Beyond The Commons

Beyond The Commons

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 unavoidable issue (II)

by Aaron Wherry on Thursday, September 2, 2010 2:46pm - 0 Comments

Elizabeth Payne talks to International Cooperation Minister Bev Oda and detects some ambiguity in the government’s position on funding abortion overseas.

[It] seems more likely that Canada’s direct aid to Mali, Mozambique and other countries will take the form of help to build more rural health centres and train badly needed caregivers as well as providing clean water and support for organizations that provide nutritious food. But, in addition, the federal government supports Marie Stopes International, which provides family planning in Africa, and is on the verge of re-funding International Planned Parenthood, according to Oda.

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  • Margaret

    Bev Odious – appears to be doing a Harper. If what you believe in doesn't wash with the commoners, then you're going to have to do what they want. Until you get a majority, that is. The focus is always on the majority, and Harper would eat his grandmother for dinner if he thought it would get him a majority.

  • Emily

    Birth control AND abortion?

    Well I guess that's the last we'll see of Bev Oda.

  • bergkamp

    " …. verge of re-funding International Planned Parenthood …. "

    If Cons were actually controlled by SoCons there is no way on God's green earth would they be funding Planned Parenthood. Look at that, eighty years later and progressives are still vexed by the black peril – plus ca change, plus c'est ….

    "At a March 1925 international birth control gathering in New York City, a speaker warned of the menace posed by the "black" and "yellow" peril. The man was not a Nazi or Klansman; he was Dr. S. Adolphus Knopf, a member of Margaret Sanger's American Birth Control League (ABCL), which along with other groups eventually became known as Planned Parenthood."

    • Emily

      It should never have been a question.

      The SoCons just lost that's all.

    • Mike T.

      Most disingenous posters leave out the 1925 part, so good on you for that.

      • bergkamp

        Why do they leave out the 1925 part? I think it nicely illustrates how long progressive have embraced eugenics. Progressives and liberals today are saying the exact same things as their comrades were eighty years ago.

        • Emily

          Because something said about medicine in 1925 has no relevance today. They had lots of strange beliefs then, just as our current beliefs will appear barbaric and primitive 100 years hence.

          Like your nonsensical views of 'progressives and liberals'.

          • BGLong

            Everybody knows how progressive the Alberta SoCreds were … Aberhart and some guy named …
            ….. oh,yea … Manning..

        • ZestyMordant

          "Progressives and liberals today are saying the exact same things as their comrades were eighty years ago."

          Are you seriously trying to suggest that advocating access to family planning in the current context is related to eugenics? Do you have anything to support that? I mean, other than a quote from 1925.

          • TJCook

            Yes he's seriously trying to make that claim. He thinks it's a trump card that destroys the credibility of Planned Parenthood.

          • bergkamp

            TJCook – What reasoning do you use when you try to get Repubs to be responsible for their history – Lee Atwater – while at same time claiming progressives today have nothing to do with progressive back then even tho they support the exact same policies?

          • TJCook

            Well of course, the Southern Strategy is still in use by the Republicans, whereas only a crazy person would equate modern access to abortion with eugenics.

            Or do you have some current Planned Parenthood policy documentation that speaks of the "black" or "yellow" "menace"?

          • bergkamp

            "Are you seriously trying to suggest …. "

            What's the problem? Even H Clinton embraces Sanger and all her 'good' work.

            It is astonishing that anyone would accept an award named after Sanger and be happy about winning it. Clinton might as well have accepted an award named after Hitler or Stalin.

            Planned Parenthood press release in 2009 – " …. presented its highest honor, the PPFA Margaret Sanger Award, to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton."

            And what did Clinton say when she received award? Why, she said "The overarching mission of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the cause of reproductive freedom that you continue to advance today is as relevant in our world now as it was 100 years ago."

          • ZestyMordant

            The "problem" is that a family planning advocate from 1925 who was in favour of eugenics has nothing to do with current advocates of family planning. You may have noticed that current advocates are supportive of access to family planning for all women. I challenge you to find any contemporary progressives referring to race or eugenics in their arguments for access to family planning.

  • Holly Stick

    Well, well, a Conservative who is capable of learning? One who actually accepts reality when her nose is rubbed in it? How unusual! Bye-bye Bev!

