OTTAWA—The Conservative government, having ignored advice from public servants that abortion was an essential component of an effective maternal-health initiative, now appears to be turning its back on similar advice from the elite national scientific academies of all G8 countries.

The Royal Society of Canada as well as the national academies of Britain, the United States, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia issued a joint statement late Tuesday.

It is a unanimous call to G8 leaders to ensure that access to contraception and “measures to reduce unsafe abortion” are part of a richer, more focused and more coordinated maternal and child health initiative in June.

The joint statement was hashed out at a meeting of the G8’s national academies in March in Ottawa – attended by Canadian government representatives – where leading scientists and academics agreed that botched abortions cause 13 per cent of maternal deaths and cannot be ignored.

“That’s too big a figure … nearly one in seven maternal deaths is related to unsafe abortions,” said lead author Dr. Philip Baker, dean of medicine at the University of Alberta, in an interview.

Baker, along with two other Canadians and an Irish academic, drafted the resulting two-page paper. The paper summarizes the latest statistics on maternal and child health and urges expanded access to prenatal and obstetrical care.

“Strategies to improve maternal health should facilitate access to contraception services and measures to reduce unsafe abortion. Up to 40 per cent of maternal and child deaths could be averted by providing access to these services,” it said.

“Governments, and inter(-governmental) and non-governmental organizations must deal openly with unsafe abortions and ensure appropriate and accessible treatment of women who develop complications,” the joint statement said.

Baker, an obstetrician, stressed that the academies were “not in any way advocating abortion” but felt steps to curb unsafe abortions are part of any solution to reduce maternal mortality.

“We thought it was important to have a balanced, evidence-based discussion, and that it wasn’t possible to ignore the major contribution of unsafe abortions and lack of family planning to the mortality and morbidity around this issue.”

“It’s something that should be addressed and discussed. The solutions will vary enormously from one place to another…what we’re saying is that it’s an issue which should be on the table.”

But Bev Oda, Canada’s international aid minister, who said “I used to be an English teacher,” read it differently.

She said the statement recommends family planning services and adequate treatment of the complications that result from abortion, but does not recommend measures for the provision of safer abortions.

In any event, she said, it changes nothing for the government’s decision not to allow Canada’s contribution to a G8 fund to pay for abortions in poor countries.

Oda said she did not get wind of the content of the just-published statement until after the government announced its position in late April at the G8 development ministers’ meeting in April.

The national science academies said that 42 million pregnancies are terminated each year. About 50 per cent of the terminations are considered illegal under national legislation, performed by unskilled providers or take place in unhygienic conditions. “Severe complications” often result, leading to about 70,000 maternal deaths, more than 3 million reproductive tract infections, and almost 1.7 million cases of secondary infertility.

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Liberal MP Keith Martin, a physician with experience working in Africa, said the statement was a “powerful” call to action.

“The academy is saying to the world leaders: ‘Act. Act now, and you can save lives,’” said Martin. But since the Harper government “already ignored the advice of its advisors within CIDA (last January), the only way that Mr. Harper is going to change his position is if there is a large public outcry for him to follow the science,” he said.