Last month, Ottawa announced plans to strip pregnancy support centres of their charitable status if they fail to meet certain conditions. Those conditions include failing to fully disclose that they do not offer abortion services.
Abortion rights advocates have welcomed the move, while pro-life groups and some policy experts are raising concerns.
“This kind of approach … targets a set of charities because they have a view that is different from the government of the day,” said Andreae Sennyah, director of policy at Cardus, a think tank informed by Christian values.
“We live in a democratic society, and charities — just like all Canadians — are permitted to have different views than the government of the day on any number of issues,” she said.
‘Anti-choice’ misinformation
On Oct. 29, the Department of Finance said in a background note it would require pregnancy support centres to prominently disclose in “all public communications” if they do not provide abortion or birth control services.
Pregnancy support centres typically offer pregnant women a range of services, such as funding to cover the costs of a new baby or baby products. These centres are also commonly referred to as “crisis pregnancy centres” or “pregnancy care centres.”
Centres that fail to provide these disclosures could lose their charitable status, the finance department’s note says. Charitable status exempts charities from income tax and enables them to issue donation receipts.
The department’s note is unspecific regarding its reasons for introducing the change.
In its note, the department says that “concerns have been raised” that some pregnancy support centres may be “spreading misinformation.” It further says centres that present “themselves as a neutral, full-service pregnancy support service organization” are actually “anti-choice organizations that push women away from accessing the reproductive care of their choice.”
In a request for comment about the nature of these concerns, the Office of the Minister of Finance directed Canadian Affairs to a recording of an Oct. 29 press conference. In it, Marci Ien, the minister for women and gender equality, says the government has “been doing research and we’ve talked to people” about complaints against pregnancy support centres.
Ien’s office did not respond to a request for comment by press time.
In Sennyah’s view, the government’s proposed changes are a purely political move. They are “setting a precedent for how charitable status can actually be politicized on the basis of disagreeing with the government on a specific issue,” she said.
‘Not a big ask’
In his 2021 mandate letter to Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau instructed Freeland to make pregnancy support centres that provide “dishonest counselling” ineligible for charitable status. The letter does not define what constitutes “dishonest counselling.”
Sennyah says many pregnancy support centres understood the mandate letter to mean they could lose their charitable status for having different values than the government. The government is using “charitable status to basically silence a group of charities,” she said.
Jakki Jeffs, executive director of the pro-life umbrella organization Alliance for Life Ontario, agrees.
“I would really like the public to wake up to exactly what’s happening,” Jeffs said. “As people with a pro-life world view, we’re being told that … unless you have a big T-shirt which says, ‘I will not promote abortion, or I will not promote birth control, or I will not refer for whatever,’ we are going to be discriminated against.”
Deanna Ronson, a board member and spokesperson for the pro-choice Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada, says any attempt by the government to close pregnancy support centres would have been unlikely to withstand a legal challenge.
“If there was an attempt to shut them down altogether, I do believe that’s when they would have a fight on their hands with [a] Charter of Rights violation,” she said.
In Ronson’s view, the disclosure requirements that the government is proposing instead are “pretty simple.”
“It’s not really a big ask,” she said.
A requirement for centres to be transparent about the services they do not provide will mitigate the risk of them dissuading pregnant women from having abortions, Ronson says.
She pointed to an example of a young college student who, according to a survey conducted by the abortion coalition, had been told by a pregnancy support centre she would “have emotional trauma from [an abortion] for the rest of [her] life” if she went through with it.
Access to abortion is a human right, according to the World Health Organization. Centres that counsel against it are infringing on that right, Ronson says.
“[Pregnancy support centres] have an anti-choice — usually religious — mandate to preserve the life of the fetus,” she said. “They’re not necessarily concerned with the pregnant person.
“So many people — this is just my personal observation … don’t seem to be aware of what crisis pregnancy centres really are, and that they … don’t provide a full range of services.”
‘False labels’
Laura Lewis, executive director of the pro-life organization Pregnancy Care Canada, sees things differently.
In a press release, Lewis urged the Liberal government “to stop using false labels and mischaracteriz[ing]” the work done by their centres.
Pregnancy Care Canada operates more than 80 pregnancy support centres and is the largest such provider in the country. It declined a request for an interview.
In its press release, Lewis says every client of a Pregnancy Care Canada centre is provided with a Limitation of Services form that discloses that the centre does not provide or assist in arranging abortions. This disclaimer is also present on their website.
“If a client chooses to pursue an abortion, a PCC-affiliated centre will not mislead or obstruct this decision,” the release says. “If a client requests help in obtaining an abortion, she is advised to consult the appropriate professional.”
Ronson says she is not concerned about centres that do provide such disclaimers. “We’re worried about the ones that don’t,” she said.
A 2023 study by the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada found nearly 40 per cent of 110 crisis pregnancy centres’ websites “did not have disclaimers that they do not assist with, or refer, for abortion or contraception.”
There are more than 150 pro-life pregnancy centres in total across Canada, according to the coalition.
‘Support fizzles out’
Jeffs, of Alliance for Life Ontario, says the Trudeau government is demeaning the services pro-life centres provide. She says the alliance’s centres provide valuable support to pregnant women who are interested in completing their pregnancies, including arranging funding, baby accessories and access to health specialists.
She gave the example of a young, single mother who was contemplating having an abortion more than a decade ago. She told Jeffs she could not afford to have another child because she could not afford to go on maternity leave.
“If she went on maternity leave, she would lose $800,” said Jeffs. “She said, ‘I just don’t know where to turn.’
“I said, ‘Will you trust me? Because I’ll find that for you for a year,” said Jeffs, who helped secure $800 a month in support for the woman.
“She didn’t have her abortion. Her little one is 13 this year.”
For her part, Ronson says she is concerned that some centres limit their services to the pregnancy phase. “From what I know and what I’ve heard … there’s that initial support, and then once the … pregnant person has had the baby, that support just fizzles out,” she said.
“They’re there initially to make sure that the person is supported in the pregnancy. Are they going to be there to provide support for that woman for the next however many years that that child needs … where’s the continuation of these services?”
But Jeffs says there are many centres — including in her own work at the alliance — that have supported clients over many years.
“I have one young woman, we have known each other for 40 years,” Jeffs said. “The first time we met was when she was pregnant with her first. She was [living] on the street. She was taking drugs and drinking. We have walked together through her first little one who was born, and her second little one she released for adoption. Her third one she aborted, and her fourth child she raised.
“We would never let anyone go while they need us,” said Jeffs. “It’s the long haul, and it’s just doing what Canadians always do. You are just together for each other.”
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