CPCs should sue the Liberal party for libel

Directly from the Liberal policy platform:

"In 2021, women’s rights should not be up for debate. Yet the Conservatives want to roll back abortion access.

Meanwhile, anti-choice organizations are actively working to spread misinformation about abortion, putting the health and safety of young people and vulnerable women at risk.

Provide up to $10 million to Health Canada to develop an easily accessible portal that provides accurate, judgement-free, and evidence-based information on sexual and reproductive health and rights, which will include a section that counters misinformation about abortion.

No longer provide charity status to anti-abortion organizations (for example, Crisis Pregnancy Centres) that provide dishonest counseling to women about their rights and about the options available to them at all stages of the pregnancy." (emphasis added)

This sounds like something out of Joyce Arthur's playbook. Arthur began going after Crisis Pregnancy Centres (CPCs) as far back as 2009 with her "report" Exposing Crisis Pregnancy Centres in British Columbia. She absolutely hates these organizations which support women in crisis pregnancy situations. Her "report" was exposed for its gross misinformation in this detailed rebuttal by the organization Arthur was going after.

Then in 2017 I wrote another rebuttal to Arthur's further fabrications in this report, when Arthur went on another witch hunt of CPCs.

It seems now that her inaccurate and hateful venom has seeped its way into Justin Trudeau's policy platform. 

More on Arthur's CPC witch hunt here. 

Let's hope the media does its job and exposes Justin Trudeau's adherence to the lies about crisis pregnancy centres that made their way into his election platform.

The Value Project - an education

It is so sad that there are people in Canada who hate Crisis Pregnancy Centres so much, that they will do everything in their power to take them down.

But it is a well know fact that CPCs do amazing work for women, men, children and the unborn, if only one has ears to hear and eyes to see. And now there is another amazing project CPCs have undertaken. It is called the The Value Project.  

The clip in the video follows 12 students at three Lower Mainland high schools in BC as they examine the way media dehumanizes. They come up with their own plans to encourage classmates to Value Every Person.

The Value Project is a collaborative initiative of Signal Hill, the Christian Advocacy Society charity, and the Archdiocese of Vancouver.

Media buys into pro-abortion witch hunt of CPCs

Great rebuttal to Joyce Arthur's recent "study" (witch hunt) against crisis pregnancy centres in Canada.

I see that Anna Mehler Paperny of Global news has bought into Arthur's misinformation on CPC's.

Maybe they should instead educate themselves on Arthur's unrelenting campaign to discredit CPC's.

Joyce Arthur's study subtracts from the body of knowledge

I must confess I laughed at this post over at anonymous blogger's blog, about a "major study" by Joyce Arthur. "Fern Hill" even got her "name" on this so called "serious study".

Major and serious are not words I would ever attribute to anything Joyce Arthur writes.

The problem is, this is not at all funny. It looks like just one more witch hunt by Arthur and her pro-abortion friends. These people absolutely hate crisis pregnancy centres. They will stop at nothing to discredit them and bring them down. Why? Are they jealous of the care, love and support these centres provide women when face with an unexpected pregnancy? I think they are. Because all the pro-abortions care about is that women experiencing an unexpected pregnancy should choose to kill their unborn child. They don't care for the woman. And they definitely don't care about the child she is carrying.

A quick look at the "study" tells me that it is just a reheated version of Arthur's previous "study", where she went after CPCs in BC. In fact Brian Norton did a brilliant job of setting the record straight on Arthur's last "study". Which by the way, was funded by a $27,400 Status of Women Canada grant, a grant which Arthur never publicly acknowledged as per the agreement she signed with SWC. See here and here for more on that grant.

In this "study" Arthur and her anonymous friends only reviewed CPC websites. By her own admission this "study" doesn't even address how CPC's actually speak or support their clients.

"An important caveat of this study is that we examined only the websites of CPCs, which may not necessarily reflect their practices or counselling when they speak to clients in person or on the phone."

And then there's this gem. Arthur wants to add to the "body of knowledge" of CPC's.

