Catholic Bishops lobbies Law Commission over proposed abortion law change
Stuff co.nz 24 May 2018
Family First Comment: Well said….
“The state would fail its responsibility to care for all human life if it were to make abortion solely a matter between woman and doctor, according to the New Zealand Catholic Bishop’s Conference (NZCBC)…. The submission also calls for a review of the “social support structures, familial, financial, emotional and social, that our society offers to women who are pregnant”.
www.chooselife.org.nz/review
The state would fail its responsibility to care for all human life if it were to make abortion solely a matter between woman and doctor, according to the New Zealand Catholic Bishop’s Conference (NZCBC).
The group expressed its concerns in a submission to the Law Commission about Justice Minister Andrew Little’s proposal to make abortion a health issue rather than a criminal one – a move abortion law-change advocates called “not all that surprising”, as they questioned the NZCBC’s points raised.
Little wrote to the commission in February to ask advice on what changes could be made to the country’s legal framework to achieve that.
The NZCBC said in its letter the legal framework the commission had been tasked to provide “would effectively amount to a significant policy change”. The submission also calls for a review of the “social support structures, familial, financial, emotional and social, that our society offers to women who are pregnant”.
“The NZCBC and its centre of bioethics, The Nathaniel Centre, are concerned that such a move would limit or remove the rights of the unborn child that the current law acknowledges,” the group wrote. “They say that abortion is both a health and a justice issue and it should continue to be treated by the law as such.”
NZCBC president, Bishop Patrick Dunn, said: “The changes we would advocate for are those which will ensure continued consideration of the rights of the unborn child and promote the well-being of women, including better processes to ensure adequate informed consent, especially independent counselling.
READ MORE: https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/104192343/catholic-bishops-lobbies-law-commission-over-proposed-abortion-law-change
