Be fruitful and multiple lie

Ah yes. The hate mail continues to pour in over today's treeware take on the Harper government's  It-Makes-Me-Gag-Rule, its refusal to connect the dots between contraception and maternal healthcare.

For two months now, the Conservative mouthpiece on all this, International Cooperation Minister Bev Oda, has steadfastly refused to acknowledge the need for women to have choices, let alone suggest that the HarperCons will back family planning support in its oh-look-we-discovered-women maternal healthcare initiative.

When asked about support for contraceptives and family planning in an interview last week, Ms. Oda said: "In order to maintain our focus, again our focus is on maternal and child health and mortality rates.

"We want to make sure that mothers, pregnant women, are healthy and can have safe births, and that the birthing process is made safer because if you look at the number of births during the actual birthing process, that's where a number of maternal deaths happen," she added.

"We also want to make sure when babies are born, they are born as healthy as possible so that they can live through their early age, up to the age of five, with as strong and good health as possible."

Plenty of background here. And here.

Oda's unwavering inability to concede on contraception has been repeated by Status of Women Minister Helena Guergis and just the other day by Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon.

It's been a political firestorm, which got diverted by the abortion debate -- which took the focus off contraception, a necessary component of any maternal healthcare program. 

The government's ridiculous and backward stance started getting international attention this week. Examples are here, here, here and here.

Extraordinary events in Canada over the last couple of days with the potential to embarrass mightily the G8, meeting in Ontario in late June. The host government's "legacy initiative" is on maternal and child health. The entire GB is expected to sign up to a package intended to save the lives of women and their dependent young children. But - and prepare to rub your eyes now - Stephen Harper and his ministers appear to want to exclude family planning from it. And it's not even just unsafe abortion (which kills thousands every year) that appears to be in their minds.

Then, on Thursday, wha ... ? Spinarama? Cover your buttism?

Said the PM in Question Period:

“We are not closing doors against any options including contraception. But we do not want a debate here or elsewhere on abortion.”

So why did you allow your ministers to say what they did for as long and as often as they did?

Here is today's column, in toto, with some added linkage.

Did Prime Minister Stephen Harper put a condom instead of a thinking cap on his head when, two months ago, he announced his now internationally ridiculed policy on "maternal and child health" that he's going to promote at the coming G8 summit?

 How else to explain his intransigence on women's access to family planning – as if a mother's ability to have no more babies than she can feed, clothe and protect has nothing to do with either's health?

Has he never heard the expression AIDS orphan? Obstetric fistula? High-risk pregnancy?

And we're not even talking about abortion here. This is about the pill, IUDs, diaphragms – and education.

Sure, Harper appeared to flip-flop Thursday by saying he's not "closing doors" -- but so far they've been slammed shut.

For all the statistics Harper has spouted on the 2 million women and children who die every year due to lack of proper care during pregnancy and delivery, has he not looked at a medical book instead of the Good Book?

Because, make no mistake, his dismissal of good maternal health practice is purely ideological, not gynecological.

Consider the support this contraception-free initiative has received from religious groups that are anti-reproductive rights.

For example, both the hardline LifeSiteNews and R.E.A.L. Women of Canada, which back every anti-choice move any Conservative MP makes, no matter how unscientific or misogynistic, are cheering on this "maternal health" policy.

Never mind that doctors and medical groups, not to mention health workers in the field, contradict the HarperCon position.

On Thursday, the Ottawa-based Federation of Medical Women of Canada, was the latest to denounce the government on this issue. "By excluding family planning, there will be even more pressures on already vulnerable health systems, devastating consequences on any attempts to implement maternal health programs, and tragic loss of millions of lives that could otherwise have been saved," its member physicians said in a statement.

They were reacting to what Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon said Tuesday during a meeting of the House of Commons foreign affairs committee, in response to questions on the direct correlation between access to contraception and women's deaths.

"This (policy) does not deal in any way, shape, or form with family planning," said Cannon. "Indeed, the purpose of this is to be able to save lives."

What's worse is that, as Cannon would later suggest to reporters, he personally is pro-choice.

Then there are International Co-operation Minister Bev Oda and Status Of Women Minister Helena Guergis – neither of who has ever practised birth control, right? – who also parrot the party line.

Said Guergis in the status of women committee Monday, in reply to a question on what she will do for maternal and child health care, both here and abroad: "I will play whatever role it is that the Prime Minister is defining for me in this process, happily, and I'm very proud and honoured to be a part of that process."

Talk about A Handmaid's Tale.

As for Oda, on Wednesday she told the House that the government will be "providing clean water, vaccinations, better nutrition, as well as the most effective way (in) the training of health care workers and improving access for those women, that is what we are going to do."

Sure all that is important, but as one friend cracked on Facebook, "Dead women can't drink clean water."

Besides, research shows that when it comes to health care in impoverished nations, women – as they often are in everything else – are second-class citizens, always at the back of the line.

So, while improving the medical infrastructure will definitely help these societies as a whole, it may not do that much more for mothers and newborns.

Nice try, PM Harper.

But it's obvious: This is just a Trojan horse for your religious beliefs.

Couple things.

One, today Maclean's Paul Wells exhaustively unpacked Stephen Harper's right-ho politics. It is a must-read.

Two, it's been suggested to me by Facebook friend Alexandra Mandelis that the only family planning the HarperCons might support are condoms and the good ole rhythm method.

Now taking bets on how long before the HarperCons issue a statement saying that because they are not interesting in reopening the abortion debate, the only family planning devices their "signature" initaitive will include are all those that can't cause "very early abortions" - also called "abortifacients" by the anti-choice. "Abortifacient" methods include the Pill, emergency contraception, the patch and the IUD - all hormonal methods.

Alexandra is probably correct in her prediction

Consider the Pill, which prevents ovulation. True, every once in a huge while, mostly because a woman forgets to take her daily dose, an egg can slip by and get fertilized. The Pill would prevent that zygote from implantation, BTW.) But the risk of that is insignificant. Still, that doesn't stop the Pill Kills posse from shrieking that the Pill evil and kills babies.

Funny how they are more concerned about theoretical single-celled embryos than starving orphans who lost their mothers because their exhausted and undernourished bodies couldn't pump out that 10th baby.

