Why are NZ Women Not Been Informed of the Link between Having an Abortion and Increased Suicide Risk?

Right to Life Post  26 October 2014

The death of a woman by suicide is terrible tragedy for herself, her family and friends and for the whole community. Professional counsellors have always known that having an abortion increases the risk of a woman committing suicide. Suicide like an abortion, is a cry for help, from a woman who is depressed and lonely, who is crying out for support and encouragement to chose life.  Many women after an abortion cry out in despair, “I have killed my baby”. The burden of the loss of her child brings grief, remorse and despair and finally death by suicide. We should weep for our women whose pain is unbearable, hopefully they are now reunited with their baby.

The Chief Coroner, Neil MacLean, reports that there were 541 suicides in New Zealand in 2013,. Of these 153 were women, which is the highest number ever recorded in.New Zealand, 75 of these women were between 20 and 24 years of age, the second highest rate in the OECD. New Zealand has the third highest rate for all female suicides in the OECD.Suicide is a major public mental health problem, aggravated by the murder of the unborn. Abortion and suicide are both part of a culture of death.

The Abortion Supervisory Committee recognises that there is a link between abortion and suicide. The Standards of Practice for the Provision of Counselling produced by the Counselling Advisory Committee in 1998 require that counsellors are capable of assessing suicide risk in the women they are counselling.

Women have a right to be fully informed, Right to life asks, why then are women considering an abortion not told by Family Planning that having an abortion increases the risk of suicide and that choosing life for their baby decreases the risk of suicide?

We should also weep for the women of China. It is the only country in the world where women have a higher rate of suicide than men. The female rate is three times higher than men. There are more than 500 female  suicides each day, amounting to more than 182,500 suicides each year. The appalling statistics of female self destruction are widely attributed to the mainly forced 35,000 abortions performed each day.

There have been numerous studies that found an association between abortion and suicide. Other studies have found a link between abortion and depression (which is a major risk factor for suicide). Overseas research also reveals that fathers too, are driven to despair and suicide at the murder of their child in the womb. For example,  a 1995 study by A.C. Gilchrist in the British Journal of Psychiatry found that in women with no history of psychiatric illness, the rate of deliberate self-harm was 70 percent higher after abortion than after childbirth.

A 1996 study in Finland by pro-choice researcher Mika Gissler, funded by the government and using medical records, published in the British Medical Journal found that the suicide rate was nearly six times greater among women who aborted than among women who gave birth.

A 2002 record-linkage study of California Medicaid patients in the Southern Medical Journal, which controlled for prior mental illness, found that suicide risk was 154 percent higher among women who aborted than among those who delivered.

There is urgent need for research in New Zealand into the link between abortion and suicide.

Ken Orr

Spokesperson,

Right to Life