Right to Life fully supports the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. Violence against women and girls is an international problem of pandemic proportions. Violence against women is always a violation of human rights; it is always a crime and it as always unacceptable.

The Police in New Zealand receive 70,000 family violence calls each year. There are 3,500 convictions against men for violence inflicted on women. Each year there are 14 women who are killed by their partner or ex partner. Violence against women takes many forms. It is disappointing that our community is in denial and refuses to recognise that abortion is violence against vulnerable women and their unborn child.

An abortion entails an assault on the womb of a woman and a deadly assault on the life of her child. Frequently it is because the father of the child wants the child killed because he refuses to accept responsibility for the child he has fathered or for the care of the mother of his child. Nearly halve of the children conceived are female. What greater violence is there against women than to be killed in the mother’s womb?

It was commendable that many Members of Parliament on 25^th of November wore a white ribbon on their lapel to publicly express solidarity with women and to oppose violence against them. It is thus disappointing that the government actually continues to sanction violence against women by funding the violence of abortion.

Should we then be surprised that if we condone the violence of abortion against women that we are living in an increasingly violent society with an increase in domestic violence?

If we truly want to live in a society that respects women we must first protect mothers to be and their babies.

Ken Orr

Spokesperson,

Right to Life New Zealand Inc.