Media Release 5th June 2020
Right to Life encourages health practitioners to defend their ethics and patients by refusing to participate in the killing of the unborn and by opposing Pharmac’s anti-life proposals. They are extending access to the lethal murder drug Mifepristone and the prostaglandin, Misoprostol. These drugs are used to kill unborn children up to ten weeks gestation. The proposal which further victimises women, means that these drugs would be available and on hand for health practitioners authorised to provide abortion services. The ability to kill now extends to doctors, midwives and nurse practitioners. Women would not be required to go to a pharmacist to obtain the drugs.
It is important that the Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, the architect of the anti-life Abortion Legislation Act accepts full responsibility for the plight of women victimised by her appalling Abortion Legislation Act. Right to Life stands with women and their precious unborn and pledges to the women of New Zealand that we will not rest until it is repealed.
This proposal has been made legal by the new Abortion law, which intensifies the war on women and their precious unborn children. It trivialises the killing of the unborn which is promoted as a “health service”. Under the previous abortion legislation the lethal drugs were authorised only by a registered medical practitioner and were required to be administered and supervised by a doctor in a hospital or clinic licensed by the Abortion Supervisory Committee. Under the new Abortion law the drugs can be given to the woman in a clinic, hospital, doctor’s surgery or the women’s own home. In the home option there is a complete lack of medical supervision.
Despite claims that medication abortion is safe and easy, research proves that as many as five to seven percent of women who take abortion drugs will require follow-up surgery and three percent could end up in the emergency room. Self-managed abortions from home are especially dangerous; in fact, half of the abortion providers do not consider them safe, according to a 2019 survey published in the journal ‘Contraception’. Medical abortion becomes even more dangerous in situations where women cannot access emergency medical care.
Pharmac’s proposal will increase the pressure of the culture of death by encouraging doctors, nurse practitioners and midwives to accept the killing of the unborn as just a normal health service. This pressure will result in the following negative impacts;
- It will put pressure on health practitioners who are committed and trained to respect and care for both the mother and her child as patients, to be become killers of our unborn.
- It will place pressure on health practitioners to accept a responsibility to have these lethal drugs available to give to women seeking a medical abortion.
The proposal is just the first step in the agenda to make it compulsory for all health practitioners to provide drugs to kill the unborn. The ultimate objective will be to make it mandatory to have these drugs on hand to kill the unborn. Those practitioners who are not prepared to co-operate could be required to leave the profession.
The proposal of Pharmac will place increased pressure on a woman facing a crisis pregnancy to accept the killing of her child as the logical solution by:
- Deceiving her into believing the destructive and wrong information in the Interim Guidelines of the Ministry of Health for the performance of abortions, “that abortion is safer for women than birth.”
- Discouraging her from seeking pre-decision counselling and taking time to consider all the options of parenting and adoption that will protect her life and that of her baby.
- Forcing on her the sole responsibility for the killing of her child by taking the Mifepristone.
Ken Orr,
Spokesperson,
Right to Life
Leave a Reply