National Office Voice For Life
PO Box 12-286 Thorndon
Wellington
Phone (09) 443 0995
Email info@voiceforlife.org.nz

Silence of the Landscape

Monday 17 December this year marks the 30th anniversary of the passing into law of the Contraception, Sterilisation and Abortion Act (CS&A Act). In all likelihood, none of the Members of Parliament who put their name to that Act will feel any cause to celebrate.

On reflection, those who might have expected that this Act would recognise and protect an unborn child from abortion in all but exceptional cases, as was indicated in the long title of the Act, have found the reality woefully different. The reality 30 years later is that more than 25% of all pregnancies, more than one in every four, in New Zealand ends in abortion.

It must be assumed that those who took a strongly pro-abortion stance during the debate which led up to the final Act, could not have foreseen the disaster which is evident in statistics, but generally unacknowledged. A law which is routinely rort by the loose interpretation of the “mental health” grounds for an abortion, so that any post-pubescent female can have her pregnancy terminated without question, is the most pyrrhic of victories.

It is difficult to get a sense of what this legislation has truly meant. Focusing on the deliberate destruction of over 350,000 human foetuses in the last 30 years is gruesome. It may be callous, but we generally ignore the pain that each of these deaths represents. Certainly no one in public office wants to examine the consequences of a ‘good Act gone wrong’ and there will be little cheering for anyone speaking up for the unborn, for the unknown families or for the women and men who are scarred by the issues which ripple as a result.

So how should we begin to think about the CS&A Act 30th anniversary? Contemplating Passchendaele might be a good place to start. After 90 years, Passchendaele is at last finding its voice in New Zealand’s historical consciousness.

Today, visitors to those fields at Passchendaele and the Somme are met by a landscape which is beautiful and still. On that silent landscape, imagining those who lie in marked graves and those who lie missing, is profoundly moving.

What is the law in New Zealand?”

July 2005 :

"NZ Abortion Role at UN Level (PLT issue 20)"

Sept 2004 :

"Events contribute to rethinking on abortion"

Hayden Munro, is a co-editor of CANTA, the student magazine of Canterbury University. In early 2007, he contacted Voice for Life and the Abortion Law Reform Association of NZ (ALRANZ) for their views on how the Abortion Supervisory Committee administers the Contraception, Sterilization and Abortion Act, 1977.
The Abortion Supervisory Committee was appointed by Parliament to oversee the Act, the medical facilities and the appointment of Certifying Consultants.
It produces an annual report and is administered by the Tribunals Division of the Ministry of Justice. Hayden Munro’s article was published in the August 2007, edition of CANTA. We publish it here as a service to interested enquirers, because it provides a comprehensive and balanced overview of how abortion and the law is administered in New Zealand...click on link below to read full story.

Dec 2007 :

"New Zealand Abortion Law: An Empty Compromise"