Pawned

Longtime readers -- and I do appreciate your loyalty and patience during my absence from the blogosphere -- know that I have bitched loud and often about how US/Canada/NATO have used and abused women and their (human) rights as an excuse to continue the war in Afghanistan.

Oh, it's never about the oil, the pipelines, the mineral rights, the regional hegemony, or anything like that. No no. It's always about the women. Save the women. Think of the women. Even though Afghan women themselves have decried the current corrupt regime as well as the continued oppression of women which appears to have been stepped up because of the war.

Even though there have been numerous occasions when NATO has allowed women to be sold out.

Just read this, this, this, this, this ...

Now comes this despicable cover story in Time magazine.

The Taliban pounded on the door just before midnight, demanding that Aisha, 18, be punished for running away from her husband's house. Her in-laws treated her like a slave, Aisha pleaded. They beat her. If she hadn't run away, she would have died. Her judge, a local Taliban commander, was unmoved. Aisha's brother-in-law held her down while her husband pulled out a knife. First he sliced off her ears. Then he started on her nose...

Now you would think I would be all for the exposure of the terrible treatment of women in Afghanistan, and that I would be cheering on the NATO foot soldiers who are dying because they believe they are fighting to make things right in that blighted country.

The thing is that I am all for these things and more. Much more.

But here's the other bigger thing. If the west gave a rat's tail about women's rights, it would also be in the Congo where women are being gang-raped daily in the fight for, among other things, the minerals that go into our iPods and mobile phones. It would not be in bed with the Saudi Arabian sexist apartheid state where women are chattel. It would not be bombing Afghan women and children, making the occupation worse and worse for them everyday.

And besides, wasn't the ostensible real purpose for going there in the first place to find the terrorist masterminds behind 9/11? (And let's not forget Prime Minister Stephen Harper's March 2006 speech about how our soldiers were also there to halt the drug trade.)

I don't know what the answer to Afghanistan's problem is but I do know that it doesn't come in the form of drones, tanks and fighter jets.

My principle -- and principal ;-) -- objection to this cover story is how it EXPLOITS the mutilation of a beautiful young woman to promote the continued war that really, let's not kid ourselves, has nothing to do with women's rights. I mean, come on. And I am not the only one who says that.

Here's The Nation's Greg Mitchell, with links to more must-read critiques of the Time story:

... worth mentioning: the girl on the cover was attacked not in long ago days of Taliban rule but with tens of thousands of  U.S. troops in the country.

I  have to ask:  In Time's mission to really "illuminate what is actually happening on the ground" has it ever put on its cover close-up images of  1) a badly wounded or dead U.S. soldier  2)  an Afghan killed in a NATO missile strike  3) an Afghan official, police officer or military commander accepting a bribe from a Taliban war lord.  Alison Kilkenny has her own examples here.

No one makes light of the plight of women and children in Afghanistan under the Taliban--and, contrary to (Time editor Rick) Stengel's claim, many Americans do know about it.  Indeed, liberal women's groups in the U.S. have raised the issue often and expressed mixed feelings about staying (or even escalating) in Afghanistan because of it.  It's a serious issue.  And please see the response to Time by the Feminist Peace Network.  Jezebel with another good take here.

I like what Peter Hart over at FAIR has to say:

Something tells me that no one at a the magazine's editorial meeting suggested a "What Happens if We Stay  in Afghanistan" cover headline, which would have been accompanied by a photo of the corpse of an Afghan child killed in an airstrike or a house raid.

Finally a few words from, you know, an actual Afghan woman, Sonali Kolhatkar, author of Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords, and the Propaganda of Silence. She is also co-director of the Afghan Women's Mission, a U.S.-based nonprofit that supports women's rights activists in Afghanistan. (via The Institute for Public Accuracy).

This is the same type of justification that the Soviets used (among others) to explain why they should remain in Afghanistan: to save Afghan women from the 'backward' fundamentalists. Foreign armies have always sought to protect Afghan women from violence by fomenting violence themselves. But in the end, just like the Soviets did backroom deals with radical misogynist groups, the U.S. has been empowering non-Taliban misogynist fundamentalists since the start of this war. There are incidents happening every day in Afghanistan of women and girls being harassed, raped, flogged and killed by pro-U.S. warlords and local commanders that are not working with the Taliban -- these incidents are rarely covered by the Western media. In many ways the U.S. occupation has actually made things worse for Afghan women. Afghan women activists I work with prefer to resist two threats to their security (the Taliban and the U.S.-backed central government) instead of three (the third being the U.S./NATO occupation) and have long called for U.S. forces to leave. Time magazine is playing to age-old racist stereotypes: that brown women need a foreign white army to save them from their men.

