Are Opposition politicians willing to risk sabotaging the Conservatives' important maternal health initiative in order to pursue their pro-choice agenda?

The appalling statistics about the number of women and children around the world that suffer and die because of lack of access to the necessities of life, including even the most basic level of health care, should make even the hardest-to-reach consciences feel guilty and touch the hardest hearts. Consequently, one could have hoped that it was not naïve to believe that making maternal and child health a major focus of the upcoming G8 meeting would be welcomed by all. As the debates in Parliament and the media have shown, however, that hope was indeed naïve.

As soon as the initiative was announced, Michael Ignatieff called for abortion to be made part of the maternal health pledge. As reported initially (although this was later clarified), Mr. Ignatieff seemed to believe that contraception and abortion were morally equivalent and that abortion was an acceptable method of “contraception.” Most people, whether they are pro-choice or pro-life regarding abortion, would disagree with both those beliefs.

The vast majority of Canadians, whatever their own personal views and values with respect to contraception, believe that this should be a private decision left to individuals. It’s also the case that for some women the use of contraception is a medical decision and, sometimes, spacing out pregnancies can help to avoid health problems for future children. The announcement by the Canadian government that it will not oppose funding for contraception supports this position.

It’s necessary, however, to define contraception, because sometimes interventions called contraception are not that – the clearest example is abortion being labeled as such. Contraception involves providing the means to prevent fertilization of an ovum by a sperm, that is, preventing the formation of a human embryo, the starting point of every new human life.

Such confusion is not surprising in light of the language used by pro-choice advocates and their parliamentary allies, indeed, it is probably intentionally generated. Reasons could include to avoid facing the facts of what abortion involves in practice or to persuade others, who might have ethical misgivings about abortion, to join their cause. In any case, they studiously avoid use of the word “abortion.”

For instance, in the motion to be tabled in Parliament jointly by the opposition parties on Tuesday, they call for funding of “the full range of family planning, sexual and reproductive health options, including contraception,” without mentioning abortion, although that is the central issue in this debate. Likewise, they refer to the George W. Bush administration’s ban on federal funding of non-governmental organizations that promoted abortion, as a funding ban on “organizations promoting medically sound family planning.” That sounds much more benign than abortion and it seems much more unreasonable to ban it. In the same vein, pro-choice advocates speak only in terms of fetuses, not unborn children.

But, while we can find a shared position on contraception, where we will continue to disagree is whether or not we should support or facilitate abortion. In other words, should the lives we try to save with this maternal and child health initiative include unborn babies or, at the very least, should we avoid funding their destruction through abortion? The Canadian government’s position, one with which I agree, is that we should not fund abortion. I would allow for an exceedingly rare exception where a woman’s life was in danger or there was a very serious threat to her health in continuing a pregnancy, early delivery of the child was not possible, and the only reasonable way to avoid those harms or risks would be to offer her an abortion. This exception deals with the argument commonly made by pro-choice advocates, an argument that can be strongly challenged on the facts in the vast majority of cases, that abortion is needed to protect women’s lives and health. But certainly we should not be funding organizations, such as International Planned Parenthood, that promote abortion as the norm.

Abortion is a highly sensitive issue politically. It’s one of hot spots in the current “values and culture wars.” That means who “wins” and who “loses” on such an issue has impact on values well beyond the issue itself. Sometimes we fight these battles with those wider values in mind. But everyone, especially politicians, has to exercise wise ethical restraint when the harm they will do outweighs any good they hope to achieve. I suggest that Mr. Ignatieff, and members of the Opposition parties who joined him, did such harm in instantly politicizing this praiseworthy initiative and in continuing to do so. One can only assume that, in order to gain political points, they are willing to risk sabotaging this extraordinarily important humanitarian initiative that would benefit some of the world’s weakest, most in need, most vulnerable and desperate people. As a spokesperson for the Prime Minister’s Office said, “saving lives of mothers and children should not be a political football.” We should all act accordingly. There’s an unlimited amount of good we can do in this regard that we can all agree should be done. We should all focus on that to start this essential humanitarian work.

Finally, in arguing for funding for abortion, Mr. Ignatieff was also reported as saying, “Let’s keep the ideology [he meant the pro-life stance] out of this and move forward.” But that’s impossible, because the pro-choice stance is just as much ideologically based – that is, promotes a certain set of values and beliefs – as the pro-life one. Mr. Ignatieff was saying, therefore, that his pro-choice values should not only prevail, but not be opposed. That’s not how democracy works.