Commentary by Ala Pomelile
Warning: If this discussion around abortion causes you distress in any way, please visit https://www.voiceforlife.org.nz/crisis-support for counselling and support services.
Recently, a New Zealand social media influencer who is both a mother and a Christian faced criticism after expressing, on a podcast, her pro-life stance and her desire to see abortion end. She shared a deeply personal account, discussing her teenage abortions and the mental health challenges that followed, including suicidal thoughts. Nevertheless, much of the comments section dismissed her perspective rather than engaging with her lived experience. The backlash was sadly unsurprising, given the rhetoric promoting my-body-my-choice. More notable, though, was the claim repeated throughout the comments: “abortion is healthcare.”
“Abortion is healthcare” is not a medical fact but a moral conclusion presented as one.
It assumes that abortion is beneficial and consistent with the purpose of medicine, even though each of those claims is contested. When that language is accepted without question, the pro-choice position is granted the status of objective truth, while the pro-life position is reduced to a private belief. That is not neutrality. It is advocacy disguised as medical terminology.
This highlights the importance of language in discussions about abortion. The 2020 reforms aimed to treat abortion like any other health service, positioning it as essential healthcare and reducing a significant moral issue to an administrative one. If abortion is regarded only as healthcare, those who oppose it, including health professionals, may be viewed as obstructing patient care, or even as unloving.
This framing is not unique to New Zealand. In Victoria, the Labor government recently pledged to make abortion free if re-elected, with the health minister stating that “abortion care is healthcare.” Within hours, Liberal opposition leader Jess Wilson matched the pledge. When even the centre-right adopts this language, it doesn’t resolve the moral debate; it simply shuts it down.
But labelling something healthcare does not make it so.
Medicine has a moral purpose
Medicine aims to heal, preserve life, and relieve suffering without causing new harm. Medical ethics considers both intention and technique: the same instrument can be used to save a life or to end one. Whether an act qualifies as medicine therefore depends not only on how it is performed, but also on its intended purpose.
Most abortions end a pregnancy by ending the life of the unborn child. That is not an unintended consequence; it is the procedure’s purpose. It therefore conflicts with a view of medicine centred on healing, protecting life, and avoiding direct harm.
In genuine maternal emergencies, such as ectopic pregnancy, sepsis, or severe pre-eclampsia, doctors treat the mother’s illness. If the baby cannot survive, that death is a tragic but foreseen outcome rather than the intended one. Public debate often blurs this distinction, but it remains important. Treating illness is healthcare; intentionally ending the life of an unborn child is not.
Bodily autonomy matters, but no ethical framework treats it as absolute, especially when another person’s life is at stake. This is especially true within families. Parents have obligations to their children that strangers do not. New Zealand law recognises this through parents’ duty to provide the necessaries of life, and families demonstrate it every day through the sacrifices they make for their children.
Some argue that parents are not required to sacrifice their bodies for their children, noting that no law compels a parent to donate a kidney, or even blood. Pregnancy, however, is not an extraordinary act of rescue. It is the natural means by which every human life is sustained at its beginning. Abortion is not merely declining to provide extra assistance; it ends a life already dependent on, and entrusted to, the mother’s care.
Pregnancy is not an encounter between strangers. It marks the start of a parent–child relationship, with all its associated rights and obligations. Pregnancy can take a significant physical and emotional toll on a woman, but carrying life is also beautiful and deeply meaningful. In the rare cases where pregnancy results from violence, the trauma is immense and must be acknowledged and met with care, compassion, and practical support. That trauma, however, does not diminish the unborn child’s value or rights.
Labelling abortion “essential healthcare” also changes how those who object are perceived. A doctor or nurse who declines to participate may be seen not as acting on conscience, but as withholding care. This is not hypothetical. Objectors are already required by law to inform patients of their objection and of how to find the nearest provider. Some academics have gone further, arguing that conscientious objection in reproductive healthcare should be eliminated altogether because it can create a barrier to abortion services.
Notably, in 2020, Parliament recognised abortion as a matter of conscience by allowing MPs a conscience vote, and the bill passed by 68 votes to 51. If abortion is a matter of conscience for MPs, it should also be recognised as one for clinicians and other health professionals. A tolerant society should accommodate both perspectives, yet that accommodation is becoming increasingly uncertain.
Compassion is not the same as permission
Opposition to abortion is not about punishing women. Many pro-life advocates understand and sympathise with the pressures women face in a crisis pregnancy and the difficult circumstances in which these decisions are made. Women in these situations need compassion and practical support, not condemnation.
Compassion, however, does not require us to deny the reality of what abortion involves. True compassion offers women more than abortion: safe housing, financial help, perinatal mental health care, open adoption, and, above all, families, communities, and churches willing to say, “You are not doing this alone.”
Changing the language around abortion has not changed, and never will change, its underlying reality. Calling abortion healthcare may make it appear more acceptable, but it remains morally unacceptable.
The 2020 law should not be treated as settled, regardless of what politicians say. Laws are regularly reviewed and amended. We must continue to speak up for unborn babies, whose humanity should be acknowledged and recognised. At the same time, we must support the practical support that makes choosing life possible, and support communities in being bold and unafraid to be pro-life in word and action.
Protecting mothers and protecting unborn babies has never been an either-or choice. We should, and always will, love them both.
