New Zealand recently passed a historic law granting paid leave after a woman has a miscarriage. According to Reuters, New Zealand has joined India to become just the second country in the world to enact such a measure.
The allowance for bereavement following a miscarriage or stillborn baby applies both to women and their partners to take three days of leave to grieve their loss. The leave will not be counted as sick leave and applies also to mothers and their partners expecting a baby through adoption.
“The grief that comes with miscarriage is not a sickness; it is a loss, and that loss takes time – time to recover physically and time to recover mentally,” lawmaker Ginny Andersen told Parliament, according to the Daily Mail.
During discussion, MP Jan Logie mentioned that miscarriage and stillbirth are sadly common events that women feel compelled to suffer through in silence. “It is an incredibly normal experience, but normal doesn’t mean easy; it doesn’t mean without pain. But we have for a long time, through silence and stigma, forced women – primarily women – into actually just pretending as if it hasn’t happened.”
Indeed, many women feel this way because miscarriages are commonly minimized because of a push for acceptance of abortion.
Thus the move is a good, if contradictory, move for the extremely pro-abortion country. In the last few years in particular, abortion activists have been on the march in New Zealand. In 2020, the nation’s parliament voted 68 to 51 to decriminalize abortion on demand up to 20 weeks’ gestation. Previously, a woman had to obtain concurrence from two physicians that the abortion was needed due to a “serious danger” to her health.
Pro-life physicians filed suit against the government earlier this year to regain their conscience protection rights, since the abortion law requires physicians to either commit an abortion or refer to someone who does — or face termination by their employers. Earlier this month, as Live Action News reported, pro-abortion Labour Party MP Louisa Wall introduced legislation that would allow for the government to enact buffer zones around abortion facilities, restricting pro-lifers’ free speech.
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