The deVeber Institute is having a public lecture on Improving Maternal and Child Health? Canadian and International Perspectives.
If you are in Toronto, you might like to go and check it out!
This Thursday, October 14, 2010
7: 00 pm Doors Open, 7:30 pm Public Lecture Begins
100 St. Joseph Street, Fr. Madden Hall (in Carr Hall)
St. Michael’s College , University of Toronto
Do we A) celebrate a victory because we got by without “abortion rights” being included in maternal health? Or ignore it because B) excluding abortion is common sense and therefore not worth celebrating? Or does this simply mean C)–everything continues on as it did before–some abortions will be done, even where it is currently illegal as most everyone just gets on with the business of working on improved medical conditions?
Probably the correct answer is D) for all of the above.
Canada’s financial committment to maternal health rings in at 2.85 billion over five years. Government backgrounder here:
For mothers and newborns, Canada will focus its efforts on improving the services and care needed to ensure healthy pregnancies and safe delivery, while placing a particular emphasis on meeting the nutritional needs of pregnant women, mothers, newborns and young children. To address child mortality, Canada will work to increase access to the high-impact, cost-effective interventions that address the leading killers of children under the age of five.
Today Steve Madely of 580 CFRA (Ottawa talk radio) is asking “Do you support the Harper government’s decision not to provide funding for abortion in the developing world?”
This morning I listened to the callers and they were all opposed to funding abortions abroad. For many different reasons. Music to my ears.
A letter to the editor discussing decreasing maternal deaths and whether or not abortion contributes. Dr. Leiva’s point is that maternal morbidity declines with improved health care, not access to abortion:
To further my point, I would bring up the examples of El Salvador and South Africa. The first legally prohibited induced abortion in 1998 and the latter legalized abortion on demand in 1996. Based on an April article from the prestigious British medical journal, The Lancet, the maternal mortality ratio in El Salvador has been decreased from 137 in 1990 to 37 in 2008, while in South Africa it went up from 121 to 237. Legalization of abortion had no impact.
This is a bit of an ongoing exchange, so here’s the letter Dr. Leiva is responding to. And here’s Dr. Leiva’s first letter.
This is good news. Front page headline in the Globe and Mail–Ottawa refuses to fund abortion in G8 plan. And Margaret Wente may be right, that this will change nothing on the ground in the developing world and that this is a North American ideological battle. But it’s an important battle, because women’s health does not include abortion, not here and not abroad. It’s important because abortion shouldn’t be publicly funded. It’s important because North American ideologues who always think abortion is part of everything shouldn’t win the day. It’s important because the current Canadian government’s position on this IS the tolerant, compromising one. Of all the things that can be worked on and improved in the developing world does anyone–anyone!–really think “access to abortion” is the main item?
Sad, but I can’t help but agree with this:
All this posturing, so breathlessly dissected in the media, is aimed at the home-town crowd, of course. None of it will ever have the slightest impact on any woman in India or Uganda. Nor will it influence the international policy approach to maternal health, which has been in place for years. This policy is to encourage contraception, and to support women’s access to safe abortions in those countries where it is legal. This has been Canada’s policy for years, and no doubt will remain so, despite the phony moral righteousness on all sides.
All the more reason to stand up and point out why abortion is not part of maternal health. This is all the more true in developing countries than here, which really does make the abortion-as-part-of-maternal-health debate one for the home-town crowd.
A short segment on maternal health, also featuring yours truly (by Skype, which is why I’m never looking at the camera.)