What a difference it would make in Afghanistan if, instead of spending hundreds of billions on bombs, we just gave all the money to the women and let them build a better society for everybody there.

UPPITY WOMAN DATE: On a related note ... this.

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?

Mother Load

Now, let me see, if I were 22 years old, with seven or eight kids to feed and clothe, with miles to walk every morning to just get water with which to wash clothes and cook some rice, the last thing my exhausted body and fragile family would need is another pregnancy -- or a dose of HIV.

But does the Harper government get that?

Is the Pope Catholic? (Oh and he's another one who cares about women and, cough cough, children.)

I've hit on this topic before, here, here, here, etc., about PM Stephen Harper's announcement two months ago on supporting maternal health at the coming G8 summit, and how he and his handmaiden international cooperation minister Bev Oda refuse to connect maternal health to family planning, access to contraception and condoms -- which means freedom from dying in childbirth, freedom from AIDS, which means, uh, maternal health. (Read this, if you have a sec.)

But they don't make those connections in TheoConWorld.

Anyway.

Here's the latest, from the Star's Susan Delacourt:

In the Commons on Wednesday, International Co-operation Minister Bev Oda pointedly left birth control off the list of aid projects the government intended to support, saying that “saving lives” was more important than family planning.

“We have chosen to focus the world’s lenses on saving the lives of mothers and children,” Oda said. “When we know what we can do by providing clean water, vaccinations, better nutrition, as well as the most effective way is the training of health care workers and improving access for those women, that is what we are going to do.”

And on Tuesday, during a Commons committee hearing, Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon made clear that the maternal-health priority “does not deal in any way, shape or form with family planning.”

Liberals and New Democrats are incredulous, saying that this is a direct copy of the foreign aid policies of former U.S. president George W. Bush, who banned any support for aid organizations that supported abortion in developing countries for the eight years he was in office. Barack Obama reversed that ban within days of taking power last year.

That would be the so-called Global Gag Rule.

To continue:

Liberal MP Keith Martin, also a doctor, said without providing access to a “full array” of family planning options, women and men can’t protect themselves from sexually transmitted diseases or unwanted pregnancies.

“As a result, you have higher abortion rates, more disease, more maternal deaths and more maternal injuries,” Martin said.

He said he was “shocked” that the government took family planning off the table and accused the Conservatives of being hypocritical.

“They can’t say on the one hand they want to save lives . . . yet on the other, deprive people of having the tools to be able to reduce the death rate,” he said.

“The government is slaughtering good medical practice on the altar of ideology,” he said, adding that the government’s medical plan “defies science.

“In fact, it violates the ethics of good medical practice,” said Martin (Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca).

But, with this government, it's not about good medical practice. It's about making women be fruitful and multiply, even if multiplying kills them and their children.

Status of women mannequin minister Helena Guergis is not standing up for real maternal health either, judging from this message track exchange with NDP MP Irene Mathyssen at Monday's committee meeting.

Ms. Irene Mathyssen: What role will you play in the Prime Minister's G8 maternal and child health initiative, if any, and are you at all concerned by the fact that money for women and children in this country has not appreciably increased in regard to maternal health and child health?

 Hon. Helena Guergis: 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.

Memo to the HarperCons: Read a book, maybe a science book, or a medical text.

Just not the ''Good Book.''

(Image from Save the Mothers.)

UPPITY WOMAN DATE: Susan has some late night thoughts.

Women overboard

Didn't want you to miss this by friend and colleague Olivia Ward in yesterday's Star.

It's about how women may be thrown under the bus if NATO types, ie. the US, decide to get out of Afghanistan by reinstating the Taliban.

Yeah, I know that's not how it's being phrased in polite circles. But let's not mince words here, okay? Because that's what they would really do. After all, didn't we install our man in Afghanistan Hamid Kharzai? Of course we did.

