Dr Ashley Bloomfield,
Director General of Health,
24th April 2020Dear Dr Bloomfield,

I wish to request that consideration be given to the following suggestions for amending the “Interim Standards for Abortion Services in New Zealand”.

Information for Women

Abortion is safer than continuing a pregnancy

This statement is untrue. The abortion is not safe for the unborn child. Pregnancy is not a disease and abortion is not health care. Pregnancy is a normal condition that with care from health professionals who provide care for both mother and child terminates with a live birth.  Abortion is the only medical procedure that has the specific intention of killing a patient, an unborn child. Abortion is neither safe for the mother who may be left with a lifetime of regret and sorrow, nor for the unborn child who is violently killed. It is abhorrent that the Ministry should be seen as promoting the destruction by abortion of innocent and defenceless unborn children by making this statement. I request that consideration be given to replacing that statement with the following statement, Human life begins at conception and that abortion entails the destruction of a unique and unrepeatable miracle of the Creator.

Long term complications from abortion

There is no mention of long term complications arising from abortion, Infertility, miscarriages, pre-maturity in future pregnancies and psychological damage to women’s health.

The findings of a study by Professor David Fergusson conducted in 2009 indicated that abortion damages the psychological health of teenagers. The study, the largest of its type and most detailed long-term study ever undertaken, attracted international attention. The research was conducted by the Canterbury Health and Development Study, at the Christchurch School of Medicine. The research was led by Professor David Fergusson, Ph.D. who is a psychologist and epidemiologist; He said that his research team had followed the progress of 1265 children born in Christchurch in the mid 1970s, from infancy to adulthood. Nearly 500 women in the study became pregnant by the age of 25 and 90 women had an abortion. 90 pregnancies ended with the deliberate termination of the life of the child.

His research found 41 per cent of the women studied had become pregnant by age 25, and that 14.6 percent had had an abortion. By the age of 25, the study found that 42 per cent who had undergone an abortion had also suffered major depression during the previous four years. In total, this was nearly double the rate of those who had never been pregnant and 35 per cent higher than those who had allowed their baby to be born. Those who had endured an abortion were also twice as likely to drink alcohol to dangerous levels compared with those who had a live birth, and three times as likely to be dependent on illicit drugs. Those who had an abortion also suffered elevated rates of depression, anxiety and suicidal behaviours.

Abortion Breast Cancer Link

It is recommended that women should be informed that international studies reveal that having an abortion increases the risk of developing breast cancer. The study, titled “A meta-analysis of the association between induced abortion and breast cancer risk among Chinese females” was published in 2014 in Cancer Causes and Control, a peer-reviewed international cancer journal. The study reveals that after one abortion the risk of breast cancer increases by 44%, after two abortions,76% and after three abortions 89%.

The research was conducted by Yubei Huang et al. from the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics in the Tianjin Medical University Cancer Hospital.

The Chinese research follows on the heels of two similar studies. One study published in the Indian Journal of Community Medicine in May 2013 found a 6-fold greater risk of breast cancer among Indian women with a history of induced abortion when compared to the women with no such history. A similar study from Bangladesh published in the Journal of the Dhaka Medical College in April 2013 found that women with a history of induced abortion had a 20-fold increase in likelihood of developing breast cancer when compared to women with no such history.

It is requested that women seeking a surgical abortion be advised that the unborn child from 12 weeks gestation can feel pain. Women should be asked if they wish to have pain relief given to their child before it undergoes violent dismemberment in her womb.
In a recent article in the influential journal Medical Ethics, two researchers, including a pro-abortion British pain expert who used to believe that there was no possibility  that unborn babies could feel pain before 24 weeks, say that there is now “good evidence” that the brain and nervous system, which start developing at 12 weeks gestation are sufficiently developed to feel pain.