Meet the new boss, same as the old boss

From Pale over at A Creative Revolution, with a little help from her friends, Rev. PaperBoy and Alison at Creekside:

We need an independent G20 inquiry. Now.

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.

In all the Cons' command

I've been having some fun messing with the national anthem, thanks to the Harper government's commitment, announced during yesterday's throne speech, to castrate gender neuter O Canada. 

With a little help from some Facebook and Twitter friends, here's what I have so far:

Oh Canada! Our home on native land.

True hetero love, in all the Cons command.

We stand on gays for thee.

Green Assassin has a real good version here.

Understand that I am not opposed to this move. First because the anthem has been changed many times, and isn't even a good translation of the original French.  Second because women deserve to be acknowledged as well -- especially since there are many serving in Afghanistan where two have already lost their lives.

And that's without making much of our golden girls' performances at the Olympics. How many times did they stand up for Canada while the anthem played?

Although, when you think about it, ''all thy sons' command'' is not inaccurate when you consider the male-female ratio in Parliament, provincial legislatures, corporate boardrooms ...

Anyway.

As others have noted, this sop to women -- oh gee thanks and whoop-de-do -- hardly makes up for the government's disregard for women and families in the federal budget brought forth today. Not only are EI premiums rising while corporate taxes drop, but Harper still has not solved the daycare dilemma.

Today Finance Minister Jim Flaherty tossed a bone to single parent families with this: 

To save on tax on the $100 per month for children under the Universal Child Care Benefit, single parents will be able to report the income on the tax return of a child under the age of 18.

Which will work out great for richer families. Poor families .. not so much.

Meanwhile, there's this:

Split families: Parents who share custody of children more or less equally will now also be eligible to share the Child Tax Benefit, Universal Child Tax Benefit and the GST/HST credit.

Which sounds great in principle. But I've been on this beat long enough to know that, when parents are at each others' throats over custody, child support and property, this could lead to even greater conflict..

On other issues relevant to women, I can't say there's a whole lot. Nor is there anything for seniors on small fixed pensions. Nothing on housing. Nothing on health care.

For this they needed the recalibration vacation? Give me the break they took!

But what really galls is that the anthem change is being blamed on us femi-nazis because, as you know,  women have have been storming Parliament Hill demanding abortion rights be mentioned, along with equal pay, in the song.

We feminists have so much influence on the Harper government. Snerk.

But ... what do you know?

The push came from an openly gay feminist named Nancy Ruth. That's Senator Nancy Ruth. That's Conservative Senator Nancy Ruth -- a woman I have a lot of time for actually.

But the truth is, tossing this into the political mix right now was strictly a Harper decision.

And it was as cynical as anything else he has done.

O CONada!

P.S. Heh.

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.

Coming up short

The welfare of women continues to dominate the political agenda through the suspension of Parliament.

And so, a few items of note.

Over at Rabble.ca, Murray Dobbin nicely sums up how the Harper government has run "roughshod'' over women.

Nothing new there as regular Broadsides readers know. If I had the time, I would add in a lot more starting with the threats to our reproductive choices and the pending elimination of the long-gun registry.

By coincidence, Regina Mom today documented the dollar value of some of the cuts to programs that helped women achieve equal rights and economic parity.

Finally, NDP leader Jack Layton took advantage of the current political climate to issue a news release challenging party leaders to put Canadian women and children first.

Mr. Layton invited Mr. Harper, as well as Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff and Bloc leader Gilles Duceppe, to cooperate in 2010 to improve the lives of Canadian women and children. He outlined a series of concrete New Democrat proposals that, if embraced by the other parties, would mean real progress for women and children. Those proposals include:

• Employment Insurance rules that deny eligibility to six in ten women;
• adopting key recommendations of the 2004 Pay Equity Task Force;
• increasing support for women’s groups working to prevent violence;
• launching an inquiry into 520 missing or murdered Aboriginal women;
• launching a federal initiative to ensure every child has daily access to healthy food;
• boosting the Guaranteed Income Supplement to end poverty among seniors (overwhelmingly women).

It's stunning to me that, in this country, in this century, kids and seniors go hungry.

Who was it who said that, if you want to know the true measure of a man, watch how he treats old people, children and animals?

UPPITY WOMAN DATE: Layton had an op-ed in today's National Post.

Canada is among the wealthiest nations in the world, yet 70% of Inuit preschool-age children live in homes where there is not always enough food. There are many mothers in Canada who live in unsafe places, who are going without food, electricity or heat because of persistent, deep poverty. These deprivations have a devastating effect on Canada's very youngest, evidenced by the fact that infant mortality rates in low-income neighbourhoods are almost double those in richer ones.

