to maintain its profitability. Hence the abortion industry is vigorously opposed to women choosing adoption in preference to abortion. Abortion providers have no legal requirement to suggest to women that they consider adoption.

The Ministry for Children, Oranga Tamariki, responsible for protecting our nation’s children, does not promote adoption. It is required to be “impartial” and “neutral” and to ensure that expectant parents are aware of their right to choose to kill their child up to 20 weeks gestation.

Right to Life questions Oranga Tamariki on its policies. Under the Oranga Tamariki Act 1989, the Ministry is required to protect children from harm, abuse, neglect and deprivation placing the child’s best interests at the centre of decision making. The greatest harm to an unborn child is for it to be poisoned, scraped out of its mother’s womb or to be violently dismembered.

How can the Ministry for Children abandon the child in the womb, refuse to protect it, and pretend to be neutral? The deafening silence of the Ministry, as it gives consent to the bloody murder of nearly 18,000 of God’s precious infants last year, is an appalling injustice which cries out to their Creator for redress.

Ken Orr,

Spokesperson,

Right to Life New Zealand Inc.