The Way We Were

This first-person account by Bridget Potter, who found herself pregnant at 19 in the pre-Pill days of 1962, speaks for itself.

Here are some excerpts. But please read the whole chilling thing.

Sociologist Rickie Solinger in her book Wake Up Little Susie, describes what it was like to have an unwanted pregnancy in 1962. The woman might be “futilely appealing to a hospital abortion committee; being diagnosed as neurotic, even psychotic by a mental health professional; expelled from school (by law until 1972); unemployed; in a Salvation Army or some other maternity home; poor, alone, ashamed, threatened by the law.” There was also an acute social stigma attached to an unwed mother with an illegitimate child; maternity homes were frequently frightening and far away. All counseled adoption. The only alternatives were a shotgun wedding or an illegal abortion.

According to a 1958 Kinsey study, illegal abortion was the option chosen by 80 percent of single women with unwanted pregnancies. Statistics on illegal abortion are notoriously unreliable, but the Guttmacher Institute, a respected international organization dedicated to sexual and reproductive health, estimates that during the pre-Roe vs. Wade years there were up to one million illegal abortions performed in the United States each year. Illegal and often unsafe. In 1965, they count almost two hundred known deaths from illegal abortions, but the actual number was, they estimate, much higher, since the majority went unreported.

<SNIP>

Emily Perl knew someone who knew someone who knew someone who had been taken care of by a woman in an apartment on West 86th Street. When Michael and I arrived, she put the chain on the inside of the door and peeped through the crack. She let me in but demanded that Michael wait in the lobby. The room was dark, overheated, and smelled of boiled cabbage. I glimpsed a big Victorian wood-framed, red velvet couch and a round, oak pedestal table through the dinge. In her fifties, the woman had an Eastern European accent, suspiciously black hair, and smeary scarlet lipstick. She was curt.

She would “pack” my uterus and send me home where I must rest. For a day or two. When I started to bleed I must return and she would take care of it. What would she put inside me, I asked clumsily. “Stoff,” she replied. Where would she “take care” of it, I asked. She pointed to a door. “In ze udder room.” I must “svear” not go to a doctor or a hospital. I understood the chilling threat. “It’s nowting,” she said. “If you wanna now is fine. Five hunnerd dollars. Cash.”

My rent was sixty dollars a month. I earned sixty dollars a week, forty-seven dollars after taxes. I could barely make it Friday to Friday. I thanked her and fled. There had to be a cheaper, safer way.

<SNIP>

Written in pencil was a name and an address. My dress was wet, my tarmacked shoes stuck to the ground as I walked. I had proud long hair then that I ironed straight. It frizzed in the humidity. I handed a cab driver the paper. He spoke no English but I could tell that he  thought I was mistaken, that I didn’t want to go there. That it was far. Yes, yes. I nodded emphatically at the paper, taking it back from him and pointing with my finger at the address. Finally I understood his words: twenty dollars. I handed him money and off we went, out of San Juan, on dirt roads for what seemed like hours, to a small village built around a grassy square. The square was still, empty save for a few mangy looking dogs, a couple of chickens, and two old men sitting on a bench playing a board game. He dropped me in front of an open building, which appeared to be someone’s house.

A small man glanced at me from inside, and pointed to the whitewashed stairs that rose along the wall. At the top stood a second man, dressed in white pants and an undershirt. His massive shoulders and arms were those of a wrestler. He must be a bodyguard, I thought. But he immediately started talking about the money in fluent, barely accented English. He could take care of me but traveler’s checks were no good to him. I didn’t have enough money for the cab fair to the hotel and back again on top of the two hundred and fifty dollars that he was demanding. Are you alone, he asked? Yes, I said. We agreed on two hundred dollars. He would wait. I returned in the twilight with the cash.

A wooden table, no anesthesia, a scraping sound, and a newspaper-lined metal bucket. I moaned. Be quiet, he demanded. Or did I want him to stop? No, no. Go on. Please. Go on.

<SNIP>

In the New York Times in June 2008, Waldo Fielding, a retired gynecologist, described his experience with incomplete abortion complications.

“The familiar symbol of illegal abortion is the infamous ‘coat hanger’—which may be the symbol, but is in no way a myth. In my years in New York, several women arrived with a hanger still in place. Whoever put it in—perhaps the patient herself—found it trapped in the cervix and could not remove it… Almost any implement you can imagine had been and was used to start an abortion—darning needles, crochet hooks, cut-glass salt shakers, soda bottles, sometimes intact, sometimes with the top broken off.”

Three years after my trip to San Juan, illegal abortion officially accounted for 17 percent of all deaths attributed to pregnancy and childbirth in the U.S. It is speculated that the actual number was likely much higher.

Today, about sixty-seven thousand women worldwide still die each year from abortions, mostly in countries where the procedure is illegal.

Did I happen to mention that PM Stephen Harper doesn't think that contraception, never mind abortion, has anything to do with maternal health?

Speaks for itself

I don't like to give politicians free reign rein but I have to say that I endorse every word of this Liberal party of Canada news release, posted here without any edits. I did add some links.

Today, Liberal MPs Carolyn Bennett, Maria Minna and Anita Neville released the following open letter to International Cooperation Minister Bev Oda:

Dear Minister Oda:

We are writing today to urge you to reconsider your ill-advised decision to not include  Canada’s longstanding support for contraception and reproductive health services as part of your recently-announced maternal and infant health initiative for some of the world’s poorest countries.

By refusing to fund programs that respect women’s reproductive rights – including  contraception and reproductive health services – you are allowing ideological differences to get in the way of good health care and gender equality.

While immunization, access to clean water, better nutrition and improved training for health-care workers are all important to the health and safety of women and girls, addressing the real issues underlying poor maternal and infant health requires that the full gamut of options be made available to promote educated family planning and gender equality. Anything less is a mere bandaid solution.

We are particularly concerned when we see members of your government spreading false information on this issue. In a recent editorial, Conservative MPs Maurice Vellacott and Brad Trost tell readers that there is “no evidence” to back up claims that proper education, resources and support would reduce maternal death and complications – when in fact there is substantial factual evidence.

