Madam Speaker, today I will be splitting my time with the member for Kingston and the Islands.
I want to start by thanking the member for Edmonton Strathcona for bringing up this vitally important issue and also for bringing up the fact that, for 18 hours, it was filibustered in committee by the Conservatives, because I think that says something.
People say that abortion rights are not up for discussion in Canada, and they ask why we are even talking about it. This is why we have to talk about it, because American women also did not think that abortion rights were up for discussion. We really thought that. For our mothers, our aunts and those who had to fight for those rights, we thought that the debate was over.
Now we look across, and at every opportunity, the Conservatives will avoid, at any measure, a vote on this issue, because they do not want to admit that there is a huge majority in that caucus who actually stand against a woman's right to choose. This is something I think every Canadian woman is extremely concerned about. As such, I thank the member for Edmonton Strathcona for that motion.
I would like to start with a personal story. There is a member of my family of that generation that had to fight for these rights, a close member of my family, who at one point found that she was pregnant with a child that was severely handicapped. When she first immigrated to Canada, she worked in a sector with a lot of severely handicapped people, and she was deeply religious, deeply Catholic. When she found herself pregnant, she thought and prayed very much about what the right thing to do was. After going through a process where she made that choice between herself and her faith, she had to go in front of three male doctors and defend her decision, and those doctors decided that she could not have an abortion.
This family member was despondent. She already had two young children, two girls, and she did not pass a psychological evaluation, because of the impact of being told, after she had prayed and come to this decision between herself and her husband, that she could not do it. Thankfully, there was a geneticist, a woman and doctor, who helped her and arranged for her to go to the United States, to Seattle, so that she could have autonomy over her own body and her own life choice.
That case was one of the cases in the Morgentaler decision, which overturned that draconian abortion law in this country that said a woman had to go in front of a panel of doctors, mostly men, to justify her decision and her autonomy. I am very proud of that woman, that family member of mine. I think that, because of her, women in this country have autonomy over our own bodies. I am so proud of her.
I do not want to have to redo this debate, but sadly, we do.
When it comes to the reason I ran, the moment I decided that I was going to run for office in this country, I was working internationally. I was working in Africa. I was working in other parts of the world. At one point, the regional coordinator for my project, which was about women in politics, was from sub-Saharan Africa, a young woman from Mali. All of a sudden, in 2010, which was in the Harper years, the government cut funding to any international organization, no matter what other good things it was doing, if it also provided abortion. The government did it with absolutely no warning. In the coordinator's country of Mali, a clinic that had been there for 40 years, which provided all kinds of health services, which she went to as a child and which that community benefited from, was suddenly closed, just because one of the things that clinic provided was abortion.
That coordinator got on Skype with me at that time in 2010, and she said, “You Canadian women are hypocrites.”
I was stunned. I sort of took a moment, and I asked, “Why would you say that?”
She said, “Because I went to Montreal and I studied at McGill. I know Canadian women have reproductive rights, but your government shut down a clinic in my village out of ideology. Now I know that Canadians think that it is not good enough for us African women to also have the same rights that you Canadian women have.”
I was ashamed. I was actually so ashamed at that moment to be Canadian and to have my government, at that time the Harper government, do this kind of thing, which was so harmful to so many people, that I decided I had to run for office. I did not win that 2011 election, but I won in 2015.
I fought hard the minute I was elected, alongside many women in this chamber, to get our feminist international assistance policy, FIAP, in place, and I was able to come full circle just a little while ago this January.
As a result of FIAP, as a result of the fact that we are putting $700 million a year into SRHR, that we are the number one donor to the UNFPA and that, when the Americans pulled back, we stepped up, I went to a clinic in Kinshasa, the country where I worked before I was elected. This clinic offers, among other things, safe abortion services. I met a young girl who was in her twenties. She told me that when she was 16 and she was raped, she had nowhere to go, but then she found out about this clinic.
It is because she was able to get a safe abortion in this clinic, she is now planning to go to medical school to become a doctor so that she can help other people. However, that young woman could have been dead, because 10% of maternal deaths in the Democratic Republic of Congo are because of unsafe abortions. When we say that we do not want to provide abortion, we do not want to have SRHR or we do not want young women knowing their rights all over the world, we are killing women, because that is 10% of maternal deaths. We are saving lives with this policy by supporting SRHR.
I was so proud of those young women. There was a group of marginalized youth who sat in a circle with me and talked about what our funding for this clinic meant to them. It was the young girls, the teenagers, who were saying that they were talking to the traditional leaders. They are talking to the faith leaders, and they are explaining. One young woman said to me, “I understand my rights, and I want to make sure that every young woman understands her rights.” These strong, incredible young women are the future, the new leadership of Africa and of the world, and they are working side-by-side with the older generations to ensure that this is something that is accepted and understood.
This is not ideology. This is saving lives. This is giving rights. This is giving autonomy. This is ensuring that we have generations of young women who do not have to go through what my family member went through: the indignity and the injustice of being told, “No, you can't have an abortion.” That woman in my family still prays for that baby. She honestly says to this day, and I think she is watching, that she believes that the little baby, whom she named Jennifer, is in heaven thanking her for saving her from a life of pain.
Now, that might not be everyone's choice in this place. I know that there are so many babies born with severe disabilities who are loved, but that is not the point of this discussion. The point of this discussion is that this woman made her choice by her own conscience, and she was overruled. No woman should ever be in this position, whether here in Canada or in other parts of the world, when, after tremendous thought, and with whatever faith she might believe in or not, she comes to a choice about her own body. I will never accept it, and I will stand in the House to the very last day to make sure that nobody on that side is ever going to force a woman to carry a child to term that she does not want.
We are saving lives. This debate is absolutely 100% necessary. I thank the member for Edmonton Strathcona for giving us the opportunity to put our words on the record.
