Kiwi Party President and former MP Gordon Copeland said today that his Party is totally opposed to the proposal by Labour MP Steve Chadwick to decriminalise abortion in New Zealand and sanction abortion on demand up to 24 weeks gestation.

"The Kiwi Party has a constitutional commitment to life as the foundation of all human rights" said Mr Copeland. "Accordingly we believe that every person has an inherent dignity and sanctity which is to be protected from its beginning, before birth, until natural death."

"In accordance with our constitution, at its meeting on the 22nd of May, the Kiwi Party Board unanimously adopted as party policy the Abortion (Informed Consent) Amendment Bill which was drafted while I was in Parliament, but which was never drawn from the ballot of Member's Bills."

"The contrast with the draconian bill proposed by Steve Chadwick could hardly be greater. The Kiwi Party, in line with the practice which is now standard right across the Health Sector, would mandate that the women with child must be given all relevant information by trained counsellors before making the fateful decision to abort her baby."

"That counselling would cover the advantages and disadvantages of and any difficulties or anxieties in deciding whether to continue the pregnancy or have an abortion, the developmental stages of a foetus, an ultrasound image offer and options for the practicable assistance available to her whether the mother decides to continue with the pregnancy or have an abortion."

"Such counselling would of course be given before any final decision is made to abort and be completely separate from the pre-abortion counselling given by the abortion clinic. In addition, before the request by the mother for an abortion is forwarded to the certifying consultants, the women's own doctor would be required to certify that the women had been fully informed of all health risks and that she had made the decision to abort of her own free will. This latter is a feature of the abortion procedure in countries like Germany and Holland, where the rate of abortion is less that half the rate in New Zealand and should, we believe, also apply in New Zealand in the light of anecdotal evidence that some women feel coerced into an abortion and subsequently experience severe depression or similar."

"The woman with child is at the centre of these proposals. Choice remains, but it is a fully informed choice which by any measure is way better than uninformed choice! For that reason experienced people in Parliament believed my Bill, had it been drawn from the ballot, would have been passed if all parties had allowed members to vote with their conscience."

"Steve Chadwick's claim that abortion is a human right is just so much nonsense and can only be justified if the unborn child is regarded as property and not as a human being with potential."

"Medicine and science agree that human life begins before birth and proposals such as Steve Chadwick's ignore that fundamental truth in favour of old fashioned 1970's feminist ideology. I think she is out of touch with the growing understanding of life in the womb which is now available to every mother to be through ultrasound imaging, technology which was unthinkable when the current abortion law was enacted in 1977".