Just an excerpt from that editorial, penned by two TheoCon MPs who are clearly experts on what is good for women:

As Ian Gentles, research director at the deVeber Institute for Bioethics and Social Research, noted in a recent National Post article, Poland virtually prohibited abortion 20 years ago. Since then, maternal mortality has decreased by 75 per cent, infant mortality by almost 66 per cent, and the rate of premature births by more than 50 per cent.

According to the World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Report 2009, Ireland, the only other European country where abortion is illegal, has the lowest maternal mortality ratio of any country, with one death per 100,000 live births.

All of which I debunked here.

Back to the release:

A 2006 International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) report ("Death and Denial: Unsafe Abortion and Poverty") demonstrates that women who can’t access reproductive health services are more likely to obtain an unsafe abortion, and more likely to die as a result of pregnancy, childbirth or unsafe abortion.

Recent research by the Guttmacher Institute and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) (PDF) makes a compelling case for greater international support for sexual and reproductive health programs.

The report states that satisfying the unmet need for contraceptive services in developing countries would avert 52 million unintended pregnancies annually, which, in turn, would save more than 1.5 million lives and prevent 505,000 children from losing their mothers.

The key findings of the report are that maternal deaths in developing countries could be slashed by 70 per cent and newborn deaths cut nearly in half if the world doubled its investment in family planning and pregnancy-related care. It states that “investing in both family planning and maternal newborn services can achieve the same dramatic outcomes for $1.5 billion less than investing in maternal and newborn services alone.”

The risk of maternal mortality increases with each pregnancy. Yet research shows that 215 million women who would like to delay or avoid childbearing do not have access to modern contraception. Providing contraception to those who want it would avert about one-third of maternal deaths.

About 20 million women have unsafe abortions every year. About 8.5 million of those women need hospital care for complications, but that is not available to about three million of these women.

According to the UN Population Division, 61 percent of the world’s population live in countries where abortion is permitted. Providing safe abortion services where abortion is legal would prevent many of the estimated 68,000 deaths of women each year from complications arising from unsafe abortions.

But this issue goes beyond adequate health care. International human rights law states very clearly that maternal mortality constitutes a violation of the right to life and is linked to or results from violations of many other human rights, including the rights to health, education, equality and non-discrimination.

Canada is a signatory to several agreements that commit to providing a full range of safe and reliable family planning methods and reproductive health services. The Development Assistance Accountability Act, for example, requires that any assistance provided by Canada be consistent with international human rights standards. In June 2009, a UN Human Rights Council resolution also committed Canada to provide “the effective promotion and protection of the human rights of women and girls” which includes “sexual and reproductive health.”

Most notably, Prime Minister Stephen Harper himself signed onto last year’s G8 Leader’s statement, which clearly promotes accelerating progress on combating child mortality, including through “sexual and reproductive health care and services and voluntary family planning.”

Getting beyond addressing the symptoms of poverty means giving women the resources they need to make decisions about their lives, which is the key to lifting entire communities out of destitution.

Based on what we’ve seen from your government thus far, we have every reason to be concerned. Your government has launched a systematic assault against women’s equality here in Canada.  You have banned the words “gender equality” from the lexicon of the department of Foreign Affairs and Status of Women Canada.  You have cut funding to Status of Women and scrapped the Court Challenges Program.  And you have downgraded pay equity from a non-negotiable right to a bargaining chip.

In conclusion, we once again urge you to reverse your position around your maternal and infant health initiative. We ask you to fight for what is right and reasonable, and in the best interests of all women. It is only when women and their families are given access to all family planning and reproductive health options that we will truly be successful at helping to lift them out of poverty.

Sincerely,

The Hon. Dr. Carolyn Bennett, Liberal Health Critic and former Public Health Minister

The Hon. Maria Minna, Chair of Liberal Women’s Caucus and former Minister for the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA)

The Hon. Anita Neville, Liberal Status of Women Critic and former Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister Responsible for Status of Women

Meanwhile, the National Post thinks I am ''hyperventilating'' over the Harper government's attacks on women's rights.

IMAGE: Lifted from this spoof site mocking Vellacott and Trost for their stance on same sex rights.

Yahoo, Another reproductive Rights Round-Up

Onward Christian Soldiers, marching as to war ...

Let's begin in the Sunshine state of Florida where Southern Baptist theologian, father of eight and Republican rep Charles E. Van Zant proposes all citizens, especially of the wombanly persuasion, share his upright way of thinking.

Here's his way of thinking though: Rather than punish the maternal units, go after the doctors who perform the evil abortions, even in cases of rape and incest.

An expansive measure to make most abortions illegal in Florida has been filed for the 2010 Legislative session, challenging federal protections in place for more than 40 years.

Both anti-abortion advocates and abortion rights supporters agree the 53-page proposal is an attempt to directly challenge the 40-year-old Roe v. Wade U.S. Supreme Court decision that legalized abortions in the United States in 1973.

“The Legislature finds that there have been 50 million abortions in the United States since the Roe decision,” the bill reads. “ The Legislature further finds that every life lost to abortion was sacred and of the highest value.”

Sponsored by Rep. Charles Van Zant, R-Palatka, HB 1097 would criminalize most abortions now allowed under state and federal law, increase penalties for physicians who perform such services and require pregnant women to receive more information on adoption. The bill was filed Wednesday, the same day that right to life groups made the trek to Tallahassee to meet lawmakers and rally support.

Except in cases where a woman’s life is considered in danger, doctors who perform abortions would face first degree felonies punishable by up to life in prison and civil fines.

Now, it's doubtful this bill will get very far. But you can bet Van Zant will have back-up in the House. And, if they don't succeed this time, they'll try another way to crack this.

By the way: You'll find the comments over at Feministing rather amusing.

Now to Oklahoma where a particularly invasive law was declared unconstitutional -- but only on a technicality.

On Friday an Oklahoma judge declared a controversial law unconstitutional that would have  enacted a host of new abortion regulations, including one mandating that detailed demographic and personal information about women seeking abortions be posted online. Though pro-choice activists are applauding the decision, it was not indicative of a dismissal of the regulations themselves. Instead, the judge knocked down the law due to the fact that it violated Oklahoma’s "single-subject" rule, which states that each law can only cover one subject.