"The aim of this study was to determine the presence of any deception or misinformation on the websites of Canadian CPCs. Due to the relative dearth of research on CPCs in Canada, we felt it important to add to the body of knowledge on the topic as we seek out opportunities to regulate these organizations. We expected to find that CPC websites would reflect the same type of misinformation and/or deception that other studies and investigations have found that people encounter when patronizing CPCs. While we did find significant misinformation, our study also found that many websites present an unbiased appearance and tend to conceal their agenda or give only subtle indications of it, presumably to attract (and not repel) or even trick women considering abortion into using their services."

Does Arthur really believe her shenanigans, deceptions and misinformation add anything to anything? And trick women? Who is trying to trick whom here? First clue. It's not CPC's.

Exposing the specificity of Exposing Crisis Pregnancy Centres in BC

Today I re-read Faye Sonier's article, reprinted in LifeCanada's Journal, on the BC Crisis Pregnancy Centres defamation case against Joyce Arthur Defamation Suit and the Tactic of Being Vague.

Faye says:

Unfortunately the court found that the report was so unclear in its attributions of wrong-doing that a reasonable person reading the report wouldn’t necessarily think that the Vancouver and Burnaby CPCs were guilty of committing those particular ethical breaches. As the judge ruled, “it is difficult to say that the ‘deceptive’ tactics reflect personally on the plaintiffs. The impugned statements do not have any specificity; the Report describes the tactics in broad generalizations.”

I always thought Arthur was writing about BC's CPCs, for the same reasons Faye does:

And keep in mind, that these allegations are made within a report entitled Exposing Crisis Pregnancy Centres in British Columbia, where that title appears on the top of each page of the report, wherein the stated goal of the report is to “find out what these centres were doing and saying to women in B.C., and whether they were engaging in deceptive or harmful practices,” and where the appendix lists only B.C. CPCs. I think the average reader would likely assume that the allegations made within the report apply to B.C. CPCs, and likely to the two CPCs which launched the suit against Arthur.

What exactly is not specific about "Exposing Crisis Pregnancy Centres in British Columbia" appearing as a title on every page of the report?

I decided to take another look at my ATIP to Status of Women regarding the infamous $27,400 funding Joyce Arthur received to write this horrid report.

Here are a few "specific" references to CPCs in BC from that ATIP. And remember. This document is what clinched the funding for Arthur.

From Arthur's proposal:

There are CPC's in almost every city in BC. With the closure of many women's centres, and the brief office hours of most family planning clinics around BC, comprehensive and non-judgmental reproductive services for women (and referrals to such services) are becoming very difficult to access. In some areas, women may only be able to access the local CPC. In fact, CPC's are striving to replace feminist-based agencies. They even obtained government funding from the BC Liberals while funding cuts for Women's Centres were being planned. 

It is critical to research and evaluate the extent and impact of CPCs' reach and influence in BC. Armed with this knowledge, we can take concrete steps to stem the tide, by educating women and the public about the true nature of these centres, lobbying government to stop funding them, using the media to publicize the CPC anti-feminist agenda and tactics, and promoting and establishing feminist-based alternative services for women.

Under the document entitled Goal and Objectives in Arthur's proposal:

The overall goal of this social justice project is to minimize the harmful impact of CPC's through public education. As part of that goal, we hope to be able to accomplish the following objectives:

• research the current situation in BC -- for example, numbers, locations, sizes, and resources of CPC's and similar agencies
• research community influence of CPC's — for example, relationship between them and other women's groups, whether legitimate agencies refer to them, alternative services in the community impact on minority groups and youth in particular, etc.
• research how CPC's shape public policy and discourse on reproductive rights — for example:
• – analyze how these groups are co-opting feminist language and strategies while using them to foster a right-wing patriarchal agenda that promotes a traditional, narrow role for women as wives and mothers
• – evaluate how and to what extent their anti-feminist agenda asserts itself into the public consciousness and negatively impacts women's ability to achieve equality
• – evaluate their relative success at supplanting feminist-based resources in local communities in BC, and look at ways to counter this
• solicit and collect stories from women who have been harmed or deceived by CPC services
• research and try to curtail CPC's public funding sources
• publicity expose the anti-woman and anti-feminist agenda of CPC's using various public education and media initiatives, and by doing so, work to mitigate discriminatory attitudes towards women
• shift public awareness by alerting and educating the following target audiences (in BC):
• — women
• — aboriginal, minority, and youth group— women's groups and other community organizations
• — health professionals and institutions who might refer to CPC's, including doctors, walk-in clinics, hospitals, counselors, family planning clinics — government
• — public