Mr. Harper acknowledges that the solutions to maternal and child health problems are "not intrinsically expensive." This holds true for Canadian women and children as well: Providing safe drinking water on reserves, addressing the affordable housing crisis, and funding organizations that support women and children are all relatively inexpensive compared to the health and social costs of poverty in Canada, which are estimated at more than $20-billion per year.

<SNIP>

To put the full consequences of (Harper's) indifference into perspective, imagine a city the size of Winnipeg full of children: That is the number of our kids who live in poverty in Canada today.

As a country, we have the ability to take decisive action to end this cycle of marginalization, and Mr. Harper has shown that he knows that investing in women and children will get the job done in the developing world. It will be pure hypocrisy if he refuses to make similar investments here at home.

Report card

Why, Stephen Lewis said this exact same stuff to me just the other day. 

Still, I think it bears repeating:

Despite being a major part of Prime Minister Stephen Harper's speech to the World Economic Forum last week, the government's plan to champion action on maternal and child health is still a work in progress, CIDA Minister Bev Oda said Monday.

No kidding. She might consider starting right here at home. As former Minister of State for the Status of Women, she did nothing either.

Meanwhile, former UN special envoy for HIV/AIDS Stephen Lewis has described Mr. Harper's speech as "a piece of crass, political opportunism" amid accusations the government is late to the issue, and sees women as mothers and little else.

Last Thursday, Mr. Harper outlined his goals and priorities for Canada's presidency of the G8 in a speech to state and business leaders in Davos, Switzerland. He noted that in developing countries, more than 500,000 women die each year in pregnancy and 9 million children die before the age of five.

"As president of the G8, Canada will champion a major initiative to improve the health of women and children in the world's most vulnerable regions," he said. "It is therefore time to mobilize our friends and partners to do something for those who can do little for themselves, to replace grand good intentions with substantive acts of human good will."

Reducing the number of children who die before the age of five is the fourth Millennium Development Goal, while doing the same for mothers during pregnancy or childbirth is the fifth goal. They are the two MDGs that are furthest from being achieved by 2015.

Ms. Oda said the government has had its eye on these targets for some time, and argued that they fit neatly into CIDA's priority focus on children and youth, though nutrition for infants and mothers also relates to food security.

Ah. Might this explain its total withdrawal from anything to do with Palestinian human rights?

Ms. Oda said the plan now is to hold more consultations with an expanded list of stakeholders, particularly obstetricians and pediatricians in Canada who have worked internationally, as well as multilateral organizations, developing countries and G8 partners "to see what they had been supporting in the past and how and where they might chose to support the general initiative." She also plans to review projects currently supported by CIDA "to find out which ones are most effective, which ones are really making a difference."

So Harper takes all the international credit while Oda has all the 'splaining to do now and later, when nothing happens?

"You don't just throw in the phrase 'maternal and child health,'" Mr. Lewis said. "You actually spend some time setting out what you intend to do and putting a dollar figure beside it. And because there was none that, it's not that I can't take it seriously, it's just that it has to be taken cynically."

He also noted that other countries have been extremely active on the issue over the past three years, and his perception is the Conservative government "stumbled on it and finds it politically advantageous to pursue it at the G8."

"My objection is that you make an announcement without any dollar sign," he said, "without any appreciable planning, without any sense for how long Canada's commitment lasts, and what research and work has gone into laying the groundwork for it. And you pretend that somehow you're leading the world.

Can somebody please look yo the meaning of empty promise?

Equally troubling to Mr. Lewis is that the stated focus avoids many of the root causes of maternal and child deaths, particularly gender equality—which is actually another Millennium Development Goal.

"To deal with maternal health is also easy for Canada because it avoids all of the issues with which women are engaged beyond being mothers," he said.

"I don't think you'll ever overcome maternal mortality and you'll have a great deal of difficulty with child health until equality or something approaching equality is achieved. And women don't lead lives simply as child bearers. They lead whole lives where discrimination and hardship are felt in a whole world of other ways."

As if the Con men care.

According to sources, CIDA's efforts over the past decade to improve gender equality were reviewed a few years ago and an internal evaluation was released internally in April 2008. However, while the agency has been developing a plan to improve those activities, nothing has emerged.

No. Really?

Ms. Oda said the gender equality plan has not has been delivered to her office yet, but that Canada has been recognized for its leadership on work on "gender issues," which remain a cross-cutting theme for CIDA's work.

That's a pretty good punchline in and of itself.

But I just have to ask: Why hasn't Canada reported, as it was supposed to have done last November, to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) which asked to hear how we are improving our sorry record on women's poverty and violence to aboriginal women?

Even though it's winter, I can still hear those crickets chirping.

Illustration: William Blake, Europe Supported By Africa and America, 1796. Engraving.

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

Sneak attack

My friend Balbulican over at StageLeft scores again, this time with his observations on the Harpies' not-so-hidden agenda.