The law, which was initially scheduled to go into effect on Nov. 1, 2009, would have required a woman seeking an abortion to fill out a 10-page questionnaire asking everything from her age and marital status to the date of the abortion to the county in which it took place. That information would then be posted on the state’s Department of Health website. Proponents of the law say that names would not have accompanied the statistics. But opponents say the law was a scare tactic that infringed on women’s privacy, and that people in small towns in Oklahoma could easily draw conclusions about identities from even seemingly anonymous information.

Undaunted, the forced birthers are back at the drawing board, drafting, count 'em, four new laws that will get around the technicality.

In other action, the panel passed four separate abortion measures that previously had been declared unconstitutional because they had been combined in one bill.

Bills must deal with only one subject.

The panel passed HB 3290 by Rep. Skye McNiel, R-Bristow. It would require a doctor to be in the room when the abortion pill RU486 is administered.

The panel also passed HB 2780 by Rep. Lisa Billy, R-Lindsay, which would require women who seek an abortion to have an ultrasound and have its contents explained to them.

Rep. Ryan Kiesel, D-Seminole, said the Legislature should focus on preventing unintended pregnancies rather than bringing further disgrace and shame to women facing the most difficult decision of their lives.

Billy responded: “This bill is about choice for women. It is an opportunity for her to understand what is growing inside of her and the consequences.”

The panel passed HB 3110 by Rep. Pam Peterson, R-Tulsa, which would allow health-care providers who object to abortion not to participate in the procedure.

Peterson’s other abortion bill, HB 3284, also passed.

It would require women who seek abortions to provide a host of information about themselves to be posted on a public Web site.

As if there aren't bigger things to worry about in Oklahoma -- like how one in five actual children live in poverty.

Oh but it gets better in Utah.

A bill passed by the Utah House and Senate this week and waiting for the governor's signature, will make it a crime for a woman to have a miscarriage, and make induced abortion a crime in some instances.

According Lynn M. Paltrow, executive director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women, what makes Utah's proposed law unique is that it is specifically designed to be punitive toward pregnant women, not those who might assist or cause an illegal abortion or unintended miscarriage.

The bill passed by legislators amends Utah's criminal statute to allow the state to charge a woman with criminal homicide for inducing a miscarriage or obtaining an illegal abortion. The basis for the law was a recent case in which a 17-year-old girl, who was seven months pregnant, paid a man $150 to beat her in an attempt to cause a miscarriage. Although the girl gave birth to a baby later given up for adoption, she was initially charged with attempted murder. However the charges were dropped because, at the time, under Utah state law a woman could not be prosecuted for attempting to arrange an abortion, lawful or unlawful.

The bill passed by the Utah legislature would change that. While the bill does not affect legally obtained abortions, it criminalizes any actions taken by women to induce a miscarriage or abortion outside of a doctor's care, with penalties including up to life in prison.

Never mind how desperate that 17 year old girl must have been to pay somebody to beat her up. (Can you imagine?)  Might it be a coincidence that there are no abortion providers in 93 per cent of Utah's counties? 

Nah.

To continue:

In addition to criminalizing an intentional attempt to induce a miscarriage or abortion, the bill also creates a standard that could make women legally responsible for miscarriages caused by "reckless" behavior.  

Using the legal standard of "reckless behavior" all a district attorney needs to show is that a woman behaved in a manner that is thought to cause miscarriage, even if she didn't intend to lose the pregnancy. Drink too much alcohol and have a miscarriage? Under the new law such actions could be cause for prosecution.

"This creates a law that makes any pregnant woman who has a miscarriage potentially criminally liable for murder," says Missy Bird, executive director of Planned Parenthood Action Fund of Utah. Bird says there are no exemptions in the bill for victims of domestic violence or for those who are substance abusers. The standard is so broad, Bird says, "there nothing in the bill to exempt a woman for not wearing her seatbelt who got into a car accident."

Such a standard could even make falling down stairs a prosecutable event, such as the recent case in Iowa where a pregnant woman who fell down the stairs at her home was arrested under the suspicion she was trying to terminate her pregnancy.

Because, Lady, when you're preggers your body is nationalized by the state.

Now to Africa where, if women aren't being raped, they're being denied access to legal abortions. So they have illegal ones. And then they die.

Take Kenya. For 20 years, Kenyans have been working fitfully to revise their constitution and are now mere weeks away from possibly finalizing the document. But this milestone in the nation's slow move towards real democracy may be marred by another human rights calamity. If the constitution is approved in its current form by the Kenyan Parliament sometime this year, Kenya will join the inglorious ranks of three nations -- Northern Mariana Islands, Uganda, and Zambia -- that have prohibited abortion within their constitution.

The most recent draft of the constitution had solid human rights protections for women. However, a review by a parliamentary commission resulted in the evisceration of many of the core democratic constitutional provisions. This included amending Article 25, which in its original language guaranteed that "Every individual has the right to life" (emphasis added).

The wording choice for Article 25 is hardly revolutionary. In fact, it reflects the values of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and is consistent with the majority of national constitutions in the world. But conservative religious groups are not partial to international legal precedence and many lobbied Kenyan parliamentarians to amend Article 25. Which they did, and then some.

Article 25 still protects life, but life is now defined as beginning at conception. Moreover, Article 25 also outlaws abortion. Phrases in the draft guaranteeing the right to healthcare, including reproductive health care, and that no one may be refused emergency medical treatment (say, for an unsafe abortion) were also eliminated from the draft text.

Which brings us to Nicaragua, and this shocking story.

A pregnant 27-year old Nicaraguan woman, "Amelia," with metastatic cancer has been denied medical treatment on the grounds that it might harm her baby.

Nicaragua passed a draconian anti-abortion law in 2008 which criminalizes abortion even in the case of rape or incest or when the mother's life is in danger. Nicaraguan doctors are prohibited from treating pregnant women with cancer, HIV/AIDS, malaria and cardiac diseases, and threatened with prison sentences for providing health services or information related to abortion.

Amelia has effectively been handed a death sentence by her government. Each day she is denied treatment, she edges closer to death; in a tragic irony, she will most likely die before the baby is even born. Her 10-year old daughter will be left without a mother, since the Nicaraguan government values the life of an unborn fetus over that of a mother. 

And doesn't that just put the ''life'' in ''pro-life?'' (And if you want to do something to help, please go here.)

