Right to Life New Zealand

Upholding the sanctity of Human life and Standing Up for the Vulnerable

Abortion Grief Significant Suicide Risk for New Zealand Women  

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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. [Read more…]

Emeritus Professor David Fergusson dies

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Emeritus Professor David Fergusson, the University of Otago researcher behind the success of the Christchurch Health and Development study, has died at the age of 74, after a battle with lung cancer.

Prof Fergusson worked in the Department of Psychological Medicine and led the 35-year study of a birth cohort of 1265 children born in the Christchurch region in mid-1977.

The study has informed government policy decisions on topics such as child sexual abuse, youth drug use and abortion.

University vice chancellor Harlene Hayne, who wrote several book chapters with Prof Fergusson,  said in a statement today he was “considered an international leader among life course researchers, using sophisticated methods to extract maximum impact from social survey data”.

To people who worked with him, Prof Fergusson was “both our harshest critic and our fiercest ally”, Prof Hayne said.

“To described him as a national treasure is perhaps the only fitting way to capture the enormity and importance of his contributions to his adopted country over 40-plus years.”

“His work ethic was second to none,” Prof Hayne said.

“This work ethic was driven by the desire to generate knowledge that would make life better for the most disadvantaged among us. His strong personality and sheer force of will has touched many New Zealanders in different ways.”

After retiring from the university in 2015, Prof Fergusson worked as a consultant for the Ministry of Social Development.

Otago Daily Times, 5 October 2018

Abortion’s Negative Impact on Women’s Health: Maternal Mortality Part One

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The following article is a re-post from National Right to Life published November 3, 2017 and is by Randall K. O’Bannon, Ph.D., NRL Director of Education & Research.

The abortion industry and its medical and media allies constantly repeat the refrain that abortion is safer than childbirth and that it is an overall health benefit for women. A new report from the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC), the British pro-life group, says that just isn’t so.

The comprehensive, heavily footnoted 28-page report, titled “Abortion and Women’s Health” looks at several of the physical risks and psychological consequences of abortion. The report is available to download at the SPUC website.

SPUC published the report last week on the 50th anniversary of the 1967 Abortion Act.

The author of the report is Dr. Greg Pike, from Australia, the Founding Director of the Adelaide Centre for Bioethics and Culture. He has participated in research in neurobiology at the University of Adelaide and worked on trials of new laparoscopic techniques at the department of surgery at the Royal Adelaide Hospital. Dr. Pike has numerous medical and bioethics publications to his credit and has served on different government medical ethics committees in Australia. [Read more…]

“Abortion Does Not Preserve a Woman’s Life, It Preserves Her Lifestyle,” Writer Says

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Image result for abortion on demand and without apologyThe following article is a re-post from LifeNews.com and is by Micaiah Bilger   Dec 16, 2016

Abortion activists have enjoyed quite a bit of media attention lately to voice their gripes about new abortion regulations in Texas and Ohio, the incoming Congress, Donald Trump’s administration and more.

The Blaze columnist Matt Walsh recently wrote about a common thread in many of the abortion activists’ comments – an ironic claim that their abortion work is life-saving.

Walsh wrote:

One common theme amidst the leftist freak-out is that this law [in Ohio banning abortions after 20 weeks] is “dangerous” because it might force a woman in a high risk pregnancy to carry a child to term, killing her in the process.

This is the fabled “life of the mother” abortion excuse that we’re sure to hear ad nauseum anytime any state attempts to pass even the most meager regulations on the abortion industry. According to pro-abortion radicals, even the Texas law requiring humane treatment of dead babies might somehow result in the deaths of countless women. In Abortion World, abortion saves more lives than it takes. Pregnancy is more fatal than pancreatic cancer and the only thing preventing millions of women from dying from it is abortion. Pregnancy is a disease and abortion is the cure, they believe.

Here’s how one reader put it to me through email last night:

Matt, many women would be DEAD without abortion. Is that what you want? I thought you’re “pro-life”???? What if a woman needs to get an abortion to save her life. Are YOU going to tell her she has to DIE for the sake of a fetus? Is the GOVERNMENT going to tell her that? You’re not “pro-life”…. you’re pro-birth. You don’t give a sh*t about the women who will now die in Ohio because you think you should have a say over what they do with their bodies.