That said, the latest word from HellHolistan is that the Taliban isn't going to deal.

But that doesn't make the plain fact of how quickly NATO was prepared to give up women.

GENEVA (Reuters) - Any future peace deal between the Afghan government and the Taliban should include a clear commitment to respecting women's rights, a United Nations women's rights body said on Friday.

It also voiced regret at what it called the exclusion of Afghan women from the high decision-making level of the London conference on Afghanistan last week.

Anyway, to Olivia's piece:

Even now, young girls who dare to go to school have acid thrown in their faces, suicide bombers kill indiscriminately, beheadings and amputations await those who resist their resurgent rule and women activists receive dreaded "night letters" that mark them for death.

So it's not surprising that the rising chorus of Western voices in favour of reintegrating mid- and lower-level Taliban fighters into Afghan society – and whispers of reconciliation with top militants – have sent a shudder through liberal Afghans who long for peace, but have grave doubts about the return of a relentlessly repressive enemy.

"If you bring them back, it will push us back," says Homa Sabri, who heads the Afghan division of the United Nations women's fund UNICEF. "We will lose the gains of the past eight years."

With the Western leaders who supported the 2001 invasion now groping for the exit, thinking the unthinkable is creeping onto the agenda. War cannot rage forever, and, at the end of the day, peace is made with enemies.

<SNIP>

GIRLS, BARRED from school under the Taliban, now account for more than one-third of the 6.2 million children enrolled and female literacy rates have risen from single digits to about 13 per cent.

In employment, women have made gains in the civil service, and 75 per cent of the Women's Affairs Ministry is female. Women are no longer officially barred from the workplace, and numerous micro projects have allowed them to start small businesses.

In health care, soaring infant mortality has declined modestly and the percentage of women getting pre-natal care risen to more than 32 per cent.The government also set up a human rights commission where women can complain if they suffer violence or other abuses.

Women have joined numerous community groups across the country for social and economic support, as well as political action. The constitution reserves 25 per cent of seats in the lower house and 17 per cent of the upper house of parliament for women.

But today's Afghanistan is not a golden age for women. The Taliban's primitive interpretations of religious law, and the tribal culture from which they sprang, cast a dark shadow over their lives, and the ideals of the constitution are sparsely enforced outside of Kabul.

A recent law has undermined Shia women's rights, a warning to others that political expediency can trump their promised equality, and an unsettling hint for the future. Under international pressure, Karzai allowed the law to be amended. But doubts remain about how far the West would be prepared to support women's rights once its troops have departed.

Even now, the Western military presence has done little to improve the lot of women, and some argue that it has worsened it by exposing them to bombs and bullets.

In addition, a Human Rights Watch report found that, more than eight years after the fall of the Taliban, women and girls are still targeted for violence and discrimination, and have little access to either justice or education.

At least half of Afghan women experience violence, it found. More than half of marriages are of girls under 16 and up to 80 per cent take place without the bride's consent.

Hundreds of girls' schools have been destroyed by the resurgent Taliban, and hundreds of schoolgirls wounded or killed. Only 11 per cent of secondary school-aged girls are still attending school. A mere 4 per cent make it to Grade 10.

Meanwhile, women in public life suffer threats, intimidation and assassination attempts — or death. Women who want to work outside the home face threats and discrimination. There are numerous reports of despairing women attempting suicide by setting themselves on fire.

"The situation for Afghan women and girls is dire and could deteriorate," warns Reid. "It's critical to make sure that (their) rights don't just get lip service while being pushed to the bottom of the list by the government and donors."

When the fog of war clears in Afghanistan, women and progressive thinkers hope that they will have a place to stand. But they know much depends on what the peacetime landscape will look like, and what tradeoffs are made to arrive there.

Yeah. Trade-offs.

Bargaining chippies.

Women have always been a commodity.

Murder most fowl

Excuse me? The Harper government cuts off KAIROS, UNRWA and imposes its Christian-Zionist supporters on Rights and Democracy -- just because they all support human rights in Palestine and Gaza -- but boasts about its relationship with Turkey? Our ''ally,'' via NATO, Turkey? 

What's wrong with this picture?

Here's what's wrong. And sickening. And obscene.