Jump to Dammit Janet! where Fern reminds us that this is what PM Stephen Harper and his theocratic vision of maternal healthcare looks like.

... it's not just the preventable deaths of these women, but the bloody suffering they go through. And their families. And their soon-to-be-orphaned children.

Yet this is the kind of no-family-planning, no-contraception, no-abortion, misogynist healthcare Steve is promoting.

It's unconscionable.

Indeed.

And, finally, something  completely different. Angie the Anti-Theist is having an abortion -- and is documenting it. (Follow the Twitter debate here.)

Here's an excerpt of Angie's guest post over at The Friendly Atheist:

Prior to conceiving my son five years ago, I was told I would never carry a child to term because of sexual abuse that happened when I was 7- and 8-years-old — and I barely did. I didn’t find out I was pregnant with him until the 21st week, roughly halfway through my pregnancy. When I did find out, I was underweight for the duration of the pregnancy, and I had several other high risk indicators. I did my best to gain weight (it helped that my ex-husband worked at a pizza store).

Even still, I made several trips to the emergency room throughout my last two trimesters. During my eighth month of pregnancy, I actually lost ten pounds due to a pretty horrible stomach virus. It was as if I had no immune system at all while pregnant. I went from having never received IV fluids in my life, to being intimately familiar with the feeling of cold fluids dumping into my veins. And let’s not even get into the other causes of dehydration.

When my son was born, I decided I didn’t want any more kids, in part because I’d learned during my pregnancy that I was a carrier for Cystic Fibrosis, a fatal and painful disease (of which my son was fortunately spared). I don’t regret that decision. My son is happiest when he’s getting one-on-one attention from an adult — he has even manipulated the system at school so that he gets to hang out with his teacher while she eats lunch and the other kids nap! I honestly don’t believe siblings are always a blessing, always friends, or always best for a family.

I know that I can be a damn good mom to the one special needs child I have — he had many health problems when he was younger and he is speech delayed and has a short attention span now — but I don’t know if I could be a good mom to two kids, one or both of whom would have special needs. I know my mom had more children than she could afford or care for, and I don’t want to make the same mistake. 

Now, considering all that, I think Angie is entitled to make her own decisions about her own health and well-being, as well as those of her son. But you can be sure that there are millions of people who believe that they have the right to colonize her body.

Reproductive rights are human rights.

End of stories.

Support Bros

One of the greatest things about PM Stephen Harper's sudden professed interest in women's well-being -- at least that of those women who don't live in Canada, of course -- is how it's making many men here owning up to being pro-choice. They're actually blogging about it.

Now, a quick look at the male opinionators listed in my blogroll will reveal that there were already many guys out there who got it. It's just that, now, even more are speaking out. (And, yeah, even if it's about scoring partisan political points, who cares? We women need all the Support Bros we can get.)

In the US, in the wake of that Tebow anti-choice uproar, feminist bloggers are cheering on the likes of pro-footballer Scott Fujita as well as these guys:

Which brings us to this post today by BCer in Toronto Jeff Jedras (I added the boldface):

In a story in Embassy Mag (behind a subscriber firewall, but I’ve pasted the relevant sections below) Canadian International Development Minister Bev Oda confirms safe abortions, and even contraception, will not be part of the Conservative push on maternal and child care:

Oda says no abortion, contraceptives support
   

But the WHO reports that lack of both contributes to unnecessary deaths.

CIDA Minister Bev Oda says the government's child and maternal health strategy will not address unsafe abortions in developing countries or support access to family planning and contraceptives. Rather, she said that to ensure the aid agency remains effective, "it's the lives of mothers and babies that we are focused on."

<SNIP>

When asked about support for contraceptives and family planning in an interview last week, Ms. Oda said: "In order to maintain our focus, again our focus is on maternal and child health and mortality rates.

"We want to make sure that mothers, pregnant women, are healthy and can have safe births, and that the birthing process is made safer because if you look at the number of births during the actual birthing process, that's where a number of maternal deaths happen," she added.

"We also want to make sure when babies are born, they are born as healthy as possible so that they can live through their early age, up to the age of five, with as strong and good health as possible."

Which is pretty much on the same HarperCon Wombs on Wheels message track she was on when she spoke to CBC Radio's Carol Off last week.

I won't belabour all the reasons why maternal healthcare includes contraception, family planning, AIDS prevention and, yes, abortion. I've done it so often. I just want to emphasize Jedras' point:

The idea of a major push to address maternal and child care is a noble one. But ideology can’t be allowed to dictate the program and the help we’re going to give to women in need. We should listen to the experts on the ground about what is needed and what will be effective to meet the goals we’re trying to achieve and let them direct the resources accordingly.

That has always been the Canadian policy, and the Conservatives desire to address this challenge is legitimate, it shouldn’t change it now. Sadly, though, it seems that the trend of the Harper Conservatives allowing ideology to guide development and aid decisions is ever expanding.

Jedras also dug up this video. It's from CBC News yesterday.

Please pay special attention to the note The Family Canada put up with it.

Your letters and emails to Members of Parliament has paid off! Shelly Glover confirms that Abortion will now not be included in the Canadian Government's plan to help women and children overseas.

Pray for the Conservative Party of Canada and our Prime Minister! Donate and volunteer your time at www.conservative.ca

Forward this video to all of your Christian friends!!!!!

Canada: Now Under OMG Management.

UPPITY WOMAN DATE: Joyce Arthur has more.

Of course, Ignatieff is a politician, and bringing up abortion is no doubt a political strategy in part – but it’s also the absolutely right thing for him to do. It is impossible to tackle maternal health without addressing unsafe abortion, which is a leading cause of maternal death in most developing countries. Given the critical importance of legal safe abortion in saving women’s lives, and the Conservative Party’s well-known anti-choice stance, Ignatieff would have been remiss not to make it a burning issue. The majority of women in Canada are pro-choice, and we are surprised, pleased, and hopeful to see Ignatieff stand up to defend the rights of poor women in other countries.

Conservative politicians and commentators have heaped scorn on Ignatieff’s concerns, however, and condemned him for turning women’s health into a “political football.” But most of the politicking is actually coming from Ignatieff’s critics, who have launched attacks without the benefit of any facts, and even less compassion for women. Some of the coverage is so shockingly ignorant that it qualifies as being misogynist.

