Media Release 21 November 2020
Should we expect our Labour government that promotes and funds the violent killing of our precious children before birth to be concerned about our appalling fertility rate?
Our birth rate has been below replacement level since 1975.
Why is the Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern and her government, silent in response to New Zealand’s appalling birth rate? Our nation is facing an increasing demographic winter which will have a catastrophic effect on the future of this nation. We have an increasing ageing community with a declining workforce to support them and look after them. Why does the government not have a policy to increase our birth rate and confront this crisis?
Statistics NZ have announced that our fertility rate is now 1.63, the lowest ever recorded in New Zealand since 1894. The replacement birth rate is 2.1 for women between the ages of 15 and 44. Demographers warn that a birth rate of 1.5 is the point of no return.
Our birth rate has been in decline since the 1960s when the contraceptive pill was introduced. In 1931 at the height of the great depression, the birth rate was 3.61. In 1974 the birth rate was 2.12, just above replacement level and that was the last year that we had a replacement birth rate.
Right to Life applauds the courageous women who sacrifice themselves by choosing to have children and raise them in spite of the formidable obstacles confronting them, especially the more than 200,000 solo mothers who are raising children alone.We also applaud the noble women who chose life for their baby in the face of abandonment of the father and coercion to choose abortion.
Right to Life believes that there are many reasons for this crisis.
· The Labour government of Jacinda Ardern has undermined motherhood, the dignity of the family and the humanity of the unborn child, by passing the Abortion Legislation Act, which promotes the legal fiction that the child is not a human being until it is born. It is now no longer a crime to kill an unborn child but in the words of our Prime Minister, “a reproductive choice for women.”
· The breakdown of marriage in New Zealand.
· Half the children born in New Zealand are born out of wedlock or a defacto relationship.
· Divorce and the abandonment of women.
· Contraception, sterilisation and the Same Sex Marriage Act 2013.
· Abortion, one in five potentially normal pregnancies ends in the killing of the child in the womb. Each year more than 13,000 innocent and defenceless unborn children are poisoned, violently dismembered or sucked out of their mother’s womb. Each child is a unique and unrepeatable miracle of God’s loving creation.
· The failure of the government to promote open adoption as a loving option in preference to the violent killing of the child in an abortion.
· The excessive cost of housing, both building and rental. New Zealand is the second most expensive country in the OECD to raise a child.
· The economic pressure on women to be in the workforce in preference to being a dedicated mother at home raising a family.
The government needs to urgently publicly acknowledge the demographic crisis and formulate a policy to promote marriage exclusively between one woman and one man and to promote child rearing. Two thirds of countries in Europe have measures to encourage fertility, baby bonuses, tax incentives and paid parental leave.
Ken Orr,
Spokesperson,
Right to Life