I ask you that with all sincerity, because if we are going to have an impact, we want to get it right. Mr. Lunney has intimated that there is a criticism of the government for taking on this initiative; I'd say that contrary to that, we've seen accolades right across the board, right across the floor, for the government taking on this initiative.
I asked you that question because if we are going to take this on, we want to get it right. The only person I've heard advancing the government's position that you can separate out abortion within reproductive health was Charles McVety, who spoke yesterday. I don't know his background well enough, but I'm going to say it's safe to assume that he is not an expert in child and maternal health. It disturbs me when I hear the government saying that they want to go down this path, which I like, but that they're going to separate out one component of child and maternal health. Maybe the government can enlighten me afterward, but the only validator that I know of who has said this is a good path is McVety, who was on yesterday saying that we shouldn't be doing this.
That's why I'm asking you the question. If we're going to take this issue on and we're going to do it right, I think we need to be singing with the choir. If the choir is saying we should do child and maternal health in a comprehensive way, as you've stated, then we should do that.
I think of some of the challenges that are faced. One of the things I've looked at that wasn't touched on has to do with adolescent women in particular. Anywhere from 10% to 48% of adolescent women report that the first sexual experience is forced upon them. I call that rape. In the case of the DRC, 14 women are raped every day. That's a study done by the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative along with Oxfam.
These women are young women. You've mentioned the risks at that age. If we can't figure out how to deal with unwanted pregnancies, particularly when you're talking about rape and particularly when you're talking about rape as a weapon of war, which has been established by everyone, then I don't know how you deal with outcomes without dealing with it in a comprehensive manner.
How do you respond to or deal with what is clearly a war against women in the world and in the developed world on top of what we have when we have meagre resources? How do you deal with it in conflict zones? How do you deal with what I'll call a gender war when you have 14 women raped in DRC every day and you have these astonishing statistics that say adolescent women's first sexual experience is basically rape? How do we make headway in those areas particularly?