ALRANZ: New Campaign to Decriminalize Abortion

The pressure is on.

The biggest advocate of abortion rights in New Zealand, ALRANZ, started a national campaign last Saturday (12 March) to decriminalize abortion in New Zealand.  

This is no surprise.  ALRANZ exists to decriminalize abortion - their website states: 

"ALRANZ firmly believes that a woman should decide whether or not to continue her pregnancy, not parliamentarians with a conscience vote and not state-funded doctors."

So what is their agenda?

ALRANZ, partnering with their affiliate, the more militantly anti-life WONAAC (Women's National Abortion Action Coalition) are campaigning to make the killing of unborn children legal, for any reason.

They are seeking to 'reform' our current law (ASC Act) which states that two certifying consultants must give abortion referrals only if the woman's mental or physical health would be at risk if she continued to carry the child to birth.

The recent High Court ruling from Right to Life's court case battle with ALRANZ was in favour of RtL's assertion: that a stunning 98% of abortions in New Zealand are illegal, with certifying consultants across the country signing off women as being mentally unprepared to have children, and referring them to abortionists.

As a response to Justice Miller's ruling, this nation-wide campaign was launched.  Dr. Morgan Healey, spokesman for the campaign says:

"The Right to Life case, currently before the High Court, shows just how fragile and outdated our abortion services are. Should the High Court rule in favour of Right to Life, the Abortion Supervisory Committee could be forced to crack down on certifying consultants using ‘mental’ health as a fix-all for our unfair abortion law.”

Campaign spokesperson Kirstie Vonk, has a solution:

"They need to be urgently updated and made fairer," said campaign spokesperson Kirstie Vonk. "They are preventing women from accessing health services when and where they need them, and make criminals out of patients instead of dealing with unwanted pregnancy as a health issue."

Abortion is a 'health issue', all right.  It kills 18,000 New Zealand children each year and physically and psychologically damages thousands of women.

In his press release on the campaign, Family First director Bob McCroskrie nails the issue:

“Abortion harms women – yet groups seeking to decriminalise abortion refuse to acknowledge this, seeing the right to abortion more paramount than the long-term health and welfare of the women.”

Here's an unashamed comment from WONAAC's press release on the campaign:

"To be fair counsellors and consultants have worked to make the system as sympathetic as possible. Almost all requests for abortion are approved."

Abortions are essentially a money-making scam.  It's too hard for me to believe that the law was broken over 17,000 times just because counsellors and consultants were sympathetic.