“Who are the Crisis Pregnancy Centres?” the Pro-Choice Action Network asked, and we’re glad they did. It’s an important question, and one that we can answer.

We’re CAPSS - the Christian Association of Pregnancy Support Services - a national organization dedicated to encouraging, equipping and establishing pregnancy care centres in communities across Canada.

Author Sally Johansen prepared her report for Pro-Choice Press by gathering second-hand information on the services of pregnancy care centres “from someone who took the training.” Doubtless inadvertently, Ms. Johansen commends the programs and services of pregnancy care staff and volunteers. But CAPSS cannot stand by without pointing out the article’s numerous mistakes and errors and challenging its stream of fallacies. (The sections from the Pro-CAN article are in italics.)

Pro-CAN: Crisis Pregnancy Centres (CPC’s) and similar anti-choice “counselling” groups work to persuade women not to have abortions, and to "help" women who regret their abortion decision.

CAPSS: Centre staff and volunteer peer counsellors provide accurate information because women deserve honest dialogue on all pregnancy options. Every woman has a right to the information she needs to make a wise choice on such a serious life issue. And yes, every year Canada’s centres help hundreds of women whose lives have been shattered by abortion.

Pro-CAN: The CPC’s (or Care Net in the U.S.) have non-profit status and are linked to right-wing fundamentalist churches. Through the churches, layers of umbrella groups direct activities and channel funds from higher, faceless, and almost invisible right-wing conservative organization.

CAPSS: We do work well as a team. Our kind supporters though, are not faceless and invisible. They are from all political persuasions; from businesses, foundations, churches, charities, families and individuals. They are a ribbon of care from coast to coast.

Pro-CAN: In Canada, CPC’s are under the umbrella of CAPSS, the Christian Association of Pregnancy Support Services, which is under the Christian Advocacy Society (CAS). This group has an office in the Burnaby CPC where a man in a suit runs the show

CAPSS: The exact opposite is true. CAS operates a pregnancy care centre, a safe house for women and a rape relief support network, and is a member of CAPSS, not the other way around. Also, the one who ‘runs the show’ at CAPSS is not a man in a suit, but rather a former journalist in a long skirt. (Even so, Pro-CAN surely agrees the world would be a better place if more men, like the director of CAS, were working to ensure women’s safety and well-being.)

Pro-CAN: It was two Focus on the Family doctors, Terri and Paul Reisser who seem to have coined the phrase “post-abortion syndrome” which is now used in all anti-choice literature, but is not found in the DMS (a medical bible of psychological disorders).

CAPSS: Post-abortion trauma isn’t made real by being added to a list. The emotional and psychological fall-out of abortion is a painful reality for thousands upon thousands of women. Kind and empathetic professionals and CPC peer counsellors listen to these women and respect their expressions of sorrow and grief. Validating feelings of intense grief and sorrow gives a woman permission to take brave steps toward healing.

Pro-CAN: This leads to another area that needs to be addressed: the expansion of the CPC’s into other services for women….All the volunteer training sessions stress anti-feminist sentiments, which is ironic because the CAPSS organization continues to add more traditionally feminist services to their centres. At present they offer: free pregnancy tests, birth, abstinence and post-abortion counselling, rape relief counselling, battered women’s shelters, housing referrals, parenting classes, and financial, medical, and material assistance.

CAPSS: Centres are continually improving and expanding services to meet the practical, material, social and spiritual needs of their clients. It really is quite amazing that pregnancy care centres, on small budgets, are able to provide all these important services!

Pro-CAN: All are offered under the guise of a feminist women’s centre, but with a very anti-feminist, anti-gay, pro-right-wing conservative fundamentalist agenda. They are trying to replace and thereby wipe out the left-leaning feminist movement and all the gains made over the last forty years. Does this sound like a conspiracy theory?

CAPSS: These anti-labels won’t ever stick to centres because the ‘pro-love’ label is already permanently stuck. Centres are part of a major conspiracy: to radically transform lives through unconditional love.

Pro-CAN: The frontline women volunteers at CPC’s seem unaware that their women’s centre is at the bottom of a hierarchy of right-wing conservative policies that are ultimately controlled by powerful rich white men with global agendas—but as usual, it is women’s bodies, employment, and economics that are used and manipulated.

CAPSS: Now that’s some global scheme! The truth is that centre staff and volunteers are intelligent, educated, independent thinkers, fully aware that every woman deserves care and support and every child deserves to laugh and dance and sing. (After accomplishing amazing goals on shoestrings, imagine what centres could achieve with support from the powerful and rich!)