Back before the first Conservative Party electoral sort-of victory, we lefties were convinced that the Harperite wing of the party was driven by a secret program for Canada, a list of priorities antithetical to what we thought our country was all about. No-one ever set out their “secret Conservative Agenda” fears too specifically, but if they had, I imaging it would have looked something like this.

a) The Conservatives will dismantle or choke off funding to the organizations they perceive as “feminist”.

b) They’ll start quietly trying to reverse the growing trend toward social acceptance of gays and lesbians.

As Balbulican muses, who would have thought that the Conjobs would actually openly do these things -- and more? We all figured that, as a minority government, they'd be sneakier about it.

But why should they when, as my friend and colleague Susan Delacourt tweeted today, opposition leader Michael Ignatieff is ''coming to a milk carton near you.''

Go forth and readeth.

Every Mother's Son (and Daughter)

Further to this blog post and my Friday treeware column (which I did not blog) ...

I saw an incredible ad today in The Globe and Mail, which I cannot find online anywhere. Too bad. It's a montage of photos of G8 leaders as children with their mothers. At the bottom, the text says

Your mother taught you how to write your name, now she'd expect you to sign it.

Every single minute a mother dies in pregnancy or childbirth. 80% of those deaths are preventable. At this week's G8 Summit in Italy, you are the 8 people who can prevent them -- it's as simple as that. Reduce maternal mortality and make every mother proud of you.

Mothers everywhere are watching and hoping.

Then there's a pointer to the Every Mothers Matters page at the Make Poverty History site.

Please click over there and you'll find a an easy way to email Prime Minister Stephen Harper and demand that he keeps Canada's promise on reducing maternal mortality.

One way to reduce maternal mortality is to ensure women have reproductive choices so that they can have babies when their bodies are mature enough to handle pregnancy, or to prevent too many pregnancies in succession. Women should also have access to pregnancy monitoring technology and safe and legal abortion when their lives are in danger.

If women have these choices, they will have time to get an education and/or to start businesses or farms or find jobs in order to raise stronger and healthier children.

Fewer children.

That's good for them.

That's good for us.

Click.

Now.

Where the heartlessness is

My Twitter friend Deborah Megivern (@dmf71) in Saint Paul, MN, turned me on to this stunning video that shatters the myths surrounding homelessness:

Funny because homelessness has been very much on my mind since last Friday when I met up with the inspiring Lia Grimanis, a real go-getter who used to be homeless herself.

Lia Grimanis is the Number 3 sales executive for SAS Canada, the largest privately held business software company in the world. In her off hours, she swims with sharks, races motorcycles and flies helicopters. She's planning to "wing-walk." I'm not sure what that is, but I suspect it involves being on the wrong side of a plane.

What Grimanis says thrills her most, though, is "giving away money." She recently started a charitable foundation, Up With Women, to benefit those who, like Grimanis, were homeless.

When Grimanis was 18, she fled an abusive home with nothing but the clothes on her back. She declines to go into detail beyond stating that, had she stayed, she would not have made it to her 19th birthday.

She found the number of the Woman Abuse Hotline in the phone book and dialed. They got her into Stop 86, a YWCA shelter. The first night there, a fight broke out in her room. She cried herself to sleep.

Today, Grimanis helps other homeless women through her foundation Up With Women.

One thing that came through loud and clear. Homeless people, especially women, are not what you think -- and it's astonishingly easy to find yourself on the street. You have to wonder if, the economy being what it is, we won't see more people out there.

Needless to say, women, often with children, are especially vulnerable. And many homeless, especially young people, are on the run from abuse.

Anyway, Lia told me that, today in Toronto, a survey of the homeless would be conducted all over town. That's to assess their numbers and needs, with the intent of getting people off the streets.

The Star did an editorial on the subject. Read it here. Then read the comments.

I wonder how many of those people who don't seem to get it, or who clearly don't care, would feel if they learned how the homeless became that way.

Speaking of abuse, this moved on Reuters today:

One 4-month-old baby was shaken so violently she needed surgery. Another 3-week-old suffered fractured ribs from abuse at home. A 9-year-old diabetic boy stopped receiving proper treatment for his condition.

Those cases reported by Boston hospitals are part of a spike in child abuse in United States during a recession that has driven some families to the brink and overwhelmed cash-strapped child-protection agencies.

"In the last three months we have twice as many severe inflicted injury cases as we did in the three months the previous year," said Allison Scobie, program director of the Child Protection Team at Boston's Children's Hospital.

Typically, her hospital handles about 1,500 such cases a year. That rose to 1,800 last year.

"We're finding that it is directly attributable to what is happening economically," she said. "Many of the hospitals around here report an increase of 20 to 30 percent of requests for consultation regarding suspected child maltreatment."

Obviously, in Canada, we have the health insurance safety net. But how many kids are suffering at the hands of parents who just can't cope with the stress of joblessness? How many more teens will run away, and end up on the streets?