Media Release 10 December 2020

Abortion is the ultimate exploitation of women. Abortion betrays the basic feminist principles of nonviolence, non-discrimination and justice for all. Abortion is a reflection that we have not met the needs of women—and that women at the behest of men have settled for less. Women deserve better.

The Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, claims to be a progressive, republican feminist, however sadly she is not. As a woman and a mother why is she not at the forefront of defending women and their precious unborn? How can she claim to be a feminist when she was the architect of the notorious anti-feminist Abortion Legislation Act 2020, which undermines the dignity and status of women, and denies the humanity and right to life of their precious unborn?

More than a century ago, the same women who fought for women’s rights and for the rights of slaves to be free also fought to protect women and children from abortion. Right to Life and the pro-life movement today stand with women to protect women and children.

Feminism was born of abolition. All people are equal. Not all choices are equal. We envision a better day, a day when womanhood is celebrated, mothers are supported, fatherhood is honoured and every child is cherished.

The feminist movement has the responsibility of promoting protection of the human rights of women from conception to natural death, the foundation right being the right to life. The feminist movement should be at the forefront in seeking  protection of women in the first nine months of life in their mother’s womb. It was in the 1970s that the feminist movement was infiltrated by those who promoted abortion. It is important that those who are now promoting a dangerous anti life and anti feminist agenda are exposed and challenged.

Family Planning, when founded in the 1950s, was opposed to abortion. It now claims to represent the interests of women and genuinely believed that women would not be emancipated and truly free until the law was changed to make it no longer a crime to kill an unborn child.

They also believed that the stigma associated with the killing of the innocent and defenceless should be silenced by making the killing of the unborn “a reproductive health service.”

Family Planning is aware that many women having an abortion are subject to coercion and domestic violence. Right to Life advocates unconditional support for women who lovingly place their babies into the arms of adoptive couples. We applaud birth mothers, who say that “adoption can be an empowering option for women.”

We stand in solidarity with women who have been betrayed by those they count on the most, with women who have underestimated their own strength, with women who have experienced abortion and are silent no more, with young men and women who mourn their missing siblings. We mourn with those pregnant women who naively went to Family Planning seeking help and were offered :assistance” and were encouraged to terminate the life of their precious child. We mourn with men who weren’t given a choice or who contributed to an abortion that they now regret.

All of this is unthinkable.

As we work together toward that vision, pro-life feminists hope that our sisters who promote abortion will one day realize that unborn children are not their property either and that violence against them is equally unacceptable. Let us not need to spend another 150 years establishing that the children we bear are also persons.

Ken Orr,

Spokesperson,

Right to Life