Canadian Government Clarifies That Family Planning Doesn’t Include Planning To Kill Your Family

By no means are the Harper conservatives pro-lifers, but they’ve taken a stance that abortion funding will not be a part of maternal health care initiatives. As International Co-operation Minister Bev Oda says,

We’re saying that we’re using the definition in our discussions of family planning, which does not include abortion… We’re not debating abortion; we’re clarifying family planning… There is no division on what it includes or not includes. Canada’s initiative, that [other G8 countries] support, is saving the lives of mothers and children under the age of five, and that does not mean supporting abortions.

While Ignatieff was urging abortion for the world’s poor, and Hillary Clinton was claiming that maternal health care involves safe baby killing, Ignatieff had a “bad day at the office” (as he tried to explain on The Hour) and screwed up a motion to include abortion funding in the maternal health care initiative, losing after not enough Liberal party members showed up for the vote (but the pro-life ones sure did). Anyways, now the government can say that they’re respecting parliament’s vote on that motion (which was originally intended to embarrass them).

Family planning doesn’t mean planning to kill your family? Sounds like common sense to me.