Faith-Based Abortion Activism in British Columbia: Public Health Risks and Human Rights Concerns
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Personal SubStack
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/03/27
“Unsafe abortion is a leading – but preventable – cause of maternal deaths and morbidities. It can lead to physical and mental health complications and social and financial burdens for women, families, and health systems.”
World Health Organization, Abortion, Fact Sheet (updated 31 March 2022)
“Prosecuting women and girls for abortion is not only cruel and discriminatory, but also puts their health and lives in danger by driving them to clandestine and unsafe procedures.”
Margaret Wurth, Women’s Rights Researcher at Human Rights Watch, quoted inEl Salvador: End Abortion Prosecution (September 16, 2019)
“An abortion is a medical procedure that ends a pregnancy. It is basic healthcare needed by millions of women, girls and people who can get pregnant. It’s estimated that one in four pregnancies ends in an abortion every year. In places where abortion is legal and accessible and where there is less stigma, people can get abortions safely and with no risk. However, in places where abortion is stigmatised, criminalised or restricted, people are forced to resort to unsafe abortions. It is estimated that 25 million unsafe abortions take place every year, the vast majority of them in developing countries, and can lead to fatal consequences such as maternal deaths and disabilities. All people have a right to bodily autonomy which is another reason why anyone who can become pregnant should be able to get an abortion.”
Amnesty International, “What is abortion and why is it necessary?”
“Unsafe abortion is an important preventable cause of maternal deaths and morbidities. It can lead to physical and mental health complications and social and financial burdens for women, communities and health systems.”
World Health Organization, Abortion, Fact Sheet (updated 25 November 2021)
“Access to legal abortion is essential health care and pivotal to women’s enjoyment of a full spectrum of their human rights.”
United Nations Human Rights Office, Joint web statement by UN Human Rights Experts on Supreme Court decision to strike down Roe v. Wade (24 June 2022)
“Good sexual and reproductive health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being in all matters relating to the reproductive system.”
United Nations Population Fund, Sexual and Reproductive Health (2024)
Abortions happen: Whether legal or illegal, safe or unsafe, women get abortions, by free volition or coercion. If legal and safe, over time, the rates go down and women’s health goes up. If illegal and unsafe, the rates go up and women’s health goes down. Ergo, if one cares about the health of the woman, abortion should be safe, legal, and available.
British Columbia, where I live in Canada, does have anti-abortion groups, or anti-women’s reproductive choice groups. Most of the rhetoric seems to be grounded in religious orthodoxy, faith-based arguments. Most of the agitators for restrictions on women’s rights or gender parity in this regard are the churches. Therefore, at least in the province of British Columba, faith-based opposition, though well-meaning, often overlooks public health evidence, particularly those far more in support of the advancement of women’s reproductive rights. The advocacy coming from select faith-based institutions is against abortions, even outlawing them within religious institutions–almost exclusively Christian in this province.
As per the excerpts at the top, if their vision were implemented, based on the evidence, these would lead to injuries and deaths for women exclusively, otherwise preventable. If the argument is that these are grounded in a particularist version or tenet of their faith, then the faith would lead to real-world harm to women needing reproductive health services. The churches to be covered today include Christ Covenant Church (Langley), Precious Blood Parish (Surrey), Immaculate Conception Parish (Delta), St. Francis de Sales Parish (Burnaby), St. Mary’s Parish (Vancouver), Sacred Heart Parish (Delta), St. Anthony of Padua Parish (Vancouver), St. Patrick’s Parish (Vancouver), and St. Joseph’s Parish (Port Moody). These are conservative activist churches based on anti-abortion/pro-life positions.
I am not writing this for me, but I am writing for countless people, as per my and others’ experiences in these Christian communities, who when they write about religious over-reach or illegitimate positions in community are harassed, intimidated, have trouble in employment, in familial contexts, with friends, with employers, issues with church theology, and the like. Those uprooted from ordinary community safety because of their dissent, including the women shamed and guilted, and misinformed by church theology, around practical matters of life and pragmatic decisions about reproductive health between a medical doctor and them. Atheists are the victims of highly negative prejudice, bigotry, and so on, and subsequent negative outcomes in mental health and social context based on treatment by believers.
Gervais et al. (2011) found social prejudice and distrust against those nonbelievers. Weber et al. (2012) found discrimination and negative affect leading to psychological distress for atheists. Cragun et al. (2012) found frustration and isolation based on social stigmatization and marginalization for nonbelievers. Edgell et al. (2016) found atheist stigma arises from assumptions of morality linked to religiosity, thus irreligiosity immorality based on this bigotry. Simpson & Rios (2017) found negative stereotypes of moral deficiency contributing to avoidance and emotional prejudice against nonbelievers. Now, that’s the environs and the fact for many nonbelievers living in believer communities. What about the anti-abortion activism?
My home municipality of Langley, British Columbia, Canada, is the home to Christ Covenant Church, who made headlines in the Aldergrove Star. On October 16, 2021, 10,000 pink and blue flags were placed on the church lawn led by Elyse Vroom. Each flag represented 10 aborted fetuses per flag, or the per annum estimates in Canada. The protest banner was “We Need a Law” for legislation restricting late-stage and sex-selective abortions. Vroom made a critique of the lack of a federal abortion law, which stems from the 1988 Morgentaler decision–the founder of Humanist Canada or the formal humanist movement in Canada. The point was to urge MP Tako Van Popta and Prime Minister Trudeau to protect the ‘pre-born.’
Precious Blood Parish in Surrey, British Columbia, Canada, was reported on, by BC Catholic. It is an annual anti-abortion event by Life Chain held across Canada as a silent vigil to raise awareness about abortion. Ironic, first, people need to be properly informed to make free, prior, and informed consensual decision about this. Where, the point of this faith-based conservative activism is to raise awareness about abortion as a moral evil. They organized October 5 and 6, and in other locations including outside St. Joseph’s Parish in Port Moody and near Surrey Memorial Hospital in Surrey
Immaculate Conception Parish in Delta has a dedicated Pro-Life Group focused on participation in global anti-abortion events under the common misnomer ‘pro-life.’ They look to participate in Pro-Life Sunday (June), Life Chain (October), and March for Life (May). Sacred Heart Parish is in Delta too. It has the “Hope for Life” Pro-Life Ministry. St. Joseph’s Parish in Port Moody, mentioned earlier, emphasizes the same, having a Pro-Life Ministry as well, while extending into euthanasia too. St. Francis de Sales Parish in Burnaby is the same with a Pro-Life Ministry.
Vancouver has St. Mary’s Parish, St. Anthony of Padua Parish, and St. Patrick’s Parish. St. Mary’s Parish has a Pro-Life Minister with monthly prayer sessions on every third Monday of the month. They pray with the hope to seek means by end abortions. Harmless, in and of itself, because prayer doesn’t work, as per the Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer (STEP), published in 2006. St. Anthony of Padua Parish has another Pro-Life Ministry, which organizes more prayers with an emphasis on a prayer for abortion facility workers–to have them seek ‘truth’ and reconsider their roles. St. Patrick’s Parish has a ministry, too, but under a sleight of hand difference with the name Pro-Life Society.
As is thoroughly clear, these are ministries–first and foremost–based in churches with an emphasis on Christianity. Again, they’re about awareness building on a religious view, which, if merely a belief, is harmless while, if implemented, will lead to suffering for women and families intergenerationally based on known international cross-cultural evidence. I couldn’t find much else in the manner of substantive anti-abortion activist work in British Columbia, Canada. They come primarily, arguably substantively solely, from the Christian churches. It’s not their love of women’s choice preventing the views becoming imposed; it’s the impotence of their love to impose a restriction of women’s reproductive rights.
For any human rights working to protect safe and equitable abortion access, the health and wellbeing of women seeking abortions, and prevent Christian religious over-reach into the public arena and the individual lives of women, again, we should keep a close eye on these contexts and churches in this province, as they’re advocating, in the evidence analysis internationally, for eventual restrictions on women’s freedom and harming the live of women and families in a something ultimately personal in choice.
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