    • Olaf

      I don't think "capable of learning" is the phrase you're looking for – "capable of doing something Holly Stick likes" would be more accurate.

      • Holly Stick

        No, she actually went to Africa and witnessed the reality of a woman whose child was starving becausethe mother had become pregnant again. You might want to go and read the whole article and see if you can learn too.

        • Holly Stick

          You do realize that the woman would probably die herself, and the fetus would die, and tha already living child would die too, don''t you? Let's save fetuses by killing women and children, even if the fetus dies too: that's what "pro-lifers" really support.

  • Holly Stick

    Well, some people still think that funding maternal health initiatives means actually working to improve maternal health. Which includes family planning and safe abortions.

    • AT1

      Fine, but what's the ambiguity? They never said the Planned Parenthood would not be funded, just that their application was under consideration. Moreover, funding PP can be done within or without the maternal health initiative that was proposed at the G8/G20.

      • AT1

        sorry, maternal And child heath initiative…

        • Holly Stick

          Nobody trustsed the Harper Government to do the correct thing; we expected them to do the stupid ideological thing.

          • AT1

            I'd paraphrase Olaf above, but it'd be pointless.

  • Holly Stick

    Oh look! Rightwing anti-choice scumbags are attacking Oda already!
    http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/Septem…

    After all, we can't have a woman suggesting that Conservative policy should actually work for the benefit of women, can we? Women are supposed to take orders, not have ideas of their own, right?

    • Emily

      Wow, that didn't take long.

  • ZestyMordant

    Hmm. You certainly raise a long point. Very thoughtfully pasted.

    The only one of these items that refers to eugenics at all is from 1939. While that's a full 14 years after 1925, it's still a long way from the current debate.

    Just because progressives are not so stupid to continue talking about eugenics does not mean they are less keen to murder those they don't approve of.

    You must be referring to the secret progressive agenda of murdering minorities. That old thing. Lull them into a false sense of confidence with employment equity, then we killz 'em!

  • TJCook

    Somebody's been freebasing pro-life propaganda.

    You should note that the 2008 "investigation" of Planned Parenthood you refer to was carried out by James O'Keefe, who was responsible for the carefully-edited ACORN videos, and who went to jail for a laughably amateurish attempt to bug a senator's office.

    Why, exactly, should we believe anything James O'Keefe produces? Especially when one of his Planned Parenthood tapes had 30-second gaps in which the audio had been silenced? And when his ACORN videos spliced later with shots of himself and a woman dressed as a "pimp" and a "ho"?

    Better sources, please.

    • bergkamp

      James O'Keefe plead guilty to charges for breaking into Senator's office in 2010 so that means his 2008 work is dodgy, Sanger didn't launch a negro project in 1939, Planned Parenthood doesn't have 80% of its clinics in minority neighbourhoods today and Clinton doesn't admire Sanger/Planned Parenthood's work over the past century.

      That's some sound reasoning, TJ Cook.

      You must be ecstatic that Canadians are being forced to fund Sanger's negro project.

      • TJCook

        James O'Keefe also produced a series of fraudulent videos in 2009 that claimed he went to several ACORN offices dressed like a cartoon "pimp" with a cartoon "ho". In fact, he filmed the videos of himself and his "ho" in costume later and edited them in.

        The result was that the ACORN staff looked as though they were cooperating with an obvious prostitution business. It was a lie. So yes, his 2008 Planned Parenthood work is dodgy, especially the part where 30-plus seconds of audio are edited out and replaced with silence.

        Tell me again why I should believe anything O'Keefe produces? We're talking about a three-time liar here, working entirely within his usual MO. Do you have *anything* else that's been produced in your lifetime?

        And I'm supposed to be convinced that Planned Parenthood, 75 years later, is fulfilling your distorted description of a vision Sanger never had, a "negro project", based on the evidence of a proven propagandist like O'Keefe?

        Give your head a shake, jolyon. Even for a pro-life extremist like you, this is absurd. You're smarter than this, hold yourself to a higher standard.

  • BGLong

    But then we're jumping to the unproven conclusion that Minister Oda knows what the policy is.
    Nice enough lady and all but …..

  • http://scottdiatribe.canflag.com/ Scott_Tribe

    A technicality, because everyone knows if the Cons had lost this vote/motion, they'd have ignored it. But, they won it, so they now claim they're following the rule of Parliament. More Harpocrisy in action.

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