Pro-life pregnancy centres are expressing concern about proposed federal legislation requiring charities to disclose whether they provide abortion services or risk losing their charitable status.
Some managers affiliated with such charities say the legislation implies these centres have an agenda to push their beliefs on unwilling women and girls.
Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland and Women and Gender Equality and Youth Minister Marci Ien announced the legislation at an Oct. 29 press conference saying it will increase transparency for women seeking reproductive health services.
Ien accused some charities of “actively working to spread misinformation about abortion” and “putting the health and safety of young people and vulnerable women at risk.”
“People are walking in the doors of pregnancy crisis centres, expecting to receive information on all options that are available to them, including abortion, and they are met with the organizations imposing their anti-choice convictions on them,” Ien said.
Alliance for Life Ontario executive director Jakki Jeffs said the allegations don’t reflect the reality on the ground.
The not-for-profit pro-life education organization has 55 group members, many of them faith-based pregnancy care centres. Jeffs said both her organization and its members are always “up front” about the services they offer.
“We don’t want to change women’s minds. We want to make sure that they understand the options that they’ve got and the ramifications of those options,” Jeffs told The Epoch Times. “And yet this government doesn’t appear to believe that.”
Pregnancy Care Canada’s Dr. Laura Lewis said the “false labels and mischaracterizations” being used to describe local pregnancy care centres are unfair to the people who work at the centres and to the women that use them.
The executive director of the national faith-based organization said all Pregnancy Care Canada-affiliated centres offer a “safe environment for a woman to make a pregnancy decision that is fully informed, evidence-based, and free from external pressure.”
“Centres respect a woman’s right to make her own decision and provide her with medically accurate information on all three options: abortion, adoption, and parenting,” she said.
The proposed legislation announced by the Liberals would change the Income Tax Act so that organizations that don’t clearly disclose their services would be at risk of losing their charitable status. At a minimum, the organizations would need to say if they provide contact information for abortion or birth control services to those who ask for it.
The legislation, which was part of the Liberals’ platform during the 2021 election campaign, says a re-elected Liberal government would “No longer provide charity status to anti-abortion organizations (for example, Crisis Pregnancy Centres) that provide dishonest counselling to women about their rights and about the options available to them at all stages of the pregnancy.”
Lewis told The Epoch Times the wording of the legislation has always been vague with “no clear path” of how dishonesty would be defined or measured.
She said she is not worried about Pregnancy Care Canada and the 80 pregnancy care centres in its network losing their charitable status because their work is done “with integrity” and in compliance with the Canadian Revenue Agency (CRA).
“The CRA already has a robust process for determining when charities are offside,” she said.
Some groups are applauding the government’s proposed legislation.
The Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada (SOGC) said the proposed rules would “enhance trust” in reproductive health care and “promote accountability” among pregnancy care organizations.
“This proposed initiative is a positive step toward ensuring women in vulnerable situations can make informed decisions about their reproductive health,” SOGC president Dr. Lynn Murphy-Kaulbeck said in a press release.
Action Canada, a pro-choice charity, called the legislation “an important step towards safeguarding reproductive rights and ensuring access to accurate, unbiased information for all.”
“We commend the federal government for taking this important step,” Action Canada co-director of policy and advocacy Meghan Doherty said in a social media post.
‘Freedom of Choice’
Ien said some pregnancy centres are failing the women they are supposed to serve. She gave two examples of women seeking information about abortion who were “told misinformation” and were made to feel guilty for wanting to terminate their pregnancies.Although abortion has been legal in Canada for three decades, women continue to “experience barriers to it,” she said.
“Our government takes freedom of choice very, very seriously, and we believe that women should have the autonomy to make their own choices,” Ien said. “It’s imperative that anti-choice organizations are not putting the health and safety of young people and vulnerable women at risk.”
Freedom of choice needs to be a two-way street, Lewis said. She described ideological differences in reproductive health centres as a strength, not a weakness, because it provides women and girls with more choices.
“When people say they are pro-choice, then there should be alternatives to abortion to ensure that there really is a choice available,” she said. “And when you start saying that, for instance, the services and care that’s provided at a local pregnancy care centre, that that care is not valid, you are eliminating a choice for a woman who may feel pressured to have an unwanted abortion.”
Lewis, who has been a family physician for 22 years, says she has experience “on all sides” of the abortion issue. She said no two women will have the exact same experience. Feelings of regret or uncertainty can impact how a woman feels about her experience at both pro-life and pro-choice centres, she noted.
“Sadly, we have [heard] many stories … about women who maybe didn’t feel that they had any other choice but abortion, or who had gone to an abortion clinic to find out more information, but ended up feeling so uncertain and fearful that they felt that abortion was the only way forward,” she said.
‘Wedge’ Issue
Lewis described the Ien’s announcement as a “pre-election political wedge” issue being used by the Liberal government at a time when the party is lagging in the polls. She argued the legislation is an attempt by the government to divide Canadians over abortion for “their political advantage.”“I don’t think this is actually an issue,” Lewis said. “I think it’s just an effort to bring a topic that tends to prove to be a wedge issue in politics to the forefront of the conversation.”
Lewis said the legislation is likely being watched carefully by many faith-based groups.
“If the government in power can say that if you don’t adhere to our ideology, then you’re not acceptable, then many charities and different faith-based groups are at risk,” she said. “If they are able to bring this forward, remove our status because they don’t like the way we view the world, then that could be a risk to other faith-based groups, not just Christians.”
No matter what changes come their way, Jeffs said the centres affiliated with her organization won’t stop helping women.
“These pregnancy centres will not close down,” she said. “They will fight to give the service that they know women need and want in Canada, with or without charitable status.”
She said the workers at the centres care deeply for the women and girls they help, whether they decide to terminate a pregnancy or not. Part of their mandate is helping women after they have had an abortion, she noted.
“There’s no judgment here,” she said. “The well being of women and their children, really is at our heart. And I don’t see why the government would want to fight that.”
