Maternal Health Flip Flop Update
On our main list of Flip Flops, down towards the bottom, you’ll see a mention about maternal health.
There was a lot of flip flopping about this but in the end, the Cons have refused to include abortion into their maternal health funding for African countries. See the Conservatives do not believe that abortion should be apart of this; even though we are talking about countries where women are gang raped and that is seen as a form of male bonding. Countries where young girls are raped and become pregnant. Countries where women are over-burdened with children, don’t have access to supplies to care for their children and will become pregnant with more children.
A lot of aid groups are really upset about this, and understandable so. In return, what they get from the Conservatives is this lovely soundbite:
Aid experts alarmed by Canada’s new anti-abortion stand in foreign policy have been advised to “shut the f—- up” or risk Prime Minister Stephen Harper taking even more harsh measures – abroad, or maybe even at home if abortion becomes an election issue.
“We’ve got five weeks or whatever left until G-8 starts. Shut the f—- up on this issue,” Conservative Senator Nancy Ruth told a group of international-development advocates who gathered on Parliament Hill on Monday to sound the alarm about Canada’s hard-right stand against abortion in foreign aid.
