It is a tragedy that seven grieving women killed themselves within forty-two days of having an abortion in New Zealand between 2006 and 2016.
This information was provided under the Official Information Act to Right to Life by the Health Quality & Safety Commission New Zealand. The Commission advised that there were 28 maternal suicides during that period and that, ‘around a quarter of maternal suicides occur following a termination of pregnancy.’
‘maternal death is the death of a woman while pregnant or within 42 days of termination of pregnancy (miscarriage, termination or birth), irrespective of the duration and site of the pregnancy, from any cause related to or aggravated by the pregnancy or its management. It does not include accidental or incidental causes of death of a pregnant woman.’
Right to Life respectfully asks our Prime Minister, (who we know is genuinely concerned about women’s health), if she intends to institute a national study into the damage done to women’s health by abortion and enquire why innocent and grieving women are resorting to suicide to end their grief and pain. Fathers also commit suicide in despair, because they cannot protect their precious child from being killed by an abortionist.
Right to Life acknowledges that the circumstances around suicide are complex and that there may be other contributing factors such as mental ill-health. Right to Life believes that these seven suicides are just the tip of the iceberg as it is believed that many women commit suicide many years later as a direct result of an abortion.
Right to Life estimates that as a consequence of the 500,000 abortions performed since 1978 that there have been significantly more than twenty-five reported maternal deaths by suicide following an abortion.
These statistics dispel the myth propagated by Family Planning and the pro-abortion movement that abortion is safe and that since 1977 no woman has ever died as a result of having an abortion. Every abortion kills a defenceless and innocent child in the womb and wounds and sadly sometimes kills a grieving mother. Both abortion and suicide are cries for help from women in despair. In both instances the woman is lonely, is in a state of despair and facing insurmountable odds.
“The link between abortion and suicide in women is well established. A study conducted by the Elliott Institute, a post-abortion research and advocacy organization, examined the death records linked to Medi-Cal payments for births and abortions for approximately 173,000 low income Californian women. Researchers found that over an eight year period of time, women who aborted their children had a 154 percent higher risk of death from suicide.
These findings concurred with a large record-based study of 600,000 women conducted in Finland in 1997 which found that women who chose abortion over birth were six times more likely to die by suicide in the year following the pregnancy.”
There were 668 suicides in New Zealand in the year 2017/18, the highest total ever recorded. There were 193 women or girls who committed suicide, a thirty per cent increase over the previous year. Right to Life believes that this disturbing increase could be a result of grief and guilt following an abortion that may have been inflicted on the women many years previously.
Right to Life believes that the proposal of Jacinda Ardern to decriminalise abortion will result in more women killing themselves in an attempt to end their pain and to allow them to be with their child that has been so cruelly taken from them. We should mourn for our women, innocent victims of abortion and suicide. Their deaths are a tragedy for their families and for our communities.
Ken Orr
Spokesperson,
Right to Life
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