So, a Conservative senator (who is also an heiress and a lesbian) said today that aid groups (like the one I work for!) need to "Shut the fuck up about abortion".

The backstory here is that when Stephen Harper announced that maternal health was going to be the focus to this year's G8/G20 meetings in Toronto, Michael Ignatieff pro-actively said that access to abortion had better be part of that agenda. I fully cop to being excited at the time. The Leader of the Official Opposition being pro-actively pro-choice? Awesome!

But what I've been hearing from folks in the loop is that he did this largely without consultation with groups who are providing these services. And that the status quo about funding for abortion/contraception was basically don't-ask-don't-tell, which is apologist bullshit for sure, but it was also the best we were going to get with this government. It was an issue that was off of the radar. What Ignatieff did was shine a spotlight on this stuff and put a lot of groups funding in jeopardy. Which literally puts the lives of majority world women in jeopardy.

Fucking things up even further, the Liberals then put forward a motion to include access to abortion in the range of maternal health options being presented by Canada at this year's summit. It was defeated by members of their own party. Can you effing believe the ineptitude of this man? Me either.

So Harper -- ever a brilliant tactician -- realizing that Ignatieff actually can't do anything right, has picked up the gauntlet that Ignatieff haphazardly chucked at the ground, and said that access to abortion won't be part of this initiative. (Contraception is, thank god). He can now say that it's the will of Parliament to have things be this way.

This is terrible. And I don't think it would have happened without Iggy's attempt to use majority world women's health for his own personal gain. That isn't to say that I think he's not pro-choice or anything, I'm sure he is. It's just that he really didn't talk to anyone he is purportedly going to bat for, before stirring all this shit up.

But now it's stirred up. And Nancy Ruth is telling everyone to shut the fuck up about it. Which is advice that is at once pragmatic, and chilling. Because as many people have pointed out, it's rarely to the benefit of oppressed groups for them to shut the fuck up. At the same time, I can't help but find myself agreeing with a colleague who I was emailing with today about this stuff:

Sen. Nancy Ruth has a foul mouth, that's for sure. But she's not wrong. Canadian women could conceivably (harhar!) lose the right to abortion if this is turned into an election issue. And no one wants to see that happen.

So I don't know. I guess this one of those times where it's hard to figure out how to handle something strategically, and how much our shutting the fuck up would be in the best interests of people we're trying to support. And what sort of long-term peril we're putting ourselves in for doing so, versus what sort of long-term peril we're putting ourselves in by not doing so.