Beyond The Commons

Aaron Wherry covers all the goings-on in and around Parliament Hill. Follow Aaron on Twitter: @aaronwherry

Categories: Beyond The Commons, Capital Read

'The purpose of this is to be able to save lives'

by Aaron Wherry on Wednesday, March 17, 2010 11:28am - 89 Comments

Lawrence Cannon told the Foreign Affairs committee that contraception won’t be part of the government’s commitment to maternal health in the developing world.

In no uncertain terms, Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon yesterday ruled out any kind of family-planning programs being included in Canada’s “signature” initiative at June’s G8 summit – a strategy to improve the health of mothers and young children in poor countries. ”It does not deal in any way, shape or form with family planning. Indeed, the purpose of this is to be able to save lives,” Mr. Cannon told the Foreign Affairs committee.

For the sake of argument, here is a USAID fact sheet which states that access to family planning options reduces the number of abortions, limits the spread of HIV and “could prevent 25 percent of maternal and child deaths in the developing world.”

Tags: abortion, Africa, contraception, family planning, foreign aid, lawrence cannon, maternal health, USAID

More by Aaron Wherry

Holly Stick

The woman comes first.
Luke

Ok, but I hope you can understand why some people might reasonably feel different than you about this, and may not want to be complicit in these procedures through their tax dollars. And such people do not necessarily have to be "self-righteous ignorant men" who "know nothing about the real world". Maybe these people really do think there are two people involved, and that the rights of both need to be considered.

Holly Stick

No, they just don't think women have any rights.

http://intensedebate.com/people/Gaunilon Gaunilon

I'm not debating faith, and I'm not juxtaposing religious values with medical research. I'm pointing out that if we're just going to go all in for whatever statistically reduces HIV transmission, then we'd be better off making our foreign aid include Christian or Muslim indoctrination since such beliefs tend to inhibit HIV transmission. Yet we can all see that this would be a very bad idea.

The point was this: if the adoption of some religious doctrine leads to reduced HIV transmission, does that mean we should promote that religious doctrine in our foreign aid? Of course not. Why not? Because we would be using public funds to support something that the public does not support, with no national imperative to do so. This is inherently unjust.