Voice for Life
[2] Voice for Life was founded in March 1970, as the Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child, by pioneering New Zealand foetal surgeon Professor Sir William Liley, who became the organisation's first president, and fellow Auckland doctor Patrick Dunn, the leader of the Family Rights Association.
He was deeply disturbed by the changes in the British medical profession following the passing of the Abortion Act 1967 and wrote numerous articles for NZ newspapers and journals explaining the humanity of the embryo and foetus from conception and the case for effective protection.
[3] The organisation should not be confused with the similarly motivated and named, UK-based Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, which is also abbreviated to SPUC.
[4] The abortion debate of the 1960s and 1970s stirred powerful passions, particularly as "reproductive freedom" was at the forefront of second-wave feminism and the women's liberation movement.
SPUC played a major advocacy role in a divided Parliament, which in 1975 established a Royal Commission on Contraception, Sterilisation and Abortion.
In March and April 1976, the Royal Commission released its report on contraception, abortion, and sterilisation to the Governor-General and wider public.
SPUC cautiously welcomed the Commission's report for affirming the rights of the unborn child while expressing concern about using mental health as a loophole to allow abortions.
During the parliamentary debate, SPUC also sponsored an anti-abortion advertisement in the tabloid New Zealand Truth equating abortion with murder, which attracted considerable public outrage.
SPUC leader Pryor was critical of the Sisters Overseas Service (SOS), regarding it as an attempt to circumvent New Zealand's abortion legislation.
SPUC also vetted candidates for the Abortion Supervisory Committee, objecting to certifying consultants which it deemed to be pro-abortion while seeking the appointment of anti-abortion doctors.
In 1987, SPUC's Dunedin branch leader John O'Neill appeared before the New Zealand Parliament's Justice and Law Reform Select Committee demanding the removal of the entire ASC committee including the SPUC-backed replacements on the grounds that it had failed to carry out its functions[15] According to its official historian, late former president Marilyn Pryor, the New Zealand anti-abortion movement suffered a devastating defeat in the 1982 Auckland High Court case Wall v Livingston, in which an anti-abortion doctor named Melvyn Wall attempted a legal challenge to an abortion for a fifteen-year-old girl that had been 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 and that the decisions of certifying consultants were beyond judicial review.
As a result of O'Neill's success, SPUC began coordinating complains in other New Zealand regions, leading to the suspension of abortion services in Waikato for four days.
However, the booklets were returned to the ministry by both the New Zealand Family Planning Council and counselors at some clinics that provided abortions, although some general practitioners kept and used them.
However, the Death With Dignity Bill 1995 failed to pass its first reading after opposition from SPUC, the New Zealand Conference of Catholic Bishops and other opponents.
The NCI published a fact sheet on its website explaining the science and concluding that abortion did not increase the risk of breast cancer, before 2000, which was taken down after George W. Bush was elected U.S. president.
Voice for Life's advocacy and communications activities have included stalls at public events, newspaper adverts, distributing informational material, contacts with the media, and lobbying politicians.
