Here are my thoughts (first posted at Sobering Thoughts) on the announcement that the Canadian government will not fund abortion in its maternal health program:
The Globe and Mail reports:
Canada is refusing to fund abortion services as part of a G8 initiative to improve the health of mothers in poor countries.
Just as G8 officials arrived in Halifax for talks on the maternal-health initiative on Monday, the Conservative government said that other Group of Eight nations can finance projects that include abortion services if they choose – but Canada won’t.
I don’t get the fuss. It isn’t like the United States, Great Britain and even Canada aren’t funding abortion abroad; all the Stephen Harper government is doing is insisting that this particular maternal health initiative does not include abortion. What’s wrong with that?
Andrea Mrozek at ProWomanProLife has some thoughts, too:
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?
If you followed the parliamentary debate on March 23 on the pro-abortion Liberal motion — see our original blog coverage (scroll down to March 23 for a ten-part live blog of the debate), Interim cover story or Hansard — you’ll find the Liberals, NDP and Bloc making ideological statements in favour of abortion and ideological statements against using ideology to oppose abortion, but I haven’t seen any ideological defense of keeping abortion out of maternal health. All the ideology seems to be on behalf of the cause of expanding abortion.
