May 07 2010
When medical journals go political
The Lancet is an influential body, so this one is tough to stomach:
…70 000 women die from unsafe abortions worldwide every year. The Canadian Government does not deprive women living in Canada from access to safe abortions; it is therefore hypocritical and unjust that it tries to do so abroad. Although the country’s decision only affects a small number of developing countries where abortion is legal, bans on the procedure, which are detrimental to public health, should be challenged by the G8, not tacitly supported. Canada and the other G8 nations could show real leadership with a final maternal health plan that is based on sound scientific evidence and not prejudice.
Turns out, “sound scientific evidence” is just about impossible to come by in this arena. I’m quite sure even your average pro-choice doctor would agree there. And even if legal abortion were safe and medically necessary, an assumption I do not accept, it still would not be Canada’s job to push for it in countries where good obstetric care of any kind is completely and totally unavailable.
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Brigitte adds: I may have missed something, but where do people get the idea that refusing to fund abortions amounts to banning them?
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Andrea adds: Thanks for that, Brigitte. Exactly.
No related posts.
Although I’d certainly be prepared to go to the next step and ban abortions.
Things that we need to remember about this…
–That 70,000 figure, although bandied about a lot, is not backed up by solid data. See
http://www.c-fam.org/docLib/20090514_Removing_the_Roadblocksfinal.pdf
–The WHO, IPPF (Planned Parenthood, and its associate Guttmacher) and UNFPA (UN population fund) are all heavily invested in legalizing abortion worldwide. They are also the source of most of the data. After all, who will really take issue with the data presented by the World Health Organization?
–Legalizing abortion has really not been shown to affect maternal mortality at all. See Dr. Leiva’s letter from yesterday, or, for some stats from the States, try these:
http://realchoice.blogspot.com/2008/12/unmistakable-undeniable-clear-impact-of.html
http://realchoice.0catch.com/library/weekly/aa082901a.htm
The point I’m trying to make is, if we make basic medical care a priority in developing countries, maternal mortality rates will decrease, AND deaths from abortion will decrease. We don’t have to fund abortion.