Status of Women committee  Thank you, Cathy. It's a pleasure and a privilege for me to be here to speak on behalf of midwifery and the role that midwifery has to play in the reduction of maternal and newborn morbidity and mortality globally. I want to start off by talking about this at an international

Status of Women committee  The last piece I want to identify--and this is extremely important--is adolescent health. It's not thought of when we look at maternal and child health. The largest reason for death among adolescent females globally is pregnancy and childbirth. We need to identify this as an at-r

Status of Women committee  Yes. You asked how we can achieve MDG 5 with this as an issue. We have to be very careful here. There are women who don't have access to basic maternal, newborn, and sexual reproductive health care, and in Canada we risk having this discussion turn completely to one of abortion

Status of Women committee  We do thank you for your question. It's a very important question: how do we move forward? As we speak today, there's no global standard for midwifery education. What this means is that various countries have invented programs to educate midwives. The International Confederation

Status of Women committee  Absolutely.

Status of Women committee  The Canadian midwifery education program is being used as one of the stellar models for midwifery education globally.

Status of Women committee  Yes. Midwives work from the household through to the hospital setting. So that's the most vulnerable service delivery area. That's where the midwifery competencies really have the highest advantage in providing antenatal care, intrapartum care, making sure women have clean water,

Status of Women committee  Yes.

Status of Women committee  Yes. I just wanted to speak to the democratic piece of this as well. We fought so hard and long in this country for women to be respected, for their voices to be respected. This isn't just about abortion; this is about not respecting women's voices. It's much larger than an abo

Status of Women committee  Yes, and not to misquote Ms. Lynch...because Ms. Lynch wants to be really, really clear that Canada is playing horrific politics right now. And when I'm saying it's politics, it's going to cost women's lives. Now we're put in a position of having to compromise what we do inste

Status of Women committee  I can speak to that a little bit. Even under the gag rule, if you're a health care worker in the field, whether there are dollars coming in or not--and it will be very difficult to describe dollars going in--it will be more at the level of who among the NGOs gets moneys than abou

Status of Women committee  I think this is one of Canada's strengths. The call for accountability must take place. We must be accountable. The G8 has made promises. At the University of Toronto, they did a phenomenal review by country and by category of G8 promises made and G8 promises kept. Canada actua

Status of Women committee  We weren't referring to any particular clinic.

Status of Women committee  To NGOs.

Status of Women committee  Our midwives within the G8 probably have, consistently, one of the highest levels of education, regulation, and provision of services.