8 May 2011

Media Release

Nurturing and Protecting Our Children

Right to Life welcomes the announcement of the Minister of Social Development, the Hon Paula Bennett’s intention to develop a Green Paper, to introduce a national conversation on how we value, nurture and protect children. Right to Life congratulates the Hon Paula Bennett, for this important initiative.

Our society agrees that as a nation we can do better for our children, by taking a long term approach, to addressing a wide range of issues that affect our children.

Right to Life supports the range of issues relating to the safety of our children.

Information sharing to protect children.

Tracking at risk children.

Mandatory reporting of child abuse.

Right to Life is encouraged by the government’s advocacy for children and its commitment to participate in this dialogue with the community. It is clear from the range of issues proposed by the Minister, that the prevention of child abuse is the objective of the Green Paper.

The Most Dangerous Place for a Child Today is in its Mother’s Womb

This is a social issue of the greatest importance. On average, 10 children are killed in New Zealand, each year in child abuse. We have the fourth highest rate of child killings in the developed world. The abuse of our precious children is a painful burden on the conscience of the nation.

The focus of the Green Paper will be on the needs of children and young people aged 0 to 18 years, with a special focus on under five –year olds. Right to Life is disappointed that the Green Paper excludes consideration of the needs of unborn children in the first nine months of life. Unborn children are the weakest and most defenceless members of the human family, these are the most vulnerable of our children. Today the most dangerous place for a child is in its mother’s womb. Violence against children does not start after a child is born, it starts in the womb. Each year we kill nearly 18,000 children before they are born. Abortion is the ultimate in child abuse. When are we going to stop the abuse of our children before birth? There is a connection between violence against the unborn child and violence against the born child. How can we say that you may kill the child before it is born but after birth you may not smack the child?

• Having an abortion may decrease an individual’s instinctual restraint against the occasional rage felt for those dependent on her care.

• Allowing infants to die by permissive abortion might diminish the social taboo against aggressing the defenceless.

• By lessening children’s confidence in their parents’ care, abortion may increase the hostility between the generations which may become violent.

• By discarding non defective unborn children wholesale, abortion may devalue children thus diminishing the importance of caring for children.

• When abortion increases guilt and self-hatred, the parent may displace it onto a child.

• Abortion of the first pregnancy may truncate the initial developing mother-infant bond, thereby diminishing future mothering capability.

• A previous abortion may result in depression which interferes with the mother’s capacity to bond to her new-born.

A study conducted in 2005 at the Bowling Green University in the United States found that women who have had an abortion are significantly more likely to physically abuse their children than women who have not had an abortion. Compared with women with no history of abortion those who had undergone an abortion were found to have a 144 per cent greater risk of physically abusing their children. The study was published by the medical journal Acta Paediatrica.

Right to Life urges the community to make a firm commitment to protect all of our children, born and unborn from child abuse.

Right to Life requests that the Minister includes the unborn child in her proposed Green Paper to allow the community to have a truly meaningful conversation about child abuse.

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