Media Release

Green Paper – Unborn Children Excluded

Right to Life is disappointed that the Minister of Social Development, the Hon Paula Bennett has excluded the issue of violence against unborn children from consideration in the Green Paper recently launched in Auckland. The Minister in a letter to Right to Life stated that, “abortion was outside the scope of the Green Paper.” The Green Paper, was introduced to initiate a national conversation on how we value, nurture and protect children. Right to Life congratulates the Hon Paula Bennett, for this important initiative.

New Zealand has the highest rate of child deaths through child abuse in the OECD. Each year on average 12 children are killed by abuse, this is a national tragedy. Each year nearly 18,000 unborn New Zealand children are violently deprived of their lives, this is the ultimate in child abuse. The exclusion of unborn children from consideration in the Green Paper is deliberate discrimination.

• Why is the government having a national discussion about child abuse and ignoring the most vulnerable of our children, our unborn?

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 proposed in the Green Paper.
Right to Life is encouraged by the government’s advocacy for children and its commitment to participate in this dialogue with the community.

There is evidence that there is a link between abortion and the child abuse of born children.

• 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 the 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 commitment to protect all of our children, born and unborn from child abuse. Right to Life also urges concerned citizens to participate in the national conversation about child abuse and to include their concerns about abortion the ultimate in child abuse.

Ken Orr
Spokesperson,
Right to Life New Zealand Inc.

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