[Read more…]

Abortions Dramatically Increase Rate of Preterm Deliveries and Disabled Children

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Image result for abortion risks for pre-termMedia Release 30th November 2016

The rate of preterm births in New Zealand is 8 per cent a rate that has increased 2.1 per cent in the last 20 years. This rate has increased dramatically in the developed world and is correlated with the abortion rate.

There are 5,000 babies born each year in New Zealand who are born before 37 weeks gestation. In 2012 there were 448 fetal deaths, of which 363 were preterm deaths. Researchers believe that 40 per cent of these are caused as a direct result of a previous abortion or repeat abortions. The annual cost of care of preterm babies in New Zealand is an estimated $40 million.

Abortion drastically increases risk of pre-term  and low-weight births. Women who have one or more abortions face a dramatically increased risk of giving birth to a pre-term or low birth weight baby in a subsequent pregnancy. This is the conclusion that a team of scientists came to after studying a meta analysis of 36 studies that included over a million women ( 1,047,683 women).

Why are women considering a surgical abortion not being told of the real risks including the increased risk of a preterm delivery and a disabled child in future pregnancies? [Read more…]

Abortion linked to mental health problems down the road, study finds

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Banner sad woman credit trig shutterstock cna

The following post is a re-post from the Angelusnews.com website published 4th September 2016

Washington D.C., Sep 3, 2016 / 04:55 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Abortion during the late teen and early adult years raises a woman’s risk of mental health problems and may be linked to almost one in ten cases of these women’s mental disorders, a new study says. “Evidence from the United States confirms previous findings from Norway and New Zealand that, unlike other pregnancy outcomes, abortion is consistently associated with a moderate increase in risk of mental health disorders during late adolescence and early adulthood,” said the study’s abstract.

The study, conducted by sociology professor Donald Paul Sullins of The Catholic University of America, was published July 22, 2016 in the peer-reviewed Sage Open Medicine journal. After adjusting for demographic differences and other factors, the study found that abortion during these years elevated a woman’s risk of mental health disorder by 45 percent. “One-eleventh of the prevalence of mental disorders examined over the period were attributable to abortion,” the study’s abstract said. [Read more…]

Viral video with over 5 million views is changing minds about abortion

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imageThe following video posted by Live Action News has been described by some viewers as the saddest video they have ever seen. It has been accredited with changing the minds of  Pro-abortion supporters. Please be cautioned this is not a pleasant video to watch.  Click here or on graphic to view.

A former abortionist is unmasking the lies and secrecy surrounding the  abortion industry in a new educational video project that has gone viral on social media.

In a 4-minute video, Dr. Anthony Levatino reveals the violence of abortion procedures and the risks they pose to women.

Levatino, who performed over 1,200 abortions in the early part of his career as a OB/GYN, describes a second trimester dilation and evacuation abortion procedure, or D&E.

The video, released as part of Live Action’s new educational website, AbortionProcedures.com, garnered over 3 million views within 24 hours on Facebook, and has over 120,000 shares and over 44,000 likes (at the time of the article’s publication). The D&E video is one of four depicting the violence against preborn children committed through the most prevalent abortion procedures in America.

Viewers reacted strongly to the message, and some who identified as “pro-choice” had a change of heart. [Read more…]

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

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suicide womanRight 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?

[Read more…]

Abortion Risks: A list of major physical complications related to abortion

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This article is from the Elliot Institute’s  AfterAbortion.org  website

Printable Fact Sheets
Psychological Complications
More articles on abortion complications

Physical Dangers Associated With Abortion

Approximately 10% of women undergoing induced abortion suffer from immediate complications, of which one-fifth (2%) were considered major.19 However the majority of complications take time to develop and will not be apparent for days, months or even years.

Negative psychological reactions to abortion are more common than physical complications.   These are described in a later section.

The major physical risks and complications of abortion are described below.  Citations to the medical literature regarding each danger or risk are included as end notes at the bottom of this page.

[Read more…]

This is the website of Right to Life NZ Inc.