Media Release 14th December 2019

Every pregnancy loss is a cause of profound grief and sorrow for the mother. A woman who loses her child in an abortion will often experience grief and pain at the loss of her child. This is a normal maternal instinct. This loss will also often be experienced by the father of the child who was prevented from protecting his child and its mother. This is normal paternal instinct.

Right to Life welcomes the passing of the Holidays (Bereavement Leave for Miscarriage) Amendment Bill (No 2) at its first reading on Wednesday 11 December. This is a Private Members bill of Ginny Anderson a Labour list MP.

However while the bill provides for up to three days bereavement leave for a mother and the father who suffer the loss of a child before birth by miscarriage or stillbirth, it does not include those who lose a child to abortion. It is the deliberate intention of Ginny Anderson to exclude women who are suffering from an abortion. This is calculated discrimination against vulnerable suffering women who have lost their child in an abortion. Right to Life asks how is that abortion wounded women and fathers are being left discriminated against?

This bill denies that the child killed in an abortion is a human being; only the wanted are recognised as human. Children violently dismembered and killed in  an abortion are not human beings but just the “contents of the uterus or pregnancy tissue.”

It is a cruel denial that women who have lost their child in an abortion are not suffering a loss with grief and sorrow. The government’s stance is to refuse to accept or acknowledge that these women are suffering and in effect is telling them they should deny their suffering and accept that abortion is a” health service”. This leaves them suffering in silence and alone.

The sponsor of the bill believed that the bill could have included abortion loss but was aware that if it did, that it would be defeated. On 27th June she withdrew her original bill and amended it to ensure that it would exclude women suffering from an abortion.  It is disappointing that those in Parliament who support abortion as a women’s right to choose, do not want to concede that a child lost in an abortion causes women profound grief and sorrow. Women who have an abortion are the second victims of the abortion. Why are many MPs ignoring the pain of women who have had abortions?

Ken Orr,
Spokesperson,
Right to Life