Yesterday was a day of two halves - and it revealed that even with a change of Government, our work is just as important and necessary. It's also a reality-check of just how socially liberal and radical our Parliament has become when it's difficult to distinguish the right-leaning parties from the left-leaning parties in terms of their social engineering and agenda. Yesterday was a perfect example...
THE MORNING
Focusing on the rights of the child to their mother & father - Family First
Yesterday morning, Family First made its oral submission to the Health Select Committee considering the Government's bill to expand the availability and access to surrogacy and donor sperm / eggs.
We opposed the bill. The new bill is predominantly about increasing access and making it easier for adults, as evidenced by the title of the bill - "Improving Arrangements for Surrogacy Bill". The question that nobody is asking: Should we be making surrogacy and sperm / egg donating easier?
The discussion around surrogacy tends to be focused only on the adults’ rights and needs – and ignores the rights and needs of the child (and also the safety and wellbeing of the surrogates).
READ OUR POSITION STATEMENT
THE AFTERNOON
Mothers and fathers no longer necessary or required - NZ Government
Yesterday afternoon, ACT deputy-leader and Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden released a statement gloating about how proud the Government was that adults can choose what label they have on a birth certificate, and the birth certificate may even have TWO mothers (despite the blatantly absurd biological lie that is telling).
Can the mother choose the label “father”- and why is “parent” deemed necessary? Will we one day be able to have three parents listed? [In 2018, under the Labour government, the Department of Internal Affairs removed the need for fathers to even be recorded on birth certificates.]
Notice that it is all about the rights of the adults, but not the rights of the child to know who their biological mother and father is.
Ironically, the Department of Internal Affairs website says – “A New Zealand Birth Certificate is an official document containing registered information about a person’s birth as at the date of issue.” (our emphasis added).
The role of the Birth Certificate is also spelt out in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Article 7 states: “The child shall be registered immediately after birth and shall have the right from birth to a name, the right to acquire a nationality and, as far as possible, the right to know and be cared for by his or her parents.” Article 8 says: “States Parties undertake to respect the right of the child to preserve his or her identity, including nationality, name and family relations as recognized by law without unlawful interference.”
A birth certificate is a historical & biological record based on fact – not a political tool to further an ideology.
A government document should tell the truth. But as we know, someone can now change the sex on their birth certificate also.
Circumstances may change but a historical biological document should not be able to be manipulated.
Yesterday was just a reminder of the uphill battle that we face to protect the family, the rights of children, and the biological truth - irrespective of the so-called left- or right-leaning labels on the political party/s in power.
So, a baby could have two women registered as his or her 'fathers' on the birth certificate then, if those women have changed the sex recorded on their own birth certificates? Bloody hell!