Medine Memi was found in a sitting position with her hands tied, in a two-metre hole dug under a chicken pen outside her home in Kahta, in the south-eastern province of Adiyaman.

Her father and grandfather have since been arrested and are due to face trial over her death.

<SNIP>

Media reports said the father had told relatives he was unhappy that his daughter – one of nine children – had male friends. The grandfather is said to have beaten her for having relations with the opposite sex.

A postmortem examination revealed large amounts of soil in her lungs and stomach, indicating that she had been alive and conscious while being buried.

"The report is blood curdling. According to our findings the girl who had no bruises on her body and no sign of narcotics or poison in her blood was alive and fully conscious when she was buried," one official involved in the case told the Times.

It also emerged that Medine had repeatedly tried to report to police that she had been beaten by her father and grandfather days before she was killed. "She tried to take refuge at the police station three times, and she was sent home three times," her mother, Immihan, said after the body was discovered in December.

<SNIP>

Official figures have indicated that more than 200 such killings take place each year, accounting for around half of all murders in Turkey.

And those are just the ''official'' figures? And PM Stephen Harper says we're in Afghanistan -- with Turkish forces, no less -- in part to help women? And he is now on about maternal health? 

Hey, Mr. Prime Minister. Time to pick up the phone.

That said, I still refuse to call these ''honour killings.'' Not just because there is nothing honourable about them, nor because they are committed to (ostensibly) preserve the ''honour'' of men, but because they involve killing women just because they are women.

Femicide. That's what it is.

I came across this quote the other day by Catherine MacKinnon, a feminist so hardcore she makes me look like a Stepford wife in comparison. But what she said seems so apt here:

"If women were human, would we be a cash crop shipped from Thailand in containers into New York's brothels? Would we be sexual and reproductive slaves? . . . Would we be beaten nearly to death, and to death, by men with whom we are close? Would we be sexually molested in our families? . . . If women were human, would our violation be enjoyed by our violators? And, if we were human, when these things happened, would virtually nothing be done about it? . . . When will women be human? When?"

Note that she does not focus on any particular culture.

Just saying.

RIP Medine.

UPPITY WOMAN DATE: The Star's Olivia Ward has more.

The attacks on women are aggravated by the struggle between Turkey's government and Kurdish separatist guerrillas, which has forced families to migrate to cities, where their conservative culture clashes with the liberated urban lifestyle.

"It's a very tough social issue," says Mojab, co-editor of Violence in the Name of Honour.

"The Turkish government has some very active and dynamic programs to fight honour killing, but it's not just a family problem, it involves the entire community."

In some cases, researchers have found, families are reluctant to punish their daughters for behaviour thought to dishonour them. But communities ostracize them unless they "cleanse" the supposed stain on the family's reputation.

Labour pains

It just gets better and better.

Further to the previous post, about how the HarperCons are now caught between the devil and the deep  blue machine on the connection between maternal health and reproductive freedoms, this As It Happens interview last night by CBC Radio's Carol Off is a totally worth your time.

You can listen to it by clicking on Part II here -- the interview is at the top of the half hour -- or going directly to the Windows Media Player here.

First up is Liberal MP Dr. Carolyn Bennett -- who knows a whole more about maternal health than the entire Conservative caucus.

That said, I would have liked to have heard another Liberal MP on the subject, emergency room physician ob-gyn Keith Martin, who has been in the field in some of the hellholes for women of the earth. Maternal health is practically an obsession for him. He insists that it will have a positive impact on everybody's health. That's because, if you create the physical infrastructure (clinics, hospitals etc.) and train the people to help pregnant women -- as well as those who don't want to be pregnant -- your efforts extend to other areas of healthcare in the region.  (We had a long conversation on Thursday afternoon which I hope to write up soon.) He also doesn't shy away from the subject of abortion.

Anyway, Bennett is followed by Bev Oda, Minister of International Co-operation, the cabinet minister who was stuck with the tough questions after PM Stephen Harper made his grandiose, opportunistic and hypocritical announcement about ''championing'' the cause of maternal health last week.

Off keeps trying to pin her down, on how much the government is willing to commit, what exactly its plans are, whether it recognizes  the connection between maternal care, child mortality and reproductive rights ...

Oda gives an Olympic-worthy skating performance, doing triple flips to avoid dealing with the specifics and, more important, family planning.

