Given Canada’s commitment to sending hundreds of millions of dollars overseas to promote abortion in developing countries, the information revealed in this study is highly relevant. The Liberals’ Feminist International Assistance Policy touches on education, nutrition, and women’s entrepreneurship, among other valuable things. Unfortunately, it also emphasizes the need for access to safe, legal abortions and, like Ganatra’s study, criticizes restrictive abortion laws in developing nations.

News reports on the study featured heart-wrenching stories of women considering suicide over carrying a pregnancy to term, or hemorrhaging from a botched abortion. The Policy’s Executive Summary lists strict abortion restrictions alongside female genital mutilation, forced marriage, and child marriage as a discriminatory practice holding women and girls back.

Blaming abortion restrictions, however, ignores evidence in the study itself that restrictions have little bearing on the safety and quality of care received. The study states, “The proportion of abortions that were least safe was also significantly higher in developing countries with the most restrictive laws than in developed countries with similarly restrictive laws.” That is, when comparing developed and developing nations that had the same regulations, the developed countries still had significantly safer abortions. From this we learn that it is not actually the restrictions that determine the safety of abortions but some other cause, whether the larger health framework of the nation in question, the political stability, the access to medical education, or some other factor.

The World Health Organization (WHO), where researcher Bela Ganatra is employed, reports that nearly half of its member states report fewer than one physician per 1000 population, including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, Ghana and Liberia, among many others. “Countries with the lowest relative need have the highest number of health care workers,” the WHO report states. Abortion restrictions are irrelevant in the broader framework of lack of access to health care for any medical service, necessary or elective.

So if legal restrictions are not the cause of unsafe abortion, why the push in Canada’s “feminist” Policy for fewer restrictions on abortion? In short, it’s ideological.

Obianuju Ekeocha, an outspoken human rights advocate from Nigeria, says that in order to convince any woman in Africa that abortion is a good thing, first you have to tell her that everything she’s been taught by her parents, her grandparents, and her culture, is wrong. This, she states unequivocally, is ideological colonization. Ekeocha points to African women’s real desires and needs: food, water, education.

The Liberal plan for foreign aid, with its focus on “reproductive rights” as founded upon abortion access, is nothing less than a colonial attempt at control without genuine aid. The targeted nations want their children to be healthy and safe. The “aid” being offered says children don’t need to be “healthy and safe” if they don’t exist. Rather than addressing societal and economic reasons parents struggle to provide for their families, the Canadian government takes aim at families, aiming to reduce poverty by reducing reproduction.

To use the Lancet study to promote international access to abortion is to ignore the greater need for stable health and education infrastructures in developing nations. In this study, evidence was collected and presented for a case we already knew was going to be made. Led by a researcher whose work focuses on the prevention of unsafe abortion, this study provided exactly what she needed to continue her work of promoting abortion. No space is left for a perspective that questions the validity of abortion as a means of enhancing equality for women, a perspective that believes women do not have to be more like men reproductively in order to succeed. In short, it left no space for a perspective of true equality, one that celebrates differences. This is the equality that could make a real difference in the lives of women around the world.

In the face of these doomsday scenarios, we are seeing a very different picture emerge. The evidence is mounting that abortion restrictions are having completely opposite effect – not only are they resulting in less abortions, they are also having a positive impact on women’s health.

The federal government in the United States has released the latest abortion related statistics via the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the numbers show an encouraging trend. Abortion rates are the lowest in decades as more and more women choose alternatives. In 2011 there were 13.9 abortions for every 1000 women of reproductive age. This figure has been steadily declining since 1980, when there were 25 abortions for every 1000 women. The numbers released by CDC are in line with earlier reports from the Guttmacher Institute (America’s largest abortion advocate) and they show that abortion regulations are having the desired effect.

The correlation between the number of abortions and the increase in abortion regulations cannot be ignored. Between 2000 and 2011 there were nearly 300 abortion laws passed nationwide in the USA. These laws are a reflection of the changing public attitudes towards abortion.

And it’s not only our southern neighbours where we see this seismic shift.

In 1989, Chile implemented a complete ban on abortion. At the time there was tremendous public outcry that this would lead to illegal abortions which would certainly result in women’s health being jeopardized. But thanks to accurate reporting (unlike here in Canada, where it is impossible to get accurate statistics because provincial governments have censored the information), we now know that the opposite is true. The MELISA Institute, a Chilean private non-profit institution for advanced bio-medical research, has recently released data showing that not only has maternal health improved, the number of women seeking illegal abortion has plummeted.

Dr. Elard Koch, Director of Research of the MELISA Institute says that since Chile banned abortion in 1989, the number of maternal deaths has decreased from 41.3 to 12.7 per 100,000 women. It is hard to argue with numbers like that. Dr. Koch attributes this to a number of things including data which “suggests that support programs directed to vulnerable women can prevent most induced abortions.” He goes on to say that, “The Chilean experience represents a paradox in our times: even under a less permissive abortion legislation, maternal health indicators can be significantly improved by other factors, including a noteworthy reduction in mortality and morbidity associated to abortion.”

