Voice for Life is New Zealand

New Zealand

New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...

's oldest and largest pro-life

Pro-life

Opposition to the legalization of abortion is centered around the pro-life, or anti-abortion, movement, a social and political movement opposing elective abortion on moral grounds and supporting its legal prohibition or restriction...

 group

Advocacy group

Advocacy groups use various forms of advocacy to influence public opinion and/or policy; they have played and continue to play an important part in the development of political and social systems...

 with branches nationwide. Voice for Life's role is to educate about the humanity of the preborn child, the effects of abortion

Abortion

Abortion is defined as the termination of pregnancy by the removal or expulsion from the uterus of a fetus or embryo prior to viability. An abortion can occur spontaneously, in which case it is usually called a miscarriage, or it can be purposely induced...

 on women and advocate for social change so that abortion is seen as unthinkable medical homicide. Voice for Life also exists to oppose physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia

Euthanasia

Euthanasia refers to the practice of intentionally ending a life in order to relieve pain and suffering....

, so it deals with the both the beginning of human life and its end.

History

Voice for Life was founded in 1970, as the Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child (SPUC), by pioneering New Zealand foetal surgeon Professor Sir William Liley, who became the organisation’s first president.

Liley was a brilliant obstetrician and gynaecologist, internationally renowned as the “father of foetology”, the pioneering science of preborn life in the womb. He was deeply disturbed by the changes in the British medical
profession following the passing of the 1967 Abortion Law Reform Act and wrote numerous articles for NZ newspapers and journals explaining the humanity of the preborn child from conception and the case for effective protection.

Prof Sir William Liley’s medical credentials and his arguments were never seriously challenged or debated. They were essentially ignored by those advocating social and political change to legalize abortion.

The abortion debate of the 1970s stirred powerful passions, particularly as “reproductive freedom” was at the forefront of the emerging feminist movement. SPUC played a major advocacy role in a divided Parliament, which in 1977 established a Royal Commission into abortion.

Parliamentarians wrestled with the problem of how to reconcile protection for the preborn child with the needs of women who were seeking abortions. The result was the Contraception, Sterilisation and Abortion Act passed in 1978, which set out the grounds and the machinery by which abortions might be approved.

The Abortion Supervisory Committee oversees the working of the Act under which 98% of all abortions are approved on mental health grounds.

According to its official historian, late former president Marilyn Pryor, the New Zealand pro-life movement suffered a devastating defeat in the 1982 Auckland High Court case Wall v Livingston, in which a pro-life doctor attempted a legal challenge to an abortion approved by two certifying consultants. Wall lost the case, with Justice Speight ruling that the fetus could not be represented and had no statutory rights until born. Also, the decisions of certifying consultants were beyond judicial review.

Political action for the next three decades was stymied because there wasn’t a majority of pro-life MPs in the House. Voice for Life concentrated on education, research and social advocacy through articles and advertising.

In the 1970s, there was very little research on how women and men were affected by abortion. Nobody really knew. However, by the late 90s there was a growing body of research and the emergence of the Internet enabled this to be easily available. The Otago University Health and Development Team published major NZ research overseas in January 2006 and November 2008. The Ministry of Health refused to commission further research in November 2006, that would have accurately identified the extent of subsequent mental health problems following abortion.

Voice for Life in the mid-2000s, ran nationwide advertisements on the abortion-breast cancer link.

Voice for Life Today

In recent years, new youth-orientated pro-life groups have emerged. Their
focus is on university campuses and social networking using Facebook.

Voice for Life collaborate with them on workshops and outreaches. The new
emphasis is disseminating online information through the VFL website and
social networking.

The current President of Voice for Life is Bernard Moran.