Maternal Health or Cynical Politics?

The Harper government seems to care more about scoring political points than the health of mothers and children in developing countries.

Every once in a while a politician stands up and says something so frighteningly revealing, it just takes your breath away. That happened on April 27 when Stephen Harper finally rose in the House of Commons to defend his government’s cynically-conceived new Maternal Health Initiative.

The MHI was supposedly designed to aid mothers and children in the developing world. It was intended to be a showpiece at the upcoming G8 summit in Toronto – the host country’s big policy splash.

“Canadians want to see their foreign aid money used for things that will help save the lives of women and children in ways that unite the Canadian people rather than divide them,” said Harper, in his best I’m-a-parent-reasoning-with-tiresome-children voice. “We want to make sure our funds are used to save the lives of women and children and are used on the many, many things that are available to us that frankly do not divide the Canadian population.”

Think for a moment about other Canadian international aid initiatives. Having a hard time remembering any? That’s because they are largely conceived and implemented by the Canadian International Development Agency, and developed to be actual effective plans and policies, not created as something to be trumpeted to the media.

Unlike the normal sort of aid program CIDA comes up with, the MHI is not being formulated to prioritize the needs of the recipients – mothers and children in developing countries – but rather to be politically saleable. Which actually means it exists first and foremost to benefit the Tories, i.e., to produce that precious majority government.

You may recall the initial announcement itself was intended as a distraction from other political problems. It was late last January at the World Economic Forum in Davos, just a few days after Harper had created a public relations disaster at the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference by admitting Canada had no intention of implementing any meaningful reduction in carbon emissions. So Harper, under considerable fire from the media, other world leaders, and NGOs, suddenly announced that in fact Canada wasn’t a monster at all – we were helping mommies and babies!

There is only one inescapable conclusion: the Harper government has at best a minimal interest in the health of third-world mothers and children. They are simply handy propaganda images, things to be used for political points, nothing else.

Actually, if you look at this government’s track record, there is one other conclusion you can reach, not at odds with the first one. It’s that this government, which has repeatedly stated it didn’t want to reopen the abortion debate, has reopened the abortion debate.

One thing I will readily credit Stephen Harper with has been his scrupulous control of the Reform – errr, Conservative caucus. Who can forget the years of Reform/Alliance backbenchers blurting out jaw-droppingly racist and sexist sentiments, and championing policies to bring back the Good Old Days? The reason Harper sits in the prime minister’s chair today is because of his ability to silence those people. But at long last, it seems he has decided to embrace them – so long as he is the one who delivers the message. Who can blame him? He is so much better at it.

Harper and his lieutenants are obviously inspired by U.S. Republican policies during the Reagan and Bush eras. Remember photos of those presidents signing edicts that prohibited international aid monies from funding abortions, as rich white men gathered around, beaming their approval?

Not only were those pictures of policy realization, they were pictures of success. Those governments remained popular for significant lengths of time, and they were able to implement antediluvian policies that rolled back decades of reformist social legislation.

A major part of this achievement was due to the energizing of their base – committed Christians across the United States who brought evangelical zeal to the ballot box. It looks like the same thing could be happening here.

Indeed, two Conservative private members’ bills have been put forward in recent months which are clear attempts to create “thin edge” legislation. Edmonton MP Ken Epp’s “Unborn Victims of Crime” act got through second reading. Winnipeg MP Rod Bruinooge is currently attempting to get Parliament to pass a law making it illegal for anyone to coerce a woman into having an abortion. This nonsense is clearly based on a law enacted last month by Tennessee.

And I have seen with my own eyes the revitalizing effect this government has had on pro-life activists in Toronto. After years of relative inactivity, they are back; organizing on campuses, harassing women entering and leaving abortion clinics, even forcing their way into clinic waiting rooms and attempting to disseminate their gore-filled pamphlets to patients.

Should all this work – the fake concern for mothers, the appeal to social conservatism – I guarantee a Conservative majority government would move to import another Republican policy, a ban on late-term abortions. And that would only be the beginning.