By: Tatiana Furtado
Anti-abortion public messaging and crisis pregnancy centres (CPC) have been around in Canada since the late 60s and since then, the country has seen a dramatic development of how these groups get their messaging across.
In many cases, individuals seeking abortion care are tricked into thinking they are visiting a positive and friendly environment to help with pregnancy alternatives. Instead, they find themselves quickly manipulated by the deceptions of these CPC's.
The Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada (ARCC) is a national non-profit political pro-choice organization that is committed to ensuring abortion rights and access. Executive director, Joyce Arthur says a part of their work involves stopping anti-choice messaging and CPC's from forcefully influencing the decisions of those seeking abortion care.
“A lot of our projects are geared around fighting anti-choice campaigns or misinformation, which is really important because other charitable groups aren’t doing that so much,” Arthur said.
An important part of stopping anti-choice campaigns is educating local cities about ad and billboard permits and making sure they are following ad standards and codes.
According to the Canadian Code of Advertising Standards, the accuracy and clarity provision writes, advertisements must not contain, or directly or by implication make, inaccurate, deceptive or otherwise misleading claims, statements, illustrations or representations.
“Over the years we get these complaints about anti-choice ads and often decide yes, they're inaccurate. It’s a great tool for us to tell cities, hey, this ad is inaccurate according to ad standards, you have that in your policy and the ad needs to meet ad standards and the code. So it helps us to get cities to refuse ads or take them down,” Arthur said.
Anti-choices ads in rural regions
In a CBC article, Kallie Desruisseaux speaks about her encounter with an anti-abortion ad in her residence of Lethbridge, Alberta.
Descruisseaux posted the image on twitter and told the CBC the ad was triggering because she previously underwent an abortion for an ectopic pregnancy that would have taken her life.
Another anti-abortion ad was captured on the side of a local public bus in Sudbury that highlighted the organization Sudbury Right to Life.
“Over the years it’s changed more. I mean you still see a lot of fetus focused stuff. But overall, I think the movement has moved more towards this idea that abortion harms women, it’s bad for women. We want to help women. And so painting it that way and also kind of taking the religion out of it and I think an example that you see is when you look at the evolution of the crisis pregnancy centres in Canada,” Arthur said.
Like the Sudbury ad, many of these anti-abortion ads are linked to various crisis pregnancy centres in Canada. Action Canada for Sexual Health and Rights compares the number of hospitals and clinic providing abortion versus crisis pregnancy centres.
Arthur explains that CPC’s are deliberately deceptive and they have toned down their manipulative tactics in order to avoid losses and advocacy.
“You have to dig deeper when you go into a website and look for clues to see if they are anti-abortion and things like if they talk about post-abortion counselling which is a really big thing for CPCs, because this comes out of their assumption that abortions hurt women so of course, if you have an abortion, you’re going to need counselling and help after,” Arthur said.
Anti-abortion ads and harassment can have a rippling effect in the community. Not only does it affect those needing abortion care, but also abortion providers and activists. Arthur says she continues to take daily security measures to keep herself and her family safe.
For more information and on how you can submit a complaint against an anti-choice/anti-abortion ad, visit Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada.