Federal Government Funds Anti-Choice
Organization in Calgary

Last year, the Calgary Pregnancy Care Centre, an anti-choice organization received $128,901 from Human Resources Development Canada. This Centre is an organization that is dedicated to preventing women from getting abortions. Advertising for the centre would lead women to believe that they will receive professional counselling about all the options open to pregnant women. However, women who visit the centre are not given accurate information about abortion or contraception. Because this agency is opposed to all forms of contraception, as well as abortion, the staff does not provide non-judgemental options, counselling or referrals to women seeking abortions. Unfortunately, the women who do go to the Calgary Pregnancy Care Centre believing they will receive what is advertised, are delayed in seeking medical services.

Women have the right to reliable and accessible counselling services. We also have the right to information about our options and to not be judged upon the decisions we make about our bodies. Money given to the Calgary Pregnancy Care Centre is money that could be used to help fund agencies that support a woman’s right to choose. The federal Government should not support agencies that inhibit a woman’s right to accurate medical information. If this issue concerns you: please contact the Honorable Minister Responsible for Human Resources.

Unless our voices are heard, no charges will ever be made. It is important to remember all of the fights that have been won in the struggle for equality. The following article was written by Judy Rebick who is a Canadian pro-choice activist and journalist:

I will remember the morning of January 28, 1988 as long as I live. It was freezing and I was standing in front of the Morgentaler Clinic, then on Harbord Street, with my sisters in the Ontario Coalition for Abortion Clinics. We were waiting for the Supreme court decision on abortion rights. It had been almost eight years since the OCAC had formed to support the opening and continuing operation of an illegal abortion clinic in Toronto. Eight years of organizing, meeting, demonstration, raising money, lobbying, speaking, protecting patients-first from the police and then from anti-choice groups- and debating political and legal strategies. Like in Quebec three decades before, a jury had acquitted Dr. Morgentaler and the Court of Appeals had overturned. Now we were waiting for the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision. Leaders of OCAC were in Ottawa with Dr. Morgentaler but I was waiting outside the clinic for their phone call.

We had set up a communication system. One of our group would call the clinic as soon as the decision came down and the clinic staff would come out and tell us. There were quite a few reporters around. When one of them told me that the Supreme court has held upheld the jury's acquittal on the basis that women have the right to control their own bodies, I didn’t believe her. Then I heard the news through our official channels. What a moment! Never have I experienced such joy like that. The joy of winning a fight that seemed to be against impossible odds. The joy of an historic victory. The joy of winning a new right for women.