Pregnancy census wanted

Press, 21 February 1986, Page 5

Pregnancy census wanted

Women for Life has called on pregnant women to declare their unborn children on their census forms.

The national president of the group, Mrs Annetta Moran, said from her Auckland home that the call was being made to bring attention to the fact that unborn children had no legal status in New Zealand.

Mothers were being asked to indicate that they were pregnant, she sa:id. Mrs Moran said the group would also ask that a category for unborn children be included in the next census. Submis-

sions had already been made on the proposed Bill of Rights, which gave no protection to the unborn child.

The move did not worry the census section, said the assistant statistician at the Christchurch branch of the Statistics Department, Mr Len Cook.

“We might even tally it up,” he said. But it seemed ironic to him that the group should want to provide extra information when the department had removed a question about the number of children born to a woman, on the ground that it was an invasion of privacy.