Under section 24. JUSTIFICATION

Expected concrete results: 

1. To examine the state and organization of CPC's in B.C., including numbers, size, locations, funding sources, their influence in the community and how they shape public policy discourse on reproductive health issues

2. To examine the ways in which CPCs disseminate deceptive and misleading information to circumscribe women's right to full reproductive agency

3. To produce a report detailing the research findings, which will be used as a tool to inform the public about the anti-woman agenda and practices of CPCs, with a particular focus on educating women's organizations, health professionals and government as well as individual women

4. To implement any changes recommended in the report

5. To persuade CPCs to alter their current practices in order to ensure women have full choice over their reproductive health 

In Arthur's Summary Of Expected Outcomes:

• Public discourse on the issue of women's reproductive choices is drawn from a broad spectrum of perspectives, including a feminist perspective

• Diverse women throughout BC have full access to comprehensive arid nonjudgmental reproductive services

And finally, this from Status of Women Canada, in their recommendation for approval of the funding to Arthur, and SWC's brief description of the initiative:

This initiative seeks to ensure access by a diversity of women in British Columbia to comprehensive and non-jugmental reproductive services as well as a representative speck of perspectives on women's reproductive rights. It has two related components, research and public education. The first component will consist of examining the current trend towards the proliferation of crisis pregnancy centres operating in the province and their role in shaping public discourse on women's reproductive rights. The second part of the initiative will be to inform the public, educators, health professionals and governments about the results of this research. This information will help ensure the public has an accurate understanding of the various approaches to supporting towards women's reproductive choice, as part of an overall strategy to provide the public with a comprehensive understanding of women's reproductive rights. A set of indicators will be used to evaluate the effectiveness of both components of this initiative in achieving planned outcomes. 

There's only one question left to ask.

If Arthur's report is not "specifically" referring to Crisis Pregnancy Centres in British Columbia, then why would Status of Women Canada, use funds from the Women's Program, whose mandate "is to achieve the full participation of women in the economic, social and democratic life of Canada. Funding is provided to eligible organizations in support of projects at the local, regional and national levels", hand over Canadian tax dollars, to a Canadian person, for a report that is about Crisis Pregnancy Centres not in Canada?

Exposing "Exposing Crisis Pregnancy Centres in BC"

The two Crisis Pregnancy Centres in BC recently lost their defamation case against Joyce Arthur for her report "Exposing Crisis Pregnancy Centres in BC."

Their press release states:

"As stated in his legal argument to the court at paragraph 18 "The defendants' position in this application is that as a matter of law the impugned passages in the report are not capable of being found to refer to the plaintiffs, and in any event, as a matter of fact the report would not lead a reasonable person who knows the plaintiffs to conclude that the passages refer to them"; and at paragraph 20 "... no reasonable reader of the report would feel able to draw any conclusions about the practices at the CPCs operated by the plaintiffs" (i.e. the Vancouver and Burnaby centres).

The Judge who heard legal argument on this matter in early April ultimately accepted those submissions, stating at paragraph 92 of her reasons for judgement, released on August 26th, that "As it is never made clear in the Report what 'many or most' entails with regard to CPCs across North America, it is difficult to say the 'deceptive' tactics reflect personally on the plaintiffs. The impugned statements do not have any specificity; the Report describes the tactics in broad generalizations." And then her conclusion at paragraph 98, that "I conclude the alleged defamatory statements are not of and concerning the plaintiffs."

The Crisis Pregnancy Centres are obviously confused by this ruling, since as they so aptly point out, the report:

• Is titled Exposing Crisis Pregnancy Centres in British Columbia, and which title appears typed at the top on all 65-pages of the report, including the pages where the Allegations appear.
• Describes its purpose as: "We wanted to find out what these centres were doing and saying to women in BC, and whether they were engaging in deceptive or harmful practices."
• Lists the Vancouver and Burnaby Centres in an appendix to the report along with, and only, CPCs in BC.
• Focuses most of the content (main text and appendixes) specifically on CPCs in BC (including our own CPCs).