My only regret is that Off didn't pin Oda down on maternal health and infant mortality right here at home.

Still, I knew this was going to be fun.

This may be the issue that brings the Harper government down.

My work is done here.

(H/t to reader Jay H. who sent me the link.)

UPPITY WOMAN DATE: Via Dammit Janet  come this.

Despite harsh criticism from two prominent Catholic bishops, Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff stood firm on Friday on his position that abortion rights must be tied to any Canadian plan to improve maternal and infant health in the developing world.

Calgary Bishop Fred Henry on Friday called Mr. Ignatieff’s proposal “pathetic,” while on Thursday Archbishop Thomas Collins of Toronto labelled the Liberal leader’s position on abortion and the developing world “sad.”

“In light of the many positive contributions that Canada can make to the improvement of maternal and child health, it is astonishing that the leader of the Opposition has issued an official statement advocating contraception and abortion as fundamental elements in addressing this important issue,” said Archbishop Collins. “Even those who think that abortion should be allowed do not, however, propose it as a positive contribution to the good of society.”

Bishop Henry was even more blunt.

“I thought it was pathetic for a political leader to suggest that abortion is somehow tied to the health of women and children,” said Bishop Henry. “It was a particularly crass remark in light of all the orphaned children we now see in Haiti. It was absolutely incredible that he would say that and he is alienating religious people with these comments. This will not win him votes.”

Male celibate priests who don't even believe in contraception pronouncing on women's reproductive rights in the 21st Century.

BWAHAHAHA.

Perhaps you gentlemen might get over that virgin birth thing.

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.

Stand-up Guy

Now this is more like it:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper needs to back aid for abortions abroad if he’s serious about  making maternal health a “top priority” for Canada, says Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff.

Iggy comes out swinging, with the obvious.

Good for him.

UNICEF estimates that some 70,000 women a year die from botched illegal abortions. Who knows how many of the 500,000 women who die of pregnancy-related complications every year -- that's one a minute -- would be living if they had access to therapeutic abortions?

“We don’t want to have women dying because of botched procedures. We don’t want to have women dying in misery,” Ignatieff told reporters today after meetings on Parliament Hill on issues of international development. “We’ve had a pro-choice consensus in this area for a couple of generations and we want to hold it.”

So do most Canadians.

Of course, if Harper gets his majority, it's game over for women's reproductive freedoms.

The Prime Minister announced in the Star and at Davos, Switzerland, last week that the health of mothers and children would be the focus of Canada’s attention during this summer’s G-8 meetings in this country. 

Harper has not specifically said what this aid would include, but support for abortion would be a tough sell for him within his own Conservative caucus, where there are pockets of considerable sentiment against abortion.

''Pockets?''

My friend and colleague Susan Delacourt understates the fact that the overwhelming majority of the caucus is decidedly anti-choice.

The Liberal leader said he has no reason to believe that the Conservatives would withhold foreign aid from projects that assist women in getting abortions, but he pointed out that this was a problem in the United States during the time of former president George W. Bush.

Yes. It was called ''The Gag Rule'' -- one of the first things Bush signed when he entered the Oval Office -- and it caused the defunding of any NGO, health clinic or hospital that counseled women to get abortions for whatever reason.

“In the United States, during the Bush regime, there were substantial limitations on what international agencies could support in terms of women’s health,” Ignatieff said. “We don’t want us to go that way. We want to make sure that women have access to all the contraceptive methods available to control their fertility.”

And so do most most right -- as in the Do The Right Thing -- thinking Canadians.

That said, quite a few Liberal caucus members are also anti-choice.

Unfortunately, unless Ignatieff gets enough votes, it may well be the right-whinging Canadians who get their way.

Interesting, no, how women's issues are suddenly so big?

You know, I am beginning to think that Harper may have made a politically fatal error when he cynically prorogued Parliament last month. Not only has he dropped in the polls, not only has he galvanized many Canadians into paying attention to politics, not only has he set up a situation where media and the opposition can constantly be on the attack without his flacks jumping in to change the channel, not only is he mute on issues such as Rights & Democracy and UNRWA, he is helping Canadians to better understand what he and his team represent.

A backward-thinking bunch if ever there was one.

