abortion and family planning

Canada going Bush on abortion

America may have reversed the ruinous international family planning policy of George Bush, but Canada has re-installed it . Forget the ugly American, think now of the ugly Canadian. With a big fat black eye inflicted by our gung-ho, full-steam ahead development of the Albert tar sands project, we now have another black eye thanks to our refusal to fund abortions abroad. It was once said of Americans that they love democracy so much that they want to keep it all to themselves. American governments habitually supported third world dictators while boasting that their nation was the beacon of liberty.

Now Canada is about to deny women of other nations the same right that Canadian law affords women here---the right to a safe and legal abortion.

The CBC reported the Harper government’s policy position this way:

“The federal government has disclosed for the first time that Canada will not fund abortions in its G8 child and maternal health-care initiative for developing countries. Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced late in 2009 that Canada, as the host of the upcoming G8 meeting in June, would champion maternal and child health in developing countries. But until Monday, no one in the government had disclosed whether abortion would be included in the corresponding programs Canada supports. International Co-operation Minister Bev Oda said the government would consider funding family planning measures such as contraception, but not abortion under any circumstances.” http://www.cbc.ca/politics/story/2010/04/26/abortion-maternal-health.html

Equation of death by abortion or death by hunger

So not only has the Harper government continued the fine Canadian tradition of dispensing foreign aid to developing countries without making it conditional on family planning, it has gutted family planning of an essential tool. Consider this coincidence. The global population grows by approximately eighty million people each year, and each year there are some 80 million unplanned pregnancies. The implication is clear. We need to get serious about family planning. The ideological and philosophical division over abortion is irrelevant. Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that abortion consists of the murder of human life, “the pre-born”, according to the Christian “pro-life” terminology. What then is the death of children from the scourge of over-population to be termed? In a nation that is suffering from critical overshoot, the addition of a child that otherwise would have been aborted if abortion was a safe option would jeopardize the life of an existing child. Those who promote “life” in effect, by their opposition to safe abortions, are promoting death. Death by disease and hunger from over-taxed resources and over-crowding. One could conceivably accept that a foetus is a human life form, and regard abortion as the termination of that life. But in many contexts, killing is not murder, but homicide. And some kinds of homicide are justified. Especially homocide that results in less harm in the long run.

Madeline Weld, the president of the Population Institute of Canada, was moved to write the following letter in response to a story about this issue in the Ottawa Citizen:

Young soldiers sent to wars in overpopulated countries

“Canada is sending its young soldiers to fight and die in distant lands. Now in Afghanistan, and possibly in the (Democratic Republic of) the Congo next. These countries, and many others convulsed by conflict (Somalia, Sudan, Pakistan) can be viewed as failing states. A multitude of factors contribute to the failures, but one prominent factor common to all is rapid population growth. The average Afghan woman has 6.5 children. Afghanistan now has 28 million people and is projected to have 74 million people by 2050. On the first Earth Day in 1970, Afghanistan had 15 million people. In the Congo, each woman has 5.9 children on average, and the current population of 68 million is projected to be 148 million by 2050. In 1970, the population of the Congo was 22 million. The environmental degradation resulting from rapid population growth helps fuel the conflicts in all failing states.

In view of the above, the Conservative government's refusal so far to fund the International Planned Parenthood Federation, one of the most effective agencies in making contraceptives available to millions of women around the world, is counterproductive to our national security. In the same vein, the Harper government refuses to fund abortions in its G8 maternal health initiative and included contraception only after intense public and international pressure. Yet each year, 38% of pregnancies around the world, some 80 million, are unintended. Forty million result in abortions , of which 83% occur in developing countries. Unsafe abortions account for 13% of maternal deaths (70,000 women ) each year.

From any perspective, the Harper government's refusal to acknowledge the vital importance of contraception to women's health and environmental sustainability is destructive.”

Amen.
Tim Murray