ABORTION IS MURDER AND IT HURTS - A SUBMISSION AGAINST DECRIMINALISING ABORTION

I do things at the last minute, when I can't put them off any longer and everything else has to be put aside. So for all you procrastinators out there, here's a submission on decriminalizing abortion you can plagiarise as much as you want. You have until 5 p m today, May 18. Email to alr@lawcom.govt.nz

I utterly oppose the change proposed by Justice Minister Andrew Little to New Zealand law in regard to children in utero.

The child in the womb is human. In all civilised societies, human life is sacrosanct. The right to life is the most fundamental of all human rights, and the pillar on which our civilisation is built. Remove that pillar and society collapses - a process we are witnessing now and have been ever since abortion was legalized: violence, abuse, homelessness, drug and alcohol addiction, a huge increase in the prison population and an increasing strain on 'the thin blue line' of policing and respect for the law, the root cause for the latter being the perennial truth expressed by St Augustine: “An unjust law is no law at all”.

To end a human life deliberately is to commit a crime. Until abortion was legalised, that was always and everywhere called murder. The fact that we can’t see the human life in the womb does not make that life any less human, and the fact that it’s the mother who ostensibly – because almost always she is subject to coercion - takes the decision to murder her own child, makes the crime all the more ghastly.

And certifying consultants, so-called, are paid by the Ministry of Health, so-called, paid to commit the crime. It’s murder, it’s a crime, and morally that means the person who commits is it a criminal.

If abortion is decriminalised, some babies will inevitably be killed at full term by partial-birth abortion. Babies at 20 weeks’ gestation are fully capable of experiencing pain. Think what a baby feels when at full-term or nearly so, in a partial-birth abortion the baby is dragged feet-first from the mother's womb, the 'doctor' applies scissors to puncture the base of the baby's skull, and his/her brain is sucked out.

This is the reality experienced daily in Victoria, Australia. Do we really want that in New Zealand?

The only completely authentic “health approach” to abortion is to outlaw it completely. Abortion kills the child and seriously damages the mother, often physically, usually mentally, and always spiritually. Abortion is not a ‘health issue’; it’s an horrific sickness issue.

This Government must reassess its approach, away from the negative ‘solution’ of abortion for unwanted pregnancies to an honest, holistic and positive attitude to families.

If pregnant women were given access to all the services needed to welcome their child and give him/her the best possible launch into a decent, humane society, the rate of abortions under the present law would drop dramatically.

If abortion is removed from the Crimes Act, and offered as Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern would like, to women who want access to abortion to have it ‘as a right’, our health as a nation will go from bad to worse.