Canada: The uteruses of poor women are our business

[sabotabby]

First, CIDA's funding priorities get changed to focus on women and children. (Never mind that CIDA's funding priorities have always been global hegemony.)

Then, Harper's increasingly batshit government was going to cut funding for contraception in its foreign aid.

[Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon] told a House of Commons committee that the government's initiative to bolster maternal health in developing countries would not include funding for contraception, because “the purpose of this is to be able to save lives.”

(Not the lives of women and girls, of course. Women are meatbags in which precious fetuses may be temporarily stored.)

Now they're saying that contraception is in, but abortion is out. Maybe. And if you say otherwise, you're anti-American.

Every year, unsafe abortion kills at least 700,000 women. Maternal death is a global crisis. And yet these sanctimonious sons-of-bitches at Parliament Hill who can't even be arsed to run their own country think that they should get to decide whether women in other countries get to control their own bodies?

Fuck them all. I'm provisionally impressed that the Liberals have decided to take a stand on this, but I'm betting they'll cave in the end.

Comments

[audrawilliams.livejournal.com]

The Liberals are fucking up everything. They didn't consult with groups before taking this on, it's just a political football to them. Groups were operating under a sort of don't-ask/don't-tell dynamic re: this stuff. Which is shitty for sure, but really important work was being done. Then the Grits shone a big flashlight on the issue and everyone started asking questions and coalitions are falling apart and people are going to lose funding and it's the WORST.

[frandroid.livejournal.com]

And the Liberals weren't even able to shame the Conservatives in the process...