Ignatieff Won't Shut Up About Abortion: Digs Himself in Deeper

Michael Ignatieff repeated his incendiary remarks about abortion yesterday and made is abundantly clear that he is trying to use this as a wedge issue to shore up his left wing and demonize the Conservatives among radical left-wingers. From yesterday's The National Post:

"On Tuesday, Mr. Ignatieff said his support of Stephen Harper’s plan to focus G8 efforts on helping women and children would depend on whether access to abortion would be included in the Prime Minister’s plan. He said he was setting out “a marker” for Mr. Harper, and reiterated those thoughts on Friday."

Two Roman Catholic bishops called him on his partisan use of abortion and his callous disregard for human life:

"The two bishops doubted the Liberal line would benefit women’s health abroad.

Archbishop Collins said it is obvious that Mr. Ignatieff’s “negative proposal ... in no way serves to improve the health of mothers or children, but rather imperils the most vulnerable among us.”

Said Bishop Henry: “The Prime Minister has been talking from the beginning of helping women and children. And all of a sudden we find Ignatieff focusing on the first part and totally ignoring the second. What exists within the mother’s womb is a child. An intelligent man like Ignatieff should not be blinded by his ideology.”"

I hope that Ignatieff succeeds in eroding his party's base of support among Catholics and Evangelicals to a greater extent than he succeeds in stealing a few NDP voters.

My Tyndale colleague, Dr. Ian Gentles, had a nice response to Ignatieff in the National Post the day before on how we could learn something about maternal health from Poland:

"But would Mr. Ignatieff’s idea help save the lives of women and children in poor nations — which is everyone’s goal? A closer look at the evidence on maternal and infant mortality in Poland suggest the answer is no.

Since the fall of Poland’s communist regime, maternal mortality in that country has plunged by more than 75%. Infant mortality is down by almost two-thirds, and the rate of premature births has dropped by well over a half. The reduction in premature births is important because premature children are prone to all sorts of medical and social afflictions. Perhaps the most serious of these is a much greater chance of being born with cerebral palsy than full-term babies.

In the late 1980s, around a hundred children per year were dying before the age of five from cerebral palsy in Poland. By 2006, the number was down to five or ten per year — a greater than 90% drop. In the United States, by contrast, the preterm birthrate has jumped in recent years from 8.9% to 12.8% of all births, pointing to a corresponding increase in the incidence of cerebral palsy. (Canada’s experience has probably been similar, though no figures are available.)

A woman who has one or more abortions significantly increases her risk of subsequently bearing a pre-term baby, which in turn hugely increases the risk that that baby with be afflicted with cerebral palsy. In addition to the unfathomable human tragedy that cerebral palsy represents, there is the enormous financial burden of caring for people with the disease.

Why has Poland made such strides in improving both maternal and infant health? Certainly not by spending a lot of money on “reproductive health services,” to use the preferred euphemism. Poland is a poor country, much poorer than either Canada or its immediate European neighbours. The money simply isn’t there for any lavish program to improve maternal and infant health. The only change that could have produced such a dramatic improvement is the documented decline in the induced abortion rate.

Since 1989, Poland has virtually banned induced abortion. According to official statistics, the annual legal abortion rate has plummeted from well over 100,000 in the 1980s to a few hundred in the 1990s, and that very low rate has been maintained up to the present. There is little evidence of a widespread resort to illegal abortion, nor have significant numbers of Polish women gone to other countries seeking abortions."

It is very interesting that increased maternal health goes along with banning abortion and high abortion rates go along with decreased maternal and infant health. Abortion on demand is the triumph of ideology over truth.