The G8 development ministers’ meeting will have limited benefits for women, despite its proclaimed focus on maternal and child health, according to Jane Kirby.  Kirby is an organizer with the Feminist League for Agitation and Propaganda (FLAP), a new group organizing a feminist resistance to the G8 meeting in Halifax.

From the perspective of the G8 leaders “maternal health means just giving birth - nothing  else around women’s health or child health matters,” says Kirby. Harper plans to exclude discussion of contraception and abortion when family planning is discussed among the development ministers of the Group of Eight, which includes Canada, the United States, France, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, Italy and Russia.

Twenty million unsafe abortions are carried out each year, according to the World Health Organization, notes Kaley Kennedy, also a FLAP organizer.  She finds it unacceptable that abortion access and safety are not on the Maternal Health agenda of the development ministers’ meeting.

Kennedy also points out that abortion is not an issue limited to developing countries, “the struggle for accessible, safe, legal, free abortion is… [one] that we as women engage in here." 

In Nova Scotia, women are required to go through a three-step process to obtain an abortion, and the majority are provided at one location for the entire province.  In PEI there are no abortion providers, and in New Brunswick women are required to obtain referrals from two doctors in order to access a publicly-funded abortion. Because “the Maritimes has very little in the way of support for women who seek abortions [we are] connected to global struggle for safe and accessible abortions,” says Kennedy.

One of the ways FLAP is engaging in that struggle is through education.  FLAP hosted a Teach-in on April 10 discussing how G8 policies and power exploit women, the history of G8 resistance and the significance of the G8 in a contemporary feminist struggle.

FLAP organizers also hope to shed light on local immigrant struggles that arise when borders tighten, the access to health services to Transpeople, and the effects of reduced social funding both within Canada and abroad with development aid.

FLAP’s action plan also includes special newletters and a protest planned for an anti-abortion fundraiser happening just two days before the G8 summit on April 24th. Organizers intend FLAP to have a visible presence at the main anti-G8 march on April 25th.

Kennedy and Kirby both hope the G8 summit will build momentum for a greater network of feminists within Halifax and beyond.

Jess Ross is a baker and Media Co-op contributor.