Given Canada\u2019s 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\u2019\u00a0Feminist International Assistance Policy<\/a>\u00a0touches on education, nutrition, and women\u2019s entrepreneurship, among other valuable things. Unfortunately, it also emphasizes the need for access to safe, legal abortions and, like Ganatra\u2019s study, criticizes restrictive abortion laws in developing nations.<\/p>\n News\u00a0reports<\/a>\u00a0on the study featured heart-wrenching stories of women considering suicide over carrying a pregnancy to term, or hemorrhaging from a botched abortion. The Policy\u2019s\u00a0Executive Summary<\/a>\u00a0lists strict abortion restrictions alongside female genital mutilation, forced marriage, and child marriage as a discriminatory practice holding women and girls back.<\/p>\n Blaming abortion restrictions, however, ignores evidence in the study itself that restrictions have little bearing on the safety and quality of care received.\u00a0The study states, \u201cThe 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.\u201d That is, when comparing developed and developing nations that had the\u00a0same<\/em>\u00a0regulations, 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.<\/p>\n The\u00a0World Health Organization<\/a>\u00a0(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. \u201cCountries with the lowest relative need have the highest number of health care workers,\u201d the WHO report states. Abortion restrictions are irrelevant in the broader framework of lack of access to health care for\u00a0any<\/em>\u00a0medical service, necessary or elective.<\/p>\n So if legal restrictions are not the cause of unsafe abortion, why the push in Canada\u2019s \u201cfeminist\u201d Policy for fewer restrictions on abortion? In short, it\u2019s ideological.<\/p>\n Obianuju Ekeocha, an outspoken human rights advocate from Nigeria,\u00a0says<\/a>\u00a0that in order to convince any woman in Africa that abortion is a good thing, first you have to tell her that everything she\u2019s been taught by her parents, her grandparents, and her culture, is wrong. This, she states unequivocally, is ideological colonization. Ekeocha points to African women\u2019s\u00a0real<\/a>\u00a0desires and needs: food, water, education.<\/p>\n The Liberal plan for foreign aid, with its focus on \u201creproductive rights\u201d 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 \u201caid\u201d being offered says\u00a0children don\u2019t need to be \u201chealthy and safe\u201d if they don\u2019t exist.\u00a0<\/em>Rather than addressing societal and economic reasons parents struggle to provide for their families, the Canadian government takes aim\u00a0at\u00a0<\/em>families, aiming to reduce poverty by reducing reproduction.<\/p>\n![\"Bwindi,](\"https:\/\/test.weneedalaw.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/Depositphotos_148119869_m-2015.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Abortion](\"https:\/\/test.weneedalaw.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/Depositphotos_56651269_l-2015-682x1024.jpg\")
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