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Abortion-free maternal health plan falls short: Stronach
Read the article / show / issue that provoked me to write a letter and my response below that or go straight to my response
Date Posted on this Site
May 27, 2010
Publication
Toronto Sun
Publication Date
May 26, 2010
Published Content
By LAURA PAYTON, Parliamentary Bureau
OTTAWA - Canada's maternal health plan falls short as long as it leaves out abortion funding, but G8 leaders shouldn't let that get in the way of the initiative, said former cabinet minister Belinda Stronach.
Stronach said the current proposal doesn't give women in developing countries the same access to safe and legal abortions that Canadians have.
"There's a death every minute due to unsafe abortions or pregnancy complications, so it's not an irrelevant issue," Stronach said.
"But having said that, I'd hate to see this important issue get derailed because of the abortion issue when so much good can be done on other fronts."
Stronach is in Ottawa with global anti-poverty group ONE, which is calling on Canada to push for a G8 plan for the next five years as the world works toward the deadline for the Millennium Development Goals. The MDGs were adopted by United Nations members to reduce extreme poverty around the world by 2015.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced in January that Canada would push a maternal and child health initiative when it hosts the G8 summit next month, but the government said in April it wouldn't include any Canadian money for abortion in developing countries.
ONE wants Canada to double its country-to-country maternal and child health funding from $220 million annually and is asking the G8 to commit $12-$15 billion to the Global Fund to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. The Canadian share would be $700 million over the next three years.
ONE also wants the G8 to commit $4.7 billion over five years to the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation, with $200 million a year coming from Canada.
The group says Canada has hit its 2005 commitments to increase aid to Africa but risks losing ground because the government is freezing its current contributions at 2010 levels for five years.
My Response Letter
Belinda Stronach inflates the number of so-called "unsafe abortion" victims by combining it with those who die from pregnancy complications. Why?
According to the World Health Organization, there are an "estimated" 68,000 unsafe abortion deaths each year.
That is far fewer than the 530,000 dead gleaned from Ms. Stronach's "death every minute" statement.
If Ms. Stronach and others who promote abortion abroad are willing to mislead in this regard, what else are they not telling us about abortion?
Jason Gennaro
Was my response published?
No