Harper’s global anti-abortion crusade

April 28, 2010

It’s getting harder and harder to stomach the news these days at least as regards Stephen Harper and his vicious government. The latest assault on our sensibilities and on women is the government’s decision to exclude abortion or abortion counseling from its so-called  maternal health initiative. Unable to change the laws in Canada and desperate to serve its reactionary Christian base, Harper hopes to get the best of both worlds – he can be anti-abortion but not pay the price.

It is critical that we challenge Harper on this appalling policy which condemns women to death, violates Canada’s pro-choice policy, reflects a sexist attitude towards women and puts our country at odds with literally every other developed nation.

Write a short letter to the editor denouncing this decision.

FRAMING:  Frame this as a reactionary effort to drag Canada back to the time when women here died from botched abortions.  Harper shows contempt for the vast majority of Canadians (a 2:1 margin) who support women’s right to abortion. He is violating the spirit of Canada’s laws by imposing his own fundamentalist views on the rest of the world. All of this is done to please a small minority of Christian evangelicals.

Some facts and possible points to make:

• Every eight minutes, a woman in a developing country dies from complications caused by an unsafe abortion, often leaving behind motherless children.
• Every year almost 42 million women have an abortion not because they want to but because they have been raped, have inadequate birth control or because another child would make it impossible to feed the children they already have. These are the women callously abandoned to their fate by Harper’s policy.
• Deaths from unsafe abortions account for 13 per cent of maternal deaths in poor countries, according to the World Health Organization.
• Harper is playing politics with women’s live all over the world
• Canada’s position is a horrible embarrassment as no other developed country has excluded this critical aspect of women’s reproductive health – we are at risk of becoming a pariah nation where we were once a leader in humanitarian programs and policies.
• Stephen Harper’s government is a minority government –   his election by just 38% of voters does not give him a mandate to impose this policy based on his personal preferences. Yet he stated that there will be no debate in the House over this major change in Canadian policy.
• Ask Mr Harper if Canada will now refuse to support abortions for teenagers raped by combatants in the Congo, or in other countries where rape has become a weapon of war – where women impregnated by the opposing side are ostracized.
• As activist Jane Cawthorne argues (see Globe and Mail op-ed here):  “By refusing to fund abortions as part of its ill-conceived maternal health initiative, the Conservative government is effectively saying only women who become mothers are worthy of complete health care.”

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