But there is another reason that this ruling is troublesome. It is because of the very nature of the research itself, that was conducted for the report.

By her own admission, Arthur's research included using a volunteer to infiltrate CPCs in BC, by sending out surveys, by phone calls and by visits. All these activities were done of CPCs in BC, not to CPCs in anywhere else in North America. How could Arthur know that those activities and strategies are common to "many or most" CPCs throughout North America like she states? Other than a couple of footnotes, all of Arthur's hands on research was done in BC. Not anywhere else.

In fact, for Arthur's statement that "many or most” of 4000 US centres behave badly, she only has a few isolated footnotes about what a few of them do. How on earth can she generalize from a few bad apples to the majority? Almost certainly pure speculation.

The question that arises about this research is this. What are vague allegations about US centres, doing in a report about BC centres, other than to imply that what Arthur alleges is true of the US centres, is also true of the BC centres?

That is the implication readers will take from her report – that BC Centres do these bad things too. Is this what Arthur intended all along?

(See below for a list of my previous writings on this subject. They discuss some other interesting fun facts about the report. Like how Arthur's Pro Choice Action Network received $27,400 in a government grant from Status of Women Canada to write the report. And how PRO-CAN never publicly acknowledged that grant like they were supposed to.)

(This was first published on LifeNews in January 2010)
Supporting Women in Canada Means Educating That Abortion Hurts Women

Apr 05, 2010
Status of Women Canada pays extreme group to discredit CPCs

April 16, 2010
"pregnancy support groups" vs "crisis pregnancy centres"

April 27, 2010
Mr. Harper must support the abortion debate

June 25, 2012
Don't let the numbers fool you

(First published in LifeCanada's Journal)
Jan 06, 2013
Joyce Arthur's Pro-Can grant: an investigation, Part I
Mar 09, 2013
Joyce Arthur's Pro-Can grant: an investigation, Part II

Supporting Women in Canada Means Educating That Abortion Hurts Women

(This was first published on LifeNews in January 2010)

Canada, unlike the United States, has no abortion laws. The abortion law we did have was struck down in 1988 by the Supreme Court of Canada when challenged by Dr. Henry Morgentaler, an abortion doctor.

Our Court declared in that ruling, that the existing law violated a woman's right to "security of the person" under section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. This ruling had to do with procedural problems related to Therapeutic Abortion Committees where a panel of doctors had the authority to grant a woman a certificate to obtain a legal abortion if they felt continuation of the pregnancy would be harmful to the woman's health. The court did not rule that the Charter granted a "right to abortion". Since then, all attempts to create any legal abortion restrictions, have failed.

As Americans debate publicly funded abortions, they should take note that in Canada, all abortions are paid for by our public health care system. And because Canada has no abortion laws at all, abortion is legally permissible up until the moment of birth, and for any reason.

The only recourse pro-life Canadians have against abortion, is education. This includes education that comes from crisis pregnancy centres (CPCs).

CPCs are organizations that provide support and information to pregnant women who choose to keep their unborn child or decide to give the child up for adoption. These centres are alternatives to abortion clinics, both for the support they provide and for the information they give. These centres don't just help women who choose to give birth, but even those who haven't made a decision yet whether to abort or not. Many of these centres also help women who have already had abortions and are grieving.

Now these centres (CPCs also exist in the US) are under attack as radical feminist organizations try to maintain their any-time, any-reason, publicly funded access to abortion.

Recently one such organization, the Pro-Choice Action Network (Pro-Can), decided to go on the offensive against CPCs, resulting in a scathing report condemning these centres in British Columbia, Canada.

All right minded people need to ask themselves an extremely important question in light of this report.

Should pregnant women be able to get support and information from an organization that does not advocate abortion? I am not asking if we should support a pro-life philosophy. I am asking if women, in a free and democratic society, can choose to go to an organization that will not advocate abortion?

Pro-Can believes the answer is no and tries hard to get you to agree with them. They believe we must "beware" these organizations, that they "mistreat" and "deceive" women and give them misinformation". Based on what you ask? Well, lots of unsubstantiated claims, innuendo and anonymous sources. What evidence is provided, can easily be refuted with other evidence.

