From Ottawa Students for Life:
Michael Ignatieff and the Liberal Party are scheming to force the Conservative Government to promote abortion as part of Canada’s push to fight maternal and infant mortality at the G8. The G8 is an annual summit for the governments of the United States, United Kingdom, Russia, Japan, Italy, Germany, France, and Canada as well as the European Union (I know that makes 9). Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper recently announced:
“As president of the G8 in 2010, Canada will champion a major initiative to improve the health of women and children in the world’s poorest regions. Members of the G8 can make a tangible difference in maternal and child health and Canada will be making this the top priority in June. Far too many lives and unexplored futures have already been lost for want of relatively simple health-care solutions.”
But the Liberals are introducing a motion in Parliament on Tuesday, March 23, 2010 that would force the Government to include abortion and contraception in this effort to help mothers and infants among the world’s poor.
Please email your Member of Parliament, as well as other Members of Parliament, letting them know that you oppose this move by the Liberals that would take a great initiative and turn it into an opportunity to force abortion on the world’s poor. There isn’t time to mail letters via snail mail, so I suggest sending a brief email. For information on finding out who your MP is and how to contact her or him see:http://4mycanada.ca/ParliamentaryContacts.html
We’d like to thanks 4MyCanada for informing us of this issue. You can read more about it and they’re call to action here: http://4mycanada.ca/Emails/20100320.html
Please contact all interested friends and family regarding this issue and encourage them to make their voice heard ASAP!
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Andrea adds: Having seen the resolution, I take back this call to action. Here’s what the resolution says:
That, in the opinion of the House, the government’s G8 maternal and child health initiative for the world’s poorest regions must include the full range of family planning, sexual and reproductive health options, including contraception, consistent with the policy of previous Liberal and Conservative governments, and all other G8 governments last year in L’Aquila, Italy; that the approach of the Government of Canada must be based on scientific evidence, which proves that education and family planning can prevent as many as one in every three maternal deaths; and that the Canadian government should refrain from advancing the failed right-wing ideologies previously imposed by the George W. Bush administration in the United States, which made humanitarian assistance conditional upon a “global gag rule” that required all non-governmental organizations receiving federal funding to refrain from promoting medically-sound family planning.
Everything I stand for is based on sound medical science. I stand for the full range of family planning, which does not include abortion because abortion is not family planning. Until the opposition parties replace the word “contraception” above with “abortion”–I’d say this is all a big game.
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Brigitte isn’t too sure she understand this game, but would like to add anyway: I, for one, am not against family planning and contraception in principle. But here’s what I really don’t get: Whenever I’m in a debate with pro-choicers and the subject of “abortion used as birth control method” comes up, they deny it vehemently. Abortion is NOT used as a birth control method, they insist. It is NOT back-up contraception. So why am I getting the impression now that “the full range of family planning, etc” does indeed include abortion even though the word abortion does not appear anywhere in the resolution? Just exactly what kind of game is this?
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Andrea adds: It’s a game to lower voter turnout.
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Actually, abortion in practice is almost always a back up contraception method. I think it is still implied. I don’t really know if contraception is part and parcel with maternal health anyway. These things should have a narrow focus/point – help moms and children live better. Then it can actually achieve its goal. Access to clean water, expansion of immunization, would be a more productive use of resources. Or more of a long term plan of sustainable development. That’s just me though.
I think I’ve said this before, but I would really like to see the economics of what they are planning. Our foreign aid dollars can go far, but they are limited.
NFP is free, and these countries are poor. We don’t need to make the women in the world dependent on American and European pharmaceuticals in order for them to have some control over their fertility. They can have decent control (not perfect, but we should remember that other more tech-intensive methods aren’t perfect either) of their fertility without relying on expensive artificial methods.
I don’t think we could afford to provide adequate artificial contraception for everyone in the developing world who wished for a family planning method. I agree with Nicole, that clean water, immunizations, basic sanitation equipment in the hospitals, and more trained doctors and birth attendants would go a long way to reducing maternal and child mortality.
Andrea, I’m surprised to learn that you “stand for the full range of family planning”, considering the fact that many, if not most, forms of so-called ‘contraception’ work by preventing the implantation of an already fertilized ovum – in other words, it’s a very early abortion. Life begins at conception, not at implantation.
As for condoms, even if used properly and every time, there is still a failure rate of 2%. However, in TYPICAL use (not properly or not used every time,) the failure rate ranges from 10 – 18% – these numbers according to Wikipedia.
Then when one’s ‘contraception’ fails, one feels ‘cheated’, and therefore ‘entitled’ to an abortion. Too many people forget the purpose of sex, and that when a woman gets pregnant, something’s gone right, not wrong.
I agree with Melissa that NFP (natural family planning) is a good option. Great strides have been made in recent years in this area, to the extent that one method has been found to have a failure rate of only .4 – .6% (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/02/070221065200.htm). It would take some time and money to train people in the proper technique, but money doesn’t seem to be a problem when it comes to supplying condoms. And did you ever think about how environmentally UNfriendly condoms (and their wrappers) are? (Thanks again Wikipedia)
NFP is not the easiest option, or the quickest, but the best in the long term. Kind of like the difference between giving a man a fish (condom), and teaching him how to fish (NFP).
I saw the documentary ‘The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo’ last year, and I have to say that after realizing where the majority of ‘unplanned’ pregnancies came from in the DRC (one of the poorest countries in the world) I don’t think contraception, least of all abortions, are the answer. Aborting children from the constant rapes seems like an aberration to me.
Impoverished countries need social change and social services (doctors and women’s health facilities for sure), but implementing a western standard of ‘family planning’ ignores not only the religious practices of these regions (where in Africa it is mainly Christianity and Islam) but also ignores the dire need to elevate the very status of women there and to enforce a justice system on those who commit crimes against them.
It also seems really scary in that situation – I mean, what, use contraception, and you can rape women as much as you want? IS that the message we want to send, as opposed to respect women enough to not rape them, period. Even if that’s tougher to teach, the solution isn’t to enable roughing up women without the “threat” of pregnancy…