Madam Speaker, according to the World Health Organization, “The first step for avoiding maternal deaths is to ensure that women have access to family planning” and reproductive health choices.
Family planning, it states, could prevent 25% of maternal and child deaths in the developing world by preventing risky births that are too close together, too early or too late in a woman's life, and modern contraception helps fight the spread of HIV and AIDS by allowing HIV-positive women to space births for optimal health and access services to prevent mother-to-child transmission.
As my colleague just stated, my figures are that an estimated 74,000 women around the world die as a result of unsafe abortions that could be prevented with contraception and access to safe abortion facilities.
I will stay away from abortion, for the moment, and just talk about contraception.
I am glad the government is talking about contraception now but I would like to know from the minister why the current government was reluctant to include the word “contraception,” or that concept, when it first announced its program. What was the problem with discussing contraception or making that a part of Canada's foreign policy?