Pro-Can's so-called research project, "Exposing Crisis pregnancy centre's in British Columbia" states that these centres are "fake clinics" and that they are "anti-choice Christian ministries" that "often pretend to be non-biased medical clinics".

But these centres are not fake--they tell women they do not provide abortions and are not medical clinics (see Appendix 3 of report for individual centres' websites).

Pro-Can "infiltrated" some CPCs, by sending in a volunteer, and visiting or calling a number of them. The report also tries to discredit a volunteer manual obtained from the Canadian Association of Pregnancy Support Services (CAPSS), an umbrella organization for some of these centres.

Here are just three examples of how Pro-Can attempts to disparage these CPCs.

First, they refute the relationship between abortion and breast cancer (ABC). One reference used is based on a 2003 National Cancer Institute symposium that concluded there was no link. Yet that same symposium had dissension. One participant stated he was "convinced that the weight of available evidence suggests a real, independent, positive association between induced abortion and breast cancer risk."

See Joel Brind's (Ph.D., Professor, Human Biology and Endocrinology) full statement here.

Here are other studies that support the ABC link.

Second, when can a fetus feel pain? Pro-Can's report states that a fetus "cannot feel pain until at least the third trimester". However Dr. K.S. Anand, the world's foremost authority on research into pain perception in fetal and neonatal children and whose landmark study was published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1987, disagrees. At the Partial Birth Abortion hearings in the Southern District of New York in 2004, Dr. Anand testified that "the human fetus possesses the ability to experience pain by 20 weeks of gestation, if not earlier, and the pain perceived by a fetus is possibly more intense than that perceived by term newborns or older children." His testimony can be found here.

 

Dr. Paul Ranalli, a Toronto Neurologist, in a public information meeting in Toronto, Canada in October 2008, sponsored by The deVeber Institute for Bioethics and Social Research, also presented compelling evidence that fetal pain can be felt by 20 weeks and possibly earlier. I challenge the reader to listen to Dr. Ranalli's presentation and not have serious doubts about the "no pain until the third trimester" assertion.

Third, the report states "there is no evidence to suggest that women who have abortions experience any more or less sadness and regret than women who complete an unwanted pregnancy". They cite the American Psychological Association (APA) as one source. However Andrea Mrozek, manager of research and communications at the Institute of Marriage and Family Canada, details in a recent report that the APA research was flawed.
Here is additional research of the after affects of abortion here and here.

Some may say, "some of that research is biased". The same can and should be said of Pro-Can's evidence. That's why it's so important if there's the slightest possibility of the ABC link; or of severe psychological and physical health risks; or that her unborn child would suffer extreme pain during that abortion–that a pregnant woman see all the evidence, not just the "pro-choice" evidence. It's called informed consent. (Unfortunately Canada does not have informed consent laws for abortion.)

Canada has numerous abortion clinics, hospitals and Planned Parenthood organizations, to provide or refer for abortion services. That's ample pro-choice "help". Women want and deserve something other than abortion clinics. CPCs are the only concrete something else Canada has at the moment for women in crisis pregnancy situations. They provide information on abortions; they just won't provide or refer for the actual abortions. What they do provide, is support and information to help women make an informed decision in a nonjudgmental and loving way.

Finally, what about some of those Christians who work at CPCs? Here's what Pro-Can says in their newsletter about pro-life Christians: their "opposition to abortion comes primarily from religious justifications for oppressing women"; their "views seem small-minded, uninformed, sexist, and cruel"; they are "expressing disrespect and contempt for women." (Read more of Pro-Can's "commentary" and decide its credibility for yourself here and here.)

Nobody is asking Pro-Can to believe in Christ--but it's none of their business if others do. This is one of Canada's most precious rights. It's called freedom of religion and it is protected under our Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

There are no legal restrictions on abortion in Canada; no medical reason required; all paid for by taxpayers. Canada does not legally protect its most defenceless and vulnerable citizens. But if a woman decides to have her baby or if she's not sure yet what she wants to do, she can turn to a Crisis Pregnancy Centre for support and information she will not obtain at an abortion clinic or Planned Parenthood or Pro-Can.

Yes, we must beware organizations that mistreat and deceive women by giving them misinformation. This is why we must support a woman's choice of visiting and using crisis pregnancy centres.