Go to her page for a misogyny round-up.

If you can bear it.

UnWarren-ted

I don't usually go on tirades about columnists at other papers - but the Ottawa Citizen's David Warren is  now the subject of an email campaign by at least one pro-choice group that I know of.

It isn't just his last column, about which I blogged yesterday, but also today's that is outright offensive and  outrageous.

Why is abortion so popular with women who would never dream of having an abortion?

Perhaps because women believe women should have autonomy over their bodies, and the right to control their lives and destinies?

Maybe your question should be turned around Mr. Warren. Maybe it should read, ''Why do so many right-wing men who will never get pregnant feel it's any of their business to pontificate on women's bodies and their self-determination?''

To continue with his incoherent, all too precious and disingenuous diatribe ...

The "culture of death" -- of family breakdown, contraception, abortion, pornography (this last is demographically significant, for as men become more addicted to pornography, they become less interested in conventional, procreative sex) -- feeds on itself.

Culture of death? Seriously?

I wrote on the weekend about Michael Ignatieff's demand that Stephen Harper include abortion and contraception "services" in his G8 scheme to improve maternal and child healthcare in the poorest countries. My immediate purpose was to remind readers of the huge and vicious lie upon which the Liberal leader is trading. For we do not improve the health of a baby by killing it.

No, we improve the health of the mother whose malnourished, diseased, AIDS-ravaged, exhausted and all-too-often raped body cannot bear the burden of a fifth, sixth, seventh child, especially before the woman is even 30. And, if she dies of maternity related causes, what of those other actual living children? They're as good as dead.

But hey, to Warren, contraception is the ''culture of death.''

The proposition may be evil and absurd; yet according to several media sources, there is evidence it is popular -- especially among woman voters who had been trending towards Harper's more socially and fiscally conservative policies. I know several examples of "swing voters" in this class, and can more or less follow the thinking. I'm afraid it is not flattering to them.

Bad women. Stupid women. Culture of death women who get the point that, unless the mother is in a condition to care for and protect her living children, there's no point in her becoming pregnant again.

Note the genius of Ignatieff's appeal: not for more contraception and abortion here, where we have surely had enough, but rather in "the poorest countries" -- which we think have long been producing "too many babies." And, too many babies who could be clamouring to come here one day. Harper's policy might increase the load; Ignatieff's might reduce it.

Nice one. Now he accuses Ignatieff -- as well as every doctor who has ever worked in the field -- of advocating eugenics. (And, for a sense of how Warren feels about immigration from the poorest countries, read this.)

Even within North America, abortion appeals to some because it does, in fact, disproportionately reduce the offspring of certain racial minorities. The eugenic argument for it was actually the first to be made, back in the days when it was still acceptable to speak about the fertility of the "lower orders" and the "inferior races."

Yes, well, that was also back in the day when not even women were ''persons.''

This argument is still very much alive, though today dressed up in feminist jargon.

Really? Prove it.

"Population control," through the United Nations or otherwise, has always consisted of "breeding instructions for the blacks, browns, and yellows." And this is precisely what Ignatieff is selling, to the sort of people who want to buy it.

Oh, you mean us dumb cars vehicles vessels who believe women should have choice? That ''sort of people?''

Ah David Warren, father of a Down syndrome child you trot out for rhetorical purposes when convenient, such a fine upstanding, believer in fatherhood, family, the sanctity of life, etc., remind me to take morality lessons from you.

Oh and here are the latest pensees on all this from the HarperCon Wombs on Wheels Advisory Council.

Baby you can drive my car

Here's Ottawa Citizen columnist David Warren on the matter of maternal health and abortion, the issues which have been in the political news recently.

Let me just preface this excerpt by adding that this is typical of his musings on women and their rights.

I have before me a packet of cigarettes with a Health Canada message in capital letters that reads: "Cigarettes hurt babies." The text underneath this begins, "Tobacco use during pregnancy reduces the growth of babies." Since an accompanying photograph further shows a pregnant woman smoking, it was unnecessary to specify "unborn." Similarly, when we are discussing abortion, it is unnecessary to specify that the babies in question are "unborn."

Indeed, the refusal to use plain language, the substitution of euphemisms and rhetorical evasions, is an infallible indicator that a speaker or writer feels uncomfortable with the truth.

Consider for instance the proposition, "a woman's right to control her own body." Not even men believe this, and a pregnant woman, who actually believes that the baby she is carrying is part of her own body, should wait for it to kick. Perhaps she has an astoundingly primitive notion of biology; but I should think even a woman of subnormal intelligence would understand the difference between what is in that bump she is carrying, and what is in the rest of her flesh. To wit: a different person.

I have myself had the experience of sitting inside a car. And yet even in the moment I was doing so, I did not consider myself to be a car, or part of a car. Nor -- had the car the mind of a pro-active feminist -- would I consider it had the right to do what it wished with its own body, if that involved tossing me out on the highway.

So far I have made no argument against abortion, incidentally. I might be willing to consider an argument in favour of an abortion, at least in extremely rare circumstances. But I cannot engage with, nor otherwise take seriously, an argument based on an obvious lie.

Ah yes. Legal definitions by cigarette packet. As if the definition of personhood wasn't already settled in Canada.

But no matter.

Quite apart from the fact Warren will never get pregnant, never experience morning sickness, bladder pressure, swollen feet and weight gain, back pain, sleeplessness plus the feeling of being ripped apart by a watermelon at delivery, which, as we all know, is just like "sitting inside a car,'' isn't it special that he thinks that a fetus could survive on its own from the time of conception? That it need not be implanted in a uterus to develop? That it need not feed through an umbilical cord?

Minor details, no doubt.

But it's the metaphor simile that grates. It merely reinforces the notion that these men -- since most of them are men -- who are always railing about how abortion is murder, never think of pregnant women as anything more than a vessel for the fetal payload.

Call me truck-ulent on this one. This baby ain't moving an inch.

UPPITY WOMAN DATE (10/2/10): April Reign uses some strong language to make some good points. here's a slightly edited excerpt:

What exactly does (Warren) mean by this? For sure the statement is no lie as we know that

*rapists don’t believe it
*abusive husbands/boyfriends don’t believe it
*anti-choice (BLEEP!) don’t believe it
*men’s rights (BLEEP!) don’t believe it
*the pope doesn’t believe it
*the taliban doesn’t believe it

Geez Davey you’ve found yourself some great company!

