The Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern is to be commended for her moving words of love and concern for children expressed in her beautiful prayer at the Waitangi Day commemorations. She quoted Dame Whina Cooper, “Take care of our children. Take care of what they hear. Take care of what they see. Take care of what they feel. For how the children grow so will be the shape of Aotearoa.” Referring to the principles of the Treaty she said, “Of course, we as a Government are trying to fill those not just in legislation, but in the policies and programmes that we roll out.”

Right to Life fully supports the principles of the Treaty and believe that we all have a responsibility to ensure that the Treaty rights of Maori are upheld. Right to Life believes that Article Three provides for the protection of the lives of Maori from conception to natural death. We ask the Prime Minster how can her government claim to uphold the Treaty when her Labour led government has plans to withdraw the protection of the Crown from Maori proclaimed in Article Three of the Treaty.

The Crimes Act section 182 Killing an unborn child states that the unborn child including Maori has a right to be born. This is a human right that is universal and inalienable. It is a serious crime to kill an unborn child including Maori and on conviction an offender may be imprisoned for up to 14 years. This protection has been there since 1856.

It is the intention of the Prime Minister and her government to withdraw this protection from women and the unborn including Maori. It is her intention to decriminalise abortion and to make the killing of the unborn “a reproductive choice for women.” Right to Life asks her, how can you uphold the principles of the Treaty by saying that it is no longer a crime to kill an unborn Maori child?

Right to Life believes that this proposed anti-life and anti-women legislation would be an unprecedented attack on the Treaty, a violation of human rights, and a betrayal of Maori.

Right to Life laments that the once great Labour Party of Michael Joseph Savage and Norman Kirk has departed from its founding principles to protect the weak and the marginalised in society. Today the unborn child is the weakest and most defenceless member of the human family and desperately needs effective legal protection for its right to life.

Right to Life requests that our Prime Minister, a caring woman and a loving mother, adopts the mantle of champion of women and their precious unborn by rejecting a culture of death with her ill-conceived proposal to decriminalise abortion. We urge her Instead to promote a culture of life by promoting adoption as a loving option for women with an unwanted pregnancy and women’s reproductive health with chastity before marriage and faithfulness within marriage.

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