COUP DE GRACE NOTE: Today, BQ MP Nicole Demers reminded me of this Con job, which shows just how much the Harperites care about borned children

OTTAWA – Federal money earmarked to fight the tragedy of fetal alcohol disorders has been quietly chopped back year after year, says a new report.

"Each year the initiative has received only a portion of the dollars allocated," says an internal evaluation. "It is unclear why this cutback has become the norm."

The Public Health Agency of Canada has been budgeting $3.3 million each year for its fetal alcohol spectrum disorder initiative, but consistently spends only about two-thirds of the cash, says the report.

The evaluation, completed last year, was obtained by The Canadian Press under the Access to Information Act.

The disorder, the result of alcohol consumption during pregnancy, causes a broad range of physical, mental and behavioural disabilities.

It's believed to affect 300,000 Canadians, costing about $24,000 annually in social services and health care for each afflicted child, many of whom suffer severe learning disabilities.

Oh, and I posted this last year, but it's worth reposting. It reinforces my argument that women muist be more than walking wombs if the world is to become a better place.

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

Thou shalt not spread falsehoods

On Thursday, Big Blue Wave, one of the shrillest anti-choice blogs out there, posted an excerpt  from this news release put out by the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute. (I added the boldface and some linkage.)

Permissive Abortion Laws May Be Hazardous To Mothers' Health, Per New Report

By Samantha Singson

(NEW YORK – C-FAM)  A new report from the World Economic Forum (WEF) shows that countries with restrictive abortion laws are often the leaders in reducing maternal mortality, and those with permissive laws often lag.

Now, reading that, you're led to believe that abortion leads to bad outcomes for women's health. But you've been led wrong. A thorough reading of this very important WEF report in fact demonstrates nothing of the kind. What's more, it shows how many millions of women -- and their children -- suffer needlessly.

Bear with me here as I quote more from the C-FAM release.

Abortion advocates have attempted to push an international "right to abortion," claiming that restrictive laws force women to seek unsafe abortion, which in turn leads to high maternal mortality.  In October, the Guttmacher Institute released a report on global abortion calling on states to "expand access to legal abortion and ensure that safe, legal abortion services are available to women in need." Sharon Camp, president of the Guttmacher Institute, asserted that "in much of the developing world, abortion remains highly restricted, and unsafe abortion is common and continues to damage women's health and threaten their survival."

Indeed, it does. Not only that, it also shows that, while worldwide abortion rates have fallen -- due to increased access to contraception in Latin America and Asia, especially -- the rate of illegal abortions has not. Although many women have access to safer procedures to terminate pregnancies, some 70,000 women a year still die from complications due to unsafe abortions.

Back to C-FAM's release:

An examination and comparison of several countries included in the WEF survey show that legal abortion does not mean lower maternal mortality rates. 
   

Both Ireland and Poland, favorite targets of the abortion lobby for their strong restrictions on abortion, have better maternal mortality ratios than the United States. Ireland ranks first in the survey with 1 death for every 100,000 live births. In recent years Poland has tightened its abortion law and ranks number 27 on the list with 8 deaths per 100,000. In the United States where there are virtually no restrictions on abortion, the maternal mortality ratio is 17 out of 100,000 live births. 

Now, understand that the WEF report focuses on the ''global gender gap,'' the wide chasm between how men and women are treated in many countries. It measures economic opportunity, political empowerment, educational levels and access to healthcare differences between the sexes and comes out with an index.

For the record, Canada ranks No. 25 on all these measures, while the US is No. 31. Tops in the world is Iceland, followed by the usual line-up of northern European countries, Finland, Norway, Sweden. As for the bottom of the list, let's just say you don't want to be a woman in Yemen.

But let's cut straight to the maternal mortality chase, which those ''pro-lifers'' focus on.

Not only do "weak healthcare systems not prioritize women's health,'' there is evidence that the number of skilled healthcare workers available to support women through pregnancy, delivery and post-natal care had everything to do with women's survival. The women who die, die of "severe bleeding, infection, hypertension'' and then ''complications from unsafe abortion.'' Abort About 20 per cent of maternal deaths are related to diseases such as malaria and HIV/AIDS -- and then there's women's inability to get decent nourishment.