Actually, I think Warren would consider it a compliment to be in the company of the Pope.

The Taliban, not so much.

By the way, while walking the dog, it occurred to me that his car simile only works if, after you deposit some sperm and an unfertilized egg on the back seat, it develops into an actual human passenger who can then take the wheel.

Electile dysfuntion

Here's an absolute must-read by my Star sistah Susan Delacourt.

It's all about how the Liberals are wining that ''left-wing fringe group'' called women while PM Stephen Harper is playing to the oil guys and cowboys -- at the expense of the environment and Canadian unity, according to my other Star sistah Chantal Hebert.

Not surprisingly, its headline reads ''PM from Mars, Iggy from Venus?'' and it shows how Harper's Johnny-come-lately position on maternal healthcare, not to mention his utter disdain for the plight of our own First Nations kids, could make all the difference during the next election. I added the boldface.

... when Harper talked to Sports Illustrated this week about the "tough and aggressive and ambitious" traits of the Canadian national psychology – comparing it to the skills needed for hockey – it's entirely possible that those words found their mark with women. And child care may be as much a men's issue these days as it is a concern for women.

What may have an effect, though not strictly down the gender divide, is Ignatieff's rather risky decision to raise the subject of abortion.

He did it on Tuesday in the context of Harper's new foreign-aid priority – the Liberal leader asking whether help for women abroad would include aid to organizations that support access to safe abortions. This is a hot-button issue for largely Conservative, anti-abortion advocates. In fact, support for abortions is exactly what groups such as Campaign Life were asking Harper to avoid in the wake of his announced new focus on foreign aid for women.

Officially, Harper's office dismissed the Ignatieff announcement, accusing him of playing political games with an issue of conscience and morality.

Conservatives, however, are in a bit of a glass house when they throw rocks in that direction, with their own history of attacks on Liberals over sensitive issues such as anti-Semitism, patriotism and support for the troops. In many ways, this was a deliberate Liberal effort to turn those visceral, wedge tactics back on the Conservatives.

And unofficially, Conservatives were counselling each other to avoid falling into the Liberals' trap this week – to not get baited into another polarized debate on abortion, which, history shows, tends to drive more voters away from the Conservatives than it attracts.

The irony is, the Con men are caught between a rock and a hard place here. If they say they don't want to re-open the abortion debate -- as if it ever closed -- they'll anger their socially regressive base. If they do start talking about abortion, and let all those caucus members, overwhelmingly anti-choice, start yapping, then the Cons will drive away the fiscal conservatives who are socially progressive.

Heh.

Meanwhile, NDP leader Jack Layton, who today announced that he is battling prostate cancer, is getting in on the maternal healthcare action. Monday, he's holding a newser to ''challenge his three federal counterparts to seek common ground to make the concerns of women and children in Canada a priority in the next session of Parliament.''

Heh-heh.

Guess we're gonna see a lot more blue sweaters and kittens during the campaign.

Breeding grounds

“Missing” A message about maternal mortality from Big Yellow Taxi on Vimeo.

Many right-whingers think I bash Prime Minister Stephen Harper for sport.

Wrong. I bash Harper because just about everything he does, at least when it comes to women, is wrong.

Just look how Canadian women have fared throughout his reign rule government. According to the World Economic Forum, which publishes an annual Global Gender Gap Index, Canada slipped from 14th place to 25th.

So guess where Harper was last week, banging the drum for his new cause -- women? (This is a spoof video. Pity.)

That's why I wrote Friday's column, which is still generating hits and emails. I've added some links.

Tuesday, on the Star's op-ed page, Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced that he would "mobilize" world leaders to save the lives of women and children around the world.

"As president of the G8 in 2010," he wrote, "Canada will champion a major initiative to improve the health of women and children in the world's poorest regions."

He cited some horrifying statistics: "Each year, it is estimated that 500,000 women lose their lives during pregnancy or childbirth. Further, an astonishing 9 million children die before their fifth birthday."

Hmm. These are numbers I have repeatedly noted in this column and on my blog – often to the derision of Harper supporters.(In fact I already posted the UNICEF video you see above last March. But I am reposting it.)

Anyway, there's another statistic, one he conveniently left out. According to the same sources, some 70,000 women a year die from botched illegal abortions.

But let's not go there today.

Now, I am the last person on Earth not to applaud any concerted effort to help women. Feminists have long said that women's rights are human rights – an idea that is finally sinking in among Western leaders.

Improve the lot of women, improve the lives of all.

As U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton observed this month, "Well, you know the proverb, `Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day, but teach a man to fish and he'll eat for a lifetime'? Well, if you teach a woman to fish, she'll feed the whole village."

But Harper didn't mention anything about women getting educations or achieving economic parity.

As internationally known human rights activist Stephen Lewis told me Wednesday night, "None of the spectrum of women's rights and issues is encompassed in this announcement.

It doesn't include sexual violence, child marriage, sexual trafficking, female genital mutilation, economic autonomy, political representation, land rights or inheritance rights.

It includes none of the panoply of women's issues which consign women to subordinate positions around the world."

Hardly surprising considering Harper's government record on everything from women's reproductive rights to equality.

And so he plans to help women only as baby-makers while ignoring all the other Millennium Goals to end Poverty by 2015 on the international agenda, including "environmental sustainability."

(Incidentally, many NGOs, including CIDA, report that it's women who suffer most from climate change. Whether they have to walk farther to find water, food or fuel for cooking, their burdens are increased.)

What's more, as Lewis emphasized, other nations have been on board what's known as the Clinton Global Initiative for more than two years. In 2007, Norway and the Netherlands committed $1.2 billion to this. Last year, another $5.3 billion was kicked in from other sources.

But, on Tuesday, International Cooperation Minister Bev Oda would not tell media how much Canada is actually committing.

"It takes a lot of chutzpah to pretend that somehow you're championing something that others have championed so vigorously before you," Lewis said.

It gets better – or worse, depending on your perspective.