Pro-CAN: The elite conservative powers need control of women’s bodies to keep their economic policies running, and the women volunteers in CPC’s are the foot soldiers in the most basic battle: a woman’s right to control her own body.

CAPSS: Power and economic gain are the antithesis of pregnancy care. Centres are all about wholehearted respect for all persons, born and nearly born, who deserve their fair share of life in the 21st century.

Pro-CAN: Women usually first go to a CPC for the free pregnancy test, but before they can get the results they must sit with a volunteer counselor and hear about abortion.

CAPSS: First off, clients do not have to hear about or see anything they don’t want to, before or after a pregnancy test, and no matter the result of the test. That would be coercion, against all that centres stand for. Centres have a far higher view of women. They believe women are strong and intelligent and entitled to receive all the information needed to make a well-informed choice at a critical life crossroad.

Pro-CAN: The CPC manual says “Because some in the medical community are not explaining procedures adequately, CPC volunteers must take seriously the responsibility of informing all clients about the realities of abortion, as the volunteer counselor may be the only one who discusses these important issues with them.”

CAPSS: Volunteer peer counsellors are ready and able to give women all the time they need to clearly see all their options. But we aren’t competing. If women receive thorough, accurate and honest information from another source, centres are happy. The biggest grievance clients carry after their abortion is, “No one told me.”

Pro-CAN: On abortion, young women are told that in Canada there are no cut-off times; a woman can have an abortion on demand right up to full-term.

CAPSS: How shockingly sad that this is true. Because there is no law governing abortion in Canada, abortions can be legally performed at any time, for any reason.

Pro-CAN: While [the abortion procedure] is being described, the young women are shown plastic models of the uterus...There are models for four stages of pregnancy. The first is labeled four weeks and has a tiny baby about two inches long, with opaque flesh and tiny arms and legs. On the back of the model it says this is magnified by a factor of eight, but that bit of information is not told to the women.

CAPSS: If Pro-CAN really is in favour of a woman’s right to full disclosure, they surely do not object to centres showing the wonder of prenatal child development. At the centre that is the focus of Pro-CAN’s article on CPCs, the protocol is to use fetal models only in prenatal instruction. These mini-miracles of human development are not used with crisis pregnancy clients, although they could be. The models are actual life size, except for the two tiniest that show earliest development. (The 4-week after fertilization model is a factor-four magnification, not eight as claimed).

Pro-CAN: Second and third-trimester abortions are described in horrific detail, inferring that the doctors who perform these procedures must be heartless monsters. The CPC manual displays extreme prejudice and deception in their descriptions.

CAPSS: The manual component on abortion procedures has been thoroughly reviewed by health care professionals and verified as accurate. We sadly agree that late-term abortion techniques are horrific. We are as distressed as the U.S. judge who recently described these procedures as “barbaric, cruel and uncivilized.”

Pro-CAN: The strong anti-feminist rhetoric in the CPC's, along with the expansion of the services offered by these fundamentalist Christian organizations, is a troubling trend.

CAPSS: Expanding services for mothers is a troubling trend to whom? Certainly not to the mothers!

Pro-CAN: At the same time, their activities siphon off the funding and political agenda of the feminist movement who have in the past been the only voice to speak up for the rights of poor and minority women, and confront the conservative right-wing social and economic policies.

CAPSS: This statement is not only haughty and arrogant, it’s plain wrong. Through voluntary contributions, followers of Christ have historically cared for “the least” in every generation – the poor and the devalued men, women and children. Close to our own times, history records that Christian social justice
created the movement to abolish slavery, the prison reform movement, the suffragette movement, the labour movement and the civil rights movement.

In our time, it is no surprise that Christians are significantly involved in the pro-life movement. Some are in right-to-life education and political agencies; some in crisis pregnancy centres, maternity homes, post abortion services, hospices, associations for people with disabilities, and outreaches to the homeless and the poor. It’s all in answer to Christ’s clarion call to care about our neighbour’s life as much as our own.

In the final analysis, we hope and trust that the Pro-Choice Action Network agrees that individuals are entitled to hold pro-life convictions. In our nation, thankfully, people are free to act upon their conviction by showing love and compassion at pregnancy care centres.

That’s what we do! That’s who we are!

Excerpted from an article written by Theresa White, the CEO of the Christian Association of Pregnancy Support Services in BC in response to Pro-Can’s article, “Who are the crisis pregnancy centres?” at: www.prochoiceactionnetwork-canada.org/who-are-cpcs.html. For more information on CAPSS, visit www.capss.com