What is the most important thing in the world? It is the people, it is the people, it is the people!

And March for Life Auckland wants to celebrate all people in their inaugural March in the CBD on Saturday, February 29. The gathering forthe march is at Freyberg Square at 1pm. Marchers will leave for Aotea Square at 2pm. Speeches will start at 2.45pm.

Organisers are planning a fun, family-friendly event to raise awareness and spread love and healing in this country. Like the National March For Life held in Wellington, which has doubled in numbers every year, organisers are sure it will grab the imagination and hearts of Aucklanders. It is an international movement that attracts hundreds of thousands of people every year all over the world, so the hope is that New Zealand will take this up.

Organisers are hoping to see it grow each year into a real celebration oflife, love and whanau.

The Select Committee on the Abortion Legislation Bill reported back to Parliament this month and, being a Government bill with a strong majority, it is likely to be passed swiftly.

This means the timing of this event is important. The greater the number of walkers, the clearer the message is to the politicians that people do care about vulnerable people and that liberalising abortion is not what New Zealanders need or want.

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Using euphemisms “to make an evil sound good to lessen the evil of it” was
deplored by Bishop Emeritus Colin Campbell at a Mass during the Dunedin
stage of the Family Life International Pilgrimage for Life in opposition to new abortion legislation.

“If the unjust taking of a human life is a crime then isn’t that a matter of
justice not health?” he asked. “How can it be ‘health’ when it takes the life of a child and causes such trauma and angst to the mother?”

Speaking at a pilgrimage Mass in the chapel of the Sacred Heart Home run by the Little Sisters of the Poor in Brockville, Bishop Campbell said noted
Southland gynaecologist Dr Norman Maclean had told him of letting women listen to the heartbeat of their unborn baby of only a few weeks old, when the child is but a few centimetres in length.

The bishop said “our country is working on science that is quite unscientific” with the view that a human life only begins when it is born. That was 18th-century thinking.

He noted that the 1979 abortion law stated that decisions had to have “full regard for the rights of the unborn child”, but Dr Maclean had told him after about three years the situation became basically abortion on demand.

Bishop Campbell urged people to persevere in the struggle for life of the
unborn child.

About 70 attended the Mass, concelebrated by Fr Fredy Permentilla, MSP, with Bishop Campbell, Msgr Vincent Walker and Fr Mervyn McGettigan.

The next day the pilgrimage went to Sacred Heart Church in North East
Valley where Rosary was recited at noon and Fr Aidan Cunningham, IC, celebrated Mass at 7pm.

It then made its way to St Francis Xavier Church in Mornington for a midday Rosary and a 7pm Rosary before the pilgrimage headed north to Oamaru for its next stage.

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Pro-life organisation Family Life International (FLI) is organising a secondary schools outreach programme to teach young people about pro-life values, saying it is needed “urgently”.

FLI said that the brand-new programme will put them “face-to-face” with pro-abortionists.

“Pro-abortionists are aggressively targetting New Zealand students,” FLI wrote in a letter to their supporters.

“It is frightening to think of the moral damage NZ Family Planning, the country’s biggest pro-abortion group, is inflicting on young people.”

The programme will involve the Gianna’s Choice mobile life centre, named for St Gianna Beretta Molla, the patron saint of mothers and unborn children.

FLI presenters will visit public and Catholic secondary schools in the North Island with the mobile life centre, and
students will be taught about the “reality” of abortion. All FLI presenters are fully qualified teachers who hold pro-life values.

FLI said they have already been visiting schools on a test basis and believe there is demand for their services throughout the North Island.

FLI are planning to start their programme by visiting schools in the Waikato and Waipa regions once weekly each, and will then expand into the central and lower North Island.

The organisation is planning to raise $38,350 in order to take their programme into schools, with the money raised going towards educational material, social media advertising, insurance and other day-to-day expenses in the running of the mobile life centre.

The CEO of the New Zealand Catholic Education Office, Paul Ferris, said that, while it is a Catholic view of the world to be an advocate for pro-life values and that supporting the group was “without question” a good move, he could not say how many schools would take up FLI’s invitation to run the programme.

“Each school is an independent authority at present,” he said. “I think the decision to agree will be influenced by a number of things . . . not all will relate to whether you are pro-life or not.”

He also said that timetabling issues might play a part in whether the organisation would be able to visit a school or not.

“If they are prepared to work in lunch times then that would require support from staff,” he said. “Each school will make a decision based on how that can fit in their schedule.”

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Paulo Garcia, who came into Parliament on the National Party list following the retirement of Nuk Korako, gave his maiden speech on May 29.

Mr Garcia introduced himself as Catholic, Filipino and a New Zealander.

During his speech, he said “whatever laws we might pass in this Chamber, the pro-life voice must no longer be despised and discounted as offensive”.

“Preachers of tolerance and inclusion must no longer seek to silence and condemn those with opinions that make them uncomfortable, but are nevertheless opinions based on another person’s own beliefs and values systems.”

He told his fellow MPs that “there have been people who say my views are intolerant. Why? Because I am pro-life? Because I believe in the sanctity of life? Because I take the great Māori proverb literally and to its logical conclusion? He aha te mea nui o te ao? What is the most important thing in the world? He tangata, he tangata, he tangata — it is the people, it is the people, it is the people”.

“When it comes to human beings,” Mr Garcia added, “we cannot pick and choose which ones are protected and which ones are not, and we cannot say some vulnerable lives must be protected, but others not.”

Also, in the context of the Christchurch mosque killings earlier this year, Mr Garcia called for an awareness of religious intolerance used in debates.

But he added that “it is insulting for some in this Chamber to suggest that the sole motive [for] retrograde policies, such as euthanasia, are religious ones, which is akin to saying that people of faith do not have intellect and shouldn’t also take their place here and contribute to society. We live in a day when we have put our own interests ahead of our children, and this modern society will continue to do so to its own detriment.”

Mr Garcia said that men in New Zealand are particularly at fault in this area.

“Women are often left abandoned, uncertain, and pressured to get rid of unexpected children or to raise them on their own. I salute in absolute praise all single mothers.”

Parenting is the most important job we have, he added.

“As mothers and fathers and, collectively, as a Parliament and as a nation, we need to support our parents, we need to support our families, and we need to support our children, but I highlight that the men of this country need to do more. We, as men, need to stand strong in our relationships. We must be reliable providers and protectors. We must show tamariki the way to respect and honour women.”

Mr Garcia said there is not “a day that I wake up without giving thanks for being in New Zealand”, which he praised being a place “where people from the world over are able to live without fear in the practice of their faith and values, and in observance of their cultural norms”.

While he had experienced hatred, slander and being ostracised, he acknowledged the suffering of others from many walks of life — displaced youth, those with issues around alcohol, drugs and gambling and those elderly who are isolated.

Each of us has “the capacity for greed, anger and hatred”, he cautioned. But he also argued strongly for Parliament to protect freedom of speech

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