Dr. Keith Martin, MD - Member of Parliament, Esquimalt-Juan De Fuca

Much as Hamlet was suspected of madness and sent to England to recover his wits, “or if not ‘tis no great matter there”, so those who have taken leave of their senses in our time seem to end up in the House of Commons. How else can you explain the Liberal motion calling for the government to include abortion in its maternal health plan, when a significant number of its own MPs oppose the procedure.
 

In such confused times, Liberal MP Keith Martin has a history of acting as the voice of reason by bailing out his own party and providing political cover for an obdurate Prime Minister to reach a compromise.

In 2008, then Liberal leader, Stéphane Dion, insisted that Canada’s combat mission in Kandahar must end by February 2009. It was Mr. Martin who proposed a timeline to satisfy concerns that Canada was not engaged in a never-ending war. His work led to the motion in the House of Commons that set the pull-out deadline of 2011 - a compromise that avoided a split in the Liberal Party and an election in which the Afghan war was the ballot question.

This time around, Michael Ignatieff continues to insist he will push for “reproductive rights” to be included in any Canadian-inspired G8 plan to improve the health of mothers and babies in the Third World. The Liberal leader was humbled after his own caucus undermined his attempts to embarrass the Conservatives over the abortion issue by not turning up in sufficient numbers to win the vote on their own motion, but he seems determined to carry on regardless.

Meanwhile, the Conservatives are pushing on with their “signature initiative” on maternal health at the G8 in June, even after the United States and Britain said abortion had to part of the solution. The government insists it will not push for abortion to be included in the package of measures.

There seems little room for compromise, even though the Liberals would like to extricate themselves from this pickle and the Conservatives would prefer to present a united front to the world when it comes to visit in June.

But Mr. Martin appears to have found the solution. He said Stephen Harper should embrace the World Health Organization’s position of supporting women’s access to safe abortions in those countries where it is legal. Yet he recognized many members of the Conservative government have their own opinions that have to be respected. He suggested Mr. Harper could square his opposition to abortion while still implementing a maternal health plan by proposing each G8 country take the lead on one of the treatments.

“For example, Canada could be the lead nation on training healthcare workers and micronutrients, another country could focus on providing medications, another on access to family planning and safe abortions etc. This would enable Mr. Harper to move forward with an effective plan of action while being sensitive to the views on abortion of some of his members,” he said.

This appears to be the direction in which the Conservatives were already heading, judging by the comments made in the House of Commons by Mr. Harper last Wednesday, when he said “a number of G8 countries have different positions”. But the proposal, coming from a fellow Liberal, may be sufficient to persuade Mr. Ignatieff to give the venture his blessing.

It would require at least one country to step forward to take the lead on family planning and abortion. Despite the comments made by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the G8 Foreign Ministers Meeting in Gatineau last week, it is unlikely to be the Americans. Her intervention was decried as misrepresenting America by a number of Congressmen, one of whom called her abortion push “outrageous”.

But the British may be a different story. U.K. Foreign Minister David Miliband told the CBC last week: “We think it’s very important to have a comprehensive family planning aspect as part of the development strategy.” Canadian government sources say the Brits are the most likely candidates to take the lead on abortion but this may depend on Mr. Miliband’s Labour government still being in power in June. A U.K. general election was called yesterday for May 6.

Whatever the outcome, Mr. Martin has, at the very least, injected some common sense into a partisan debate that was threatening to obscure Canada’s proposal for a global health initiative that could save some of the half million lives lost in pregnancy and childbirth every year.