On Wednesday, Liberal Status of Women critic Anita Neville told me, "Mr. Harper is not looking at these issues in Canada. Take a look at the aboriginal population. Look at maternal health care here. He's got a lot of work to do here. "

Indeed, this week, a massive new study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal reported that Inuit infants die at more than three times the rate of other Canadian babies.

Last week, the Journal of Paediatrics and Child Health reported on Canada's sinking infant mortality record – we're now 24th in the world – while revealing Saskatchewan's shocking numbers of aboriginal infant deaths. (There's a PDF Download Pages from PaedsJan2010_Blues here.)

And yet, Saskatoon Conservative MP Brad Trost is campaigning to eliminate Canada's funding to the International Planned Parenthood Federation – which is not only about contraception but also about maternal health care.

Concludes Lewis: "I think it's pretty cynical but, now that they're doing it, maybe they'll be forced into making some financial commitment."

Women are watching, and waiting.

Lots of Broadsides' pals also weighed in on the subject. Montreal Simon, Dammit Janet and StageLeft to name a few.

And here's my longtime friend Gerry Caplan in that other paper.

I said that maternal and child health could he helped significantly by inexpensive interventions, as has been shown in many countries. But if anyone is genuinely interested in the overall well-being of women and children, which ultimately will determine both their quality of life and their mortality, larger issues of development and women's rights must be pursued diligently. Birth control, abortion, sexual violence, child marriage, land and inheritance rights, political rights – all these issues related to women's subordination must be faced if their overall physical and mental health is to be improved. Is Mr. Harper ready to sign on to this program?

I'm sure the Prime Minster is well aware that his government cut off funding for Kairos, the church-backed Canadian NGO. I wonder if anyone has told him that Kairos worked in the Congo with a Congolese group that was planning to set up a legal clinic to protect women's rights. One of its intended projects was to support Congolese women who had been raped. Renewing the Kairos CIDA grant would go a long way to convincing Canadians that he is sincere in his concern for women's health.

(The New York Times' Nicholas Kristof wrote this about life for women in the Congo just the other day.)

Here are some other things that didn't make the final cut.

BQ MP Nicole Demers emailed me to say

It is with surprise that I learned of Stephen Harper's desire to help the women and children of the world. How can he be so callous when one million Canadian children don't have enough to eat? You have to wonder how does he want to help them? What does he hope to get from it, especially when he cut off help to some of the poorest countries? What about those women and children?

I heard from a reader who wanted to point out that, in spite of what I see as hypocrisy and opportunism on Harper's part, the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada applauded his announcement. 

But guess who wasn't happy? The HarperCon Cheering Squad over at the anti-choice Lifesite News.

Pro-life leaders are calling on Canadians to contact the Prime Minister and International Cooperation Minister Bev Oda, and ask them to ensure that the government does not cave in to pressure to push abortion and population control as part of the initiative.

No, because, after all, handing out contraception, or helping women to get abortions when they already have more mouths than they can feed or care for, just wouldn't be fair to women, right? And how come all the anti-choice ''leaders'' quoted are, um, men?

Finally, this incredible piece.

Pro-life leaders are calling on Canadians to contact the Prime Minister and International Cooperation Minister Bev Oda, and ask them to ensure that the government does not cave in to pressure to push abortion and population control as part of the initiative.

<SNIP>

I asked Minister Oda whether the Harper government was leaning toward the aggressive family planning model or favoured the building of local health clinics. While Minister Oda said she was seeking the best advice and not leaning in any direction at this point, one of the experts around the table nodded her head in agreement as I asked my question. Jennifer Kitts from Action Canada for Population and Development approached me excitedly after the news conference to tell me that family planning is key to reducing maternal mortality and infant deaths.

Kitts says that 30% of maternal deaths can be avoided and infant mortality can be reduced by 20% with proper family planning. Now I quickly understood how family planning could reduce maternal death but when I asked her to explain how family planning could help children live past their 5th birthday, Ms. Kitts became nervous and asked me to turn off my recorder. I asked her the question again and she told me she would have to do the interview later.

I don't know why Kitts would be so skittish. It's easy to answer the question. A woman not exhausted by multiple childbirths -- not to mention inferior nutrition and bigger burdens than the menfolk -- can't adequately care for too many children. This is why 70,000 women a year die from botched illegal abortions. That is why so many women die in childbirth. This is why so many kids don't make it to age 5.

Your chances of survival aas a child in these hellholes aren't great if your mother is dead.

But, with these people, the fetus reigns supreme.

As for women, well, dead or alive, they're just a political means to an end ...

United Nations Millennium Campaign - Goal 5- Maternal Health - More amazing video clips are a click away

Defending the right to pre-life

Well that's that then. (I added the links and the boldface.)

Defiant and unapologetic, a man accused of shooting a Kansas abortion provider confessed to the slaying Monday, telling The Associated Press that he killed the doctor to protect unborn children.

Scott Roeder, 51, of Kansas City, Mo., spoke to the AP in a telephone call from jail, saying he plans to argue at his trial that he was justified in shooting Dr. George Tiller at the abortion provider's Wichita church in May.

"Because of the fact preborn children's lives were in imminent danger this was the action I chose. ... I want to make sure that the focus is, of course, obviously on the preborn children and the necessity to defend them," Roeder said. 

<SNIP>

His confession came on the same day several strident abortion opponents released their "Defensive Action Statement 3rd Edition" that proclaims any force that can be used to defend the life of a "born child is legitimate to defend the life of an unborn child." The statement's 21 signers demand Roeder's jurors be allowed to consider the "question of when life begins" in deciding whether lethal force was justified.

Among the signers are Eric Rudolph, James Kopp and Shelley Shannon — all serving prison time for targeting abortion doctors.

Lee Thompson, attorney for the Tiller family and executor of his estate, has said allowing such a defense would "invite chaos and be tantamount to anarchy." The Kansas Supreme Court rejected such a defense in a 1993 ruling over an abortion clinic trespassing case. 

So, here we have a bunch of domestic terrorists, bonafide members of the American Taliban, attempting to justify murder based on who 'they deem to be innocent and demanding that a jury decide whether ''who'' actually exists.

Um, newsflash you crazies. Abortion is legal in the US -- although the American Taliban in suits and Congress are working hard to fight that.

More on the latter soon.