This opinion editorial is worth a read. It represents a fringe view, dressed up in moderate clothing. The author believes that access to abortion and contraception have propelled women to be successful in life and therefore that maternal health initiatives in developing countries ought to include access to abortion and contraception:
…It has been decades since Canadian women were denied access to contraception and abortion. The ability to decide when to have children is directly linked to women’s physical and financial wellbeing. It is the reason women now dominate law schools and medical schools in Canada and are an increasingly powerful force in the business and professional worlds.
This isn’t true, as women have been successfully balancing kids, schooling and power since before biblical times. A little longer view (prior to the 1970s) really is called for. Women are not “successful” because of abortion or contraception. (As a side note, both of my grandmothers had only two kids. This prior to the existence of “The Pill.” How did they do it? Not a question I’d ask, in particular because it would have happened via translation by my parents, but apparently without taking a daily dose of hormones. But I’m getting off topic here.)
Now I’d agree with her that Canadians are apathetic about abortion. If pressed about it, Canadians might conclude that if a woman has to have an abortion, they’d like it to be safe. But as recent polls show, Canadians are entirely unaware of our abortion-friendly culture. They don’t know that abortion is permitted for any reason at any time throughout the nine months of pregnancy.
This reality occurs when apathy and extremism hold hands. Canadians who don’t care on the one hand have tacitly partnered with an extremely small group of pro-abortion fanatics on the other, those who believe abortion constitutes care. These fanatics also believe that gender equality means being exactly the same. Ie: women should have the unilateral right to wipe out their offspring, all the while having as much sex as they want. This is the “unfettered copulation equals women’s rights” point of view. Most Canadians reject that, too.
And taking the whole thing abroad, well, most of us with even a passing familiarity of life in the developing world are aware that women in Canada don’t die in childbirth because of… modern health care, not because of access to abortion. This thing called modern health care is something women in developing countries don’t have.
Abortion is not basic. It’s not a right. And the idea that it helps women achieve anything has always been, is now, and always will be just a point of view.
It’s one this writer is free to hold. But to claim it represents anything more would be as foolish as if I claimed “I’m pro-life, therefore all women are pro-life.”
Abortion is not care. Not here, not abroad. The Conservatives should just keep repeating, as they have, that they’d like to help improve maternal health. And leave these swooning fringe feminists in the 1970s section of a women’s studies textbook, where they belong.
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Brigitte adds:
For the Canadian government to avoid the issue because it is politically unpalatable, would be both unjust and irresponsible. To stop funding international organizations that offer abortions would also represent a major policy change for Canada — one that would represent one standard for domestic health care and another standard for our support of international health care. If that is what motherhood means to this government, Canadians have a right to know.
Ah, yes. Because nothing says motherhood like killing your own babies.
by 
Perhaps I’m biased, but I always find that pro-abortion articles that end with the idea of “motherhood” particularly disturbing. In this case, I also found it particularly confusing …
“…family planning must be part of the package if you really want to reduce maternal mortality rates around the world and to make women and their babies healthier.”
Fair enough. I agree, actually. But see, these birth control types always seem to include abortion as part of their contraceptive strategies. And what part of abortion is actually health care?
Here’s the rub. Natural family planning/fertility awareness is FREE. And Africa is POOR. People there live a hand to mouth existence. There is no way that the average woman could scrape together the $10-15 a month for the pill. Money for contraceptives would have to come from foreign aid. And foreign aid dollars are limited.
Therefore, we have some difficult choices to make as to how we spend our aid dollars:
Do we send them condoms (and don’t kid yourself, these will be fourth-rate quality condoms that are stored in African heat) or do we buy sterilization equipment for hospitals?
Do we pay for 20 women’s pill prescriptions for a couple of years, or do we drill a well that will supply an entire village with clean water?
Do we hand out Depo-Provera, or do we supply a girls’ school with books, paper and pencils, as keeping girls in school will delay their child-bearing?
I think it’s pretty clear what I’d prefer.
http://www.c-fam.org/publications/id.1571/pub_detail.asp
Chilean Maternal Mortality Study Undercuts Pro-Abortion Claims
Thank you Rene. Another great article.
One has to wonder….can’t any of our politicians read? It certainly seems apparent that some of newspapers’ opinion editors can’t. Or don’t. Or won’t.
The term that wears on me is “reproductive rights”. When read in the context of articles such as this, it is more accurately, a woman’s right to not reproduce. “Reproductive rights”, as we have seen over and over again in the mainstream media, has become an umbrella term for contraception and abortion, not healthy pregnancy and delivery. Women worldwide have the right to safe and healthy pregnancies and births, and they want to have these babies that they have conceived. Governments should be doing just what Melissa mentioned earlier – be good stewards of the monies they have and look at the bigger picture.
“The ability to decide when to have children is directly linked to women’s physical and financial well-being.”
I think it would be more accurate to put it this way: the ability to decide when *to get pregnant* is directly linked to women’s physical and financial well-being.
There is no necessary relationship between a woman’s access to abortion and a woman’s ability to decide when to get pregnant.
If anything, access to abortion (and contraceptives) puts more pressure on a woman to become sexually active at times when she doesn’t have adequate physical or financial support should she become pregnant. Especially in societies where women have few rights.
In fact, I would think that access to abortion and contraceptives would be especially dangerous to women in the societies where women have the fewest rights.