Helen Houghton
New Conservative Spokeswoman
New Conservative is concerned that the High Court has upheld the requirement of doctors to cooperate in the killing of unborn children against their will.
This relates to the recent decision by Justice Rebecca Ellis in the case of the New Zealand Health Professionals Alliance versus the Attorney General. The Alliance contended that sections 14 and 15 of the Abortion Legislation Act were coercive. This Abortion Act was passed underhandedly by Labour during the 2020 lockdown, giving New Zealand one of the most extreme abortion laws in the world.
These sections require that doctors who are opposed to abortion on conscience grounds must provide a woman seeking an abortion with the details of how to find an abortion provider. Prior to the 2020 act the only requirement was to inform her that such services were available elsewhere.
The legal counsel for the Alliance argued that to provide this information would make them complicit in the “chain leading to the taking of a human life” which was contrary to their most fundamental beliefs, and any oath taken upon graduation.
The Alliance also objected to the current law which allows an employer to give precedence to an employee or prospective employee who was prepared to assist in the abortion process. They wanted the court to make declarations that the law was not consistent with the rights protected under the 1990 Bill of Rights Act.
Justice Ellis however ruled that doctors must not allow their consciences to prevent them from forwarding a woman to an abortion provider and that no rights were in fact being infringed or limited.
Labour’s Abortion Legislation Act allows for an unborn child to be aborted up to birth if the abortionist believes it is ‘appropriate.’ There was a recent case of a failed late term abortion where the child, once born, was legally left to die.
Even though another provider is by law required to be consulted, that provider need not agree that the abortion is “appropriate.”
New Conservative is concerned, along with the New Zealand Health Professionals Alliance, that this ruling means that those doctors whose consciences do not allow them to support the decrees of the state may no longer be welcome in medicine.
Indeed we are concerned that unless they comply and become agents of the state, willing to be complicit in ending the lives of unborn children, they may be struck off the medical register, or be refused entry to the medical professions.
New Conservative believes that this ruling overturns millennia of established medical practice whereby the informed conscience of doctors has been a guiding principle. Few if any safeguards now remain to protect the life of unborn children in New Zealand.
New Conservative will protect the rights of doctors who value life at every stage, and push to overturn the Labour imposed current legislation, to ensure the conscience rights of our health professionals and the rights of unborn children are protected.
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