February 9, 2010 Opinions

editorial

Conservatives denying the simple truth

by Madeline Coleman

Turns out abortion has nothing to do with women’s health—or so some have argued this past week. When Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff dared to suggest the two might be linked, he was called “pathetic” and “sad” by Conservative (and conservative) pundits who hoped to delegitimize any mention of abortion.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced last week that, as host of the upcoming G8 meeting this summer, Canada would make foreign aid to support women’s and children’s health a top priority. Harper made vague gestures towards better access to clean water, vaccination and proper nutrition.

Ignatieff pointed out that if Harper wanted to talk about saving the lives of pregnant women, the prime minister was going to have to put abortion on the table. The Liberal leader reasoned that botched operations were a major barrier to solving the plight of women in developing nations. But pro-lifers, including several religious leaders, refused to acknowledge this.

“I thought it was pathetic for a political leader to suggest that abortion is somehow tied to the health of women and children,” Bishop Fred Henry of Calgary told the National Post, in a leap of logic that seemed to infer medical operations performed on women actually have nothing to do with women’s bodies.

Harper spokesperson Dimitri Soudas echoed the sentiment, again calling Ignatieff’s suggestion “sad” and claiming that the proposed focus on women and children’s health “has nothing to do with abortion.”

If the proposal has nothing to do with abortion, it’s because the Conservatives blatantly refuse to address the issue. Ignatieff’s response followed logically from Harper’s announcement. The American pro-choice non-profit Guttmacher Institute announced last fall that at least 70,000 women die a year from unsafe abortions. “Virtually all abortions in Africa and in Latin America and the Caribbean were unsafe,” the research centre reported, noting that the number of women who died from botched procedures was probably lower than in reality because many less developed countries have draconian anti-abortion laws that force women far underground.

And that’s the thing: Harper’s proposal and Ignatieff’s response were about women’s health beyond the privileged scope of the western world, not in Canada. Abortion is easily accessible Canada and even covered by public health care in some provinces, including Quebec. Soudas seemed to suggest that Ignatieff is still harping on about a solved problem, when in fact ol’ Iggy was thinking outside our borders.

Soudas also accused him of turning women’s health into “political football.” By ignoring demonstrable connections between access to safe abortions and the betterment of women’s health, it is actually the Conservative spokesperson who is taking the human element out of abortion, turning it into an abstract talking point. And it’s not only about the mothers: children have a better chance of a healthy upbringing if their mothers are prepared to raise them.

At press time, the Conservatives have not confirmed whether or not they will encourage discussion of abortion at the G8 summit. Nor has Harper elaborated on how much money he wants to dedicate to his proposed initiatives. Whether or not the resulting foreign aid will cover safe abortion—and we sincerely hope it will—politicians must be able to discuss it without being derided. It would be more legitimate to take a strong position against abortion than to dismiss it. Right now the Conservatives haven’t done much more than condescend.

—Madeline Coleman,
Fringe Arts editor