Ah - So Women's Health Only Matters When You're Pregnant

Birth control won't be in G8 plan to protect mothers, Tories say

In no uncertain terms, Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon yesterday ruled out any kind of family-planning programs being included in Canada's "signature" initiative at June's G8 summit - a strategy to improve the health of mothers and young children in poor countries.

"It does not deal in any way, shape or form with family planning. Indeed, the purpose of this is to be able to save lives," Mr. Cannon told the Foreign Affairs committee.

So, in short, the HarperCon connection to the ultra-conservative "base" of religious fanatics has surfaced once again - this time with respect to women's health.

I'm sorry, Mr. Cannon, but you are doing nothing for women's health if you are taking out of their hands the ability to control their fertility. (and telling women to 'keep their legs crossed' doesn't work - especially in many of the third world countries where women are more chattel than equal members of society)

Women's health must include all dimensions - not just when they are pregnant, but also family planning, contraception and other forms of birth control. To do anything less is political dogma, not good government or policy.

Of course, this comes as little or no surprise to those who have been paying attention to the Harper government. There's been more 'dog whistles' put out in their policy in the last few months than I care to count. Whether we talk about Jason Kenney's lying deceit about his role in the content of this country's new citizenship book, the 2006 "cuts" that targetted women and minorities, or this issue, they are intended to signal to the squirming mass of extremism that had control over the Reform/Alliance party policy that they have not been forgotten.

Michael Coren: Abstinence Because Girls Are Icky

Did Michael Coren never get out of grade school or something?.

His latest gem is an amazingly misogynistic rant revolves around the movie "Sex and the City" and contraception. Basically, he's blaming movies like "Sex and the City" (and I presume its television series predecessor) for the spread of STI's in New York - and of course, the world would be so much a better place if we were all good abstinent little "Christian" robots who held off sex until we got married.

Of course, Michael's contact with reality is tenuous at best, but his focus on "Sex and the City" - and in particular feminine chastity that he appears to nearly fetishize - is creepy and smacks of both hypocrisy and ignorance.

Yes, I know that according to the Bible, women are temptation that men must resist ... yadda yadda yadda... If Michael had even the faintest inkling of reality he would have long ago figured out that even at the height of Church power in Western countries, the church couldn't even keep its own clergy abstinent! There are so many people around whose ancestry includes the illegitimate offspring of some cleric or another who was supposedly "chaste" it's not even funny.

Nothing in Michael's column even starts to acknowledge that when it comes to sexual fidelity, human males are rather prone to wander about. In the past, this was often winkingly referred to as "sowing one's oats" among other euphemisms; youthful sexual curiousity created more "shotgun" weddings and "overeager brides" who delivered a baby in somewhat less than the usual 9 months after wedding day.

Although the "abstain" crowd is technically right about one thing - if you aren't having sex, you can't acquire an STI - they overlook and grossly misrepresent the basic human condition that leads people to be sexually active. I don't know what little fantasy world Coren lives in, but apparently in it, nobody has any instincts, or perhaps every time those instincts rise to the foreground, the individual drops in prayer until the feeling goes away - either way, it sounds like a pretty grim little world.

Telling people about condoms and contraception is not about encouraging promiscuity (as Coren argues) - it's really about giving people the knowledge they need to keep themselves alive in the face of a reality that a lot of people are going to have sex at some time or another in circumstances that Coren wouldn't approve of. In an era where some STI's can be lethal if untreated, not teaching people about condom use is akin to handing someone a table saw and not giving them instructions on how to avoid getting their hands lopped off while operating it!

Coren getting on his high horse because there's a movie out there that happens to play on the mythology surrounding feminine sexuality is merely further proof in my mind that the man has no concept of what goes on in the real world.