The New Zealand Christian Network has a number of major concerns about the proposed liberalisation of New Zealand’s abortion legislation.

What is missing in the proposed new legislation, asserts spokesperson Dr Stuart Lange, is clear evidence of concern to respect and protect the life of those unborn. “How can politicians say they care about society’s most vulnerable people, then have this huge blind spot about those most vulnerable of all, unborn children?”

The existing legislation is less than perfect, and often too loosely applied, but it does at least implicitly seek to balance the health of the mother and the great seriousness of ending an unborn baby’s life.

Those proposing the change say that abortion needs to be “decriminalised”. But that is a misleading argument. Under the current legislation, no woman undergoing a “lawful” abortion is ever committing a criminal act. Only abortionists who operate outside of the law commit a crime.

Proponents of the change say that abortion must become simply a “woman’s health issue”. But what about the health of the unborn child? Abortion remains an extreme and tragic event, invariably with fatal consequences for one of the two people involved.

The network acknowledges that aborting a baby is often an agonising decision for a woman, and can also have ongoing effects on her well-being.

NZCN believes that current legislation, for all its flaws, is much to be preferred to what is proposed.

It urges members of parliament to vote against what is proposed.

Dr Stuart Lange National Director
New Zealand Christian Network

Author: Dr Stuart Lange

Dr Stuart Lange is the National Director of the NZCN and is a Senior Research Fellow at Laidlaw College, where he was formerly Vice Principal. Stuart wrote and presented the historical DVD documentary Te Rongopai: 200 years of the Gospel in New Zealand, 1814-2014.