It appears that Stephen Harper is onto something with his maternal health initiative, which specifically excludes abortion.

Chile has proven to be a world leader in maternal health. Banning abortion has helped them achieve these positive outcomes. Dr. Kock explains, “The high quality of Chilean vital statistics indicates these findings are unlikely to be the result of an artifact of the registry system. Rather, a decrease in hospital discharges due to complications from illegal abortion appears to explain virtually all the reduction in hospital discharges due to any type of abortion in Chile during the last decade.” Not only are women not seeking abortions outside proper healthcare facilities, the number of women seeking abortions is declining.

Around the world the pro-life movement has always taken a multi-pronged approach to addressing abortion. Largely through the efforts of volunteers they have come alongside women in unplanned pregnancies, exploring the options and caring for them and their families. In addition to this there are efforts geared towards educating the public about the impact of abortion on women and children.

Canada lags far behind in proper care for pregnant women and pre-born children. Women are not even afforded the respect of receiving all the relevant information prior to making a decision about the health of their pre-born child. The experiences of Chile and the United States should open our eyes to the reality that abortion regulations enhance maternal health.

Laws will never be the complete answer. As with every other example of human brokenness, they will not prevent all abortions. But that does not mean that we are excused from taking action. Just as our nation has done in addressing the harms of cigarette smoking, Canada can go a lot further to provide proper care, information, and protection for pregnant women and their pre-born children. It is time to enact life-saving regulations which bring us into line with other civilized nations.

Suffice it to say, this is an expensive awareness campaign. But the financial implications are not the troubling aspect. Indeed, most people would easily justify the use of tax dollars to ensure babies have as healthy a start to life as possible.

My full-time job is to advocate for the very children this campaign is drawing attention to. So when I heard about this campaign, the realization quickly set in that something doesn’t jive here. On the one hand we (society and government) are concerned about the health of a developing child in the womb, and on the other we allow them to be aborted for reasons as flippant as inopportune timing.

Don’t get me wrong, prenatal health is very important, but why the double standard? When some Canadians call for the legal protection of fetuses they are accused of meddling with a woman’s rights and infringing on her bodily autonomy, but should that same woman choose to drink while pregnant she is condemned as negligent.

The provincial government in Ontario, which operates the LCBO, will no doubt be investing millions of dollars in this FAS campaign to ensure that every preborn baby has a healthy start to life outside the womb. The campaign is designed to make society generally and pregnant women specifically to think carefully before drinking while pregnant. Meanwhile, that same government is spending similar amounts of money every year to pay for the abortion of one in four pre-born babies. For 25% of Ontario babies, their “healthy start” comes to a very quick and violent end.

Public awareness campaigns focused on pregnancy and drinking expose a cognitive dissonance in our society. You want to kill your baby before birth? No problem. We’ll even pay for it. But don’t you dare have a glass of wine while pregnant! And if you do, we’ll shame you with a million dollar advertising blitz.

This alcohol and pregnancy awareness campaign, when compared with Canada’s lack of any legal protection for children in the womb, makes absolutely no sense. Canada’s shame of being the only Western nation without an abortion law is untenable and totally inconsistent with what science teaches about the most vulnerable members of the human family. Thankfully, with advances in medicine and treatment, babies born with FAS can still lead a productive life. Unfortunately this does not hold true for aborted babies.

Prior to seeing the plethora of ads in the coming weeks, a pregnant woman may have been unaware of the serious complications that drinking while pregnant could have on her pre-born child. For this reason alone, the LCBO campaign is a good one. It is high time that society is also made aware of what abortion does to pre-born children. Only then will the cognitive dissonance finally resolve. Only then will human rights finally apply to all human beings.

The truth hurts, especially when the truth shows that in 2013 in the UK there were 190 abortions past the 24-week limit (including 2 for women at 37 weeks, 3 for women at 38 weeks and as described in the article, 1 for a woman who was just days away from giving birth). It hurts when we realize that Canada is no different and that unlike the UK, who have abortion laws, we have zero laws. No law to protect pre-born children who should be safest when growing inside their mother, and instead are at risk for being aborted because they are different, up to and including birth. It hurts when we realize that between 2000 and 2009, there were 491 children who died after birth as a result of a failed abortion. The truth hurts when instead of being outraged by injustice, we demand the right to carry it out.

MPs from the UK seem to understand the situation much better than many here in Canada:

“After birth we work hard to ensure equality, but before birth we have laws to prevent the disabled taking their first breath. This medieval, cruel, discriminatory law must change.” – MP Fiona Bruce

“This law desperately needs some sanity.” – MP Rob Flello

We are no different here in Canada. Let the outrage from some members of Parliament in the UK be a reminder to us as citizens and our own lawmakers here in Canada, that the injustice of killing a child because of a disability is not something to be celebrated in the name of choice. Let us choose life for everyone, regardless of size, level of development, environment or degree of dependency.