Now ''unsafe abortion'' does not necessarily correlate with legal abortion. You can have no restrictions on abortion -- and no safe means to provide them.Which is what is happening in Guyana, for example.

The C-FAM release focuses on Ireland where women have 100 per cent access to maternity care, provided by public healthcare insurance, and Poland, where, again, it's 100 per cent funded healthcare, either publicly or via an employer. 

As for the US, guess what? The C-FAM release fibs. The maternal mortality ratio is NOT ''17 out of 100,000 live births,'' but ELEVEN out of 100,000 live births. And guess again: No free healthcare. In the US, where having a uterus is a pre-existing condition, many women skip on check-ups. Many women also get abused and/or killed by their partners when they are pregnant. There are many factors.

But let's look at another country -- Canada -- where there is unrestricted access to abortion (unless you live in PEI or New Brunswick, but that's another blog post.) Maternal mortality per 100,000 live births? Seven. That's fewer than Poland.

What about the UK where abortion is also covered by public healthcare and available? Eight, same as Poland.

Denmark: 3.

Germany: 4.

France: 8.

In fact, as you can see from the excerpt (above right) of a bigger WEF graph, of the Top 10 countries for the lowest maternal mortality rates, none but Ireland puts many, if any, restrictions on abortion.

So much for C-FAM's lie theory.

Oh but it gets better:

Other regions of the world show similar trends. The African nation with the lowest maternal mortality rate is Mauritius, a country with some of the continent's most protective laws for the unborn. On the other end of the spectrum is Ethiopia, which has decriminalized abortion in recent years in response to global abortion lobby pressure. Ethiopia's maternal death rate is 48 times higher than in Mauritius. South Africa has the continent's most liberal abortion laws and also a high maternal mortality ratio of 400 deaths per 100,000.

In Ethiopia, only six per cent of births are attended by skilled healthcare practitioners. Many of them are starving, uneducated, victims of genital mutilation with virtually no access to contraception.  In Mauritius, 99 per cent of births are attended, and still 15 women per 100,00 live births die.

The reason that I am reposting C-FAM's distortions is not so much because it cherrypicks the facts to make its forced birthing case but because it is further evidence of how the so-called pro-lifers do not care at all about the lives of the Maternal Incubator Units.

If they did, they would not be advocating for restrictive abortion laws worldwide but for better maternal healthcare -- as well as education and equality. Yes, their release concludes with this:

Pro-lifers emphasize that the WEF report reinforces their contention that skilled birth attendants and access to emergency obstetric care should be the focus of maternal mortality reduction efforts, rather than increasing access to legal abortion.

But the way C-FAM jiggles the numbers puts the lie paid to that.

In fact, C-FAM even boasts that one of its programs monitors the UN's ''harmful'' Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) which fights for women's rights. What does C-FAM do?

Advocate against gay rights, reproductive rights, women's rights.

Yeah, so much for the living.

That's 70,000 women a year who die, millions more who are permanently disabled.

And C-FAM claims to be for human rights.

So glad they're on women's side.

Good going, Big Blue Wave!

UPPITY WOMAN DATE: Well, well. Doesn't this explain the focus on Ireland?

Three women living in the Irish Republic challenged the country’s strict abortion law at the European Court of Human Rights yesterday (Dec. 9), claiming that their rights had been violated.

The three — two Irish nationals and a Lithuanian — all left their homes in Ireland to have abortions in Britain. Identified only by the letters A, B and C because of the risk of imprisonment in Ireland, they are supported in their case by the British Pregnancy Advisory Service and the Irish Family Planning Association. Ireland’s abortion law dates from 1861, and bans the procedure except where there is a risk to the life of the mother, including that of suicide. An estimated 140,000 women have crossed the Irish Sea for abortions in the past 30 years, with the number presently running at an average of 6,000 a year.

One of the women in the case had had her four children placed in foster care and sought an abortion to avoid jeopardising her chances of reuniting the family.

Another woman was at risk of an extrauterine pregnancy while the third, a Lithuanian, became pregnant while in remission from cancer. She understood that the pregnancy might cause her cancer to return, and decided to have an abortion as she was “unclear, and concerned about the risks to her health and the life and to the foetus, if she continued to term”.

Pro-life, eh?

More here.

FED UP WOMEN DATE: Dammit Janet! picks up the torch and runs with it.