You can’t buy this kind of PR. Thanks, Mr. Ignatieff. Michael Ignatieff, the Liberal leader and former Harvard professor, has done more to raise the abortion issue than anyone or anything since Governor General Michaelle Jean gave Henry Morgentaler the Order of Canada in 2008.
Earlier this week he called for the Harper government to ensure that abortion is part of any foreign aid plan to promote maternal health and decrease infant mortality. Kevin Libin has a good, front-page article in the National Post today on Ignatieff’s stridently pro-abortion position. (One niggling complaint: Libin refers to The Interim as an “anti-abortion website.” We are as much of a newspaper as the National Post is, and our website, like theirs, supplements the dead tree version.) Libin quotes Ignatieff’s press secretary, Michael O’Shaughnessy, who said the Liberals are not “actively promoting abortion, just seeking assurances that all contraceptive health options will be available.” But yesterday, CanWest reported the Ignatieff saying this about his party’s support of Harper’s maternal health call-to-arms: “Liberals support the plan so long as it includes abortion.” That sounds like active promotion of abortion.
Libin also quotes Tom Flanagan, a University of Calgary political scientist and former Harper advisor. Flanagan — who does not support the recriminalization of abortion — said:
“Of all the issues that you could possibly raise about women’s health, why would you start with abortion? … What kind of mindset is that that you have to start killing unborn babies in order to help people? It seems to be based on the now discredited theory that poverty in the Third World is based on overpopulation. I don’t think any serious scholar believes that anymore.”
Flanagan is pointing to something quite diabolical: to a certain liberal or progressive mindset, abortion is the end-all and be-all of women’s health. (Well, maybe abortion and breast cancer.) If you ask most normal people about maternal health, few people will mention abortion; when you ask politically active leftists about maternal health, and abortion is about all they can think about. Ignatieff is only accurately reflecting the prejudices of his social peers.
In a press release today, Campaign Life Coalition national president Jim Hughes said: “Iggy’s comments show that the issue is not dead… let the debate begin.” Indeed. Pro-lifers are looking forward to having such a discussion.
Physicians for Life said in a press release:
It is ill-advised for some Canadians to attempt to export our culture of mass abortion to countries without the most basic health services for women and children. We have learned from our tragic experience with exporting formula feeding in the developing world that this type of cultural imperialism brings illness and death to the most vulnerable. Let us not use the deeply divisive issue of abortion to deny vulnerable women and children the basics of life that they both need and deserve.
Don Hutchinson of the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada notes:
The PM’s announcement has been greeted with mixed response. Some Canadian charities already active in this area have noted that they have been declined for CIDA funding because their religious orientation encourages a focus on maternal health, not including the option of abortion – which, when you think about it, is the antithesis of maternity care – and one of Minister for International Cooperation Bev Oda’s advisors on this matter is affiliated with Planned Parenthood, the largest provider of abortion services in the world. The government can rectify these concerns by engaging in a broad consultation, including faith based perspectives, on how to best engage with existing networks to pursue the goals.
The Catholic Civil Rights League said in a press release:
[T]he Liberal Party’s own press releaselisted pro-life statements made by Conservatives going back as far as 1990 in an effort to keep the story going. It is disturbing to see such finger-pointing in this regard, as though a commitment to respect for life is a sign of lack of fitness for public life … Perhaps someone will educate Mr. Ignatieff about the outspoken pro-lifers within the Liberal party, and other parties for that matter. The League does not engage in partisan politics because, like millions of Canadians, we regard respect for life as a good thing in a candidate and we know that there are candidates in all parties who share that sentiment.
Catholic Insight magazine also criticizes Ignatieff’s new hard-line abortion position:
Ignatieff has spoken of “safe medical services” (May 19, 2009) and of “child health care” (Feb 2, 2010). Father de Valk responds, “Abortion is not health care. Abortion does not heal; it kills the child, alienates the father, and hurts the mother, spiritually and physically.”
LifeSiteNews also has a story on criticism of the Liberal Party’s increasingly extreme position on abortion.
