Joanna Alphonso

Michelle Cohen published an article in the April edition of The College of Family Physicians of Canada, “Medical abortion is an essential service during the pandemic,” in which she argued that there has been an increase in calls to the Sexual Health and Rights hotline but that because of “new barriers to contraception and abortion in the wake of the pandemic” due to public health stay-at-home orders, there will likely be an increase in unwanted pregnancies.

Carole Eaton, acting executive director of Planned Parenthood Regina, Sask., explained to The Interim that they reduced services during the pandemic: “We had to put limits on waiting lists for all sorts of things because we have a stream of women requesting our services. That has been increasing over the years, so it was really hard for us to turn many of them away.”

Crisis pregnancy centres (CPCs) from across the country seem to tell a different story.

Mary Helen Moes, director of Toronto Ontario’s Aid to Women told The Interim, “Since the beginning of the pandemic, downtown Toronto is a ghost town. Nobody left their homes. I was witnessing fewer women go in to have abortions. There was less of everything.”

This decrease in the seeking out of pregnancy assistance is corroborated by Linda Holden, the director of the Centre for Life in St. John’s, Newfoundland. She told The Interim, “the numbers are low, maybe they’re getting support from other places. But anyone needing our help was given help.”

At British Columbia’s Hope for Women centres, they have also experienced an overall consistency in pregnant women seeking assistance. “We’ve been the least impacted here in BC,” says director Jared White, “overall, our numbers are up slightly, likely due to the opening of our new centre in Prince George, but I’d say the Fraser region numbers have gone down.”

CPCs have made some changes to their method of offering services based on the provincial COVID-19 health and safety measures. 

Many CPCs were able to assist most, if not all women that sought their assistance. Holden mentioned, “one barrier we had was access to the office.” She said, “We worked around that by offering help over the phone, discussing needed services and resources and scheduling times resource pickup. We were able to provide everyone who sought our assistance with whatever they needed.” 

The pandemic has had severe effects on the economy and employment. However, some CPCs have experienced an increase in donations and support from the community. White explained, “people are more supportive. We’ve seen an increase in donations and in people thinking about us and wanting to get involved.” On the other side of the country, Holden revealed, “donations are down because of the financial uncertainty and loss of employment.” She continued: “It’s was a struggle in 2020 and again in 2021 since we can’t host our normal in-house fundraisers.” Eaton mentioned, “we get donations from folks and we got some financial support from the federal government. We really couldn’t do our usual fundraising efforts because of COVID, so it has been on the backburner.”

All of the interviewed CPCs value conversations with clients. Eaton explained, “the first step is to have a discussion about what their choices are. Some people come to seek abortion and others are still looking to see what their options are. It depends on the person.” Moes mentioned, “I offer pre-abortion counselling and post-abortion counselling. It flows out that the womens’ minds were never really made up. I really don’t like the fact that so many women regret it.” White explained, “about 20% of abortion-minded women seeking our assistance change their minds. And that’s our goal. We keep track of these percentages so we can evaluate our success rate and discuss how we can help more women change their minds about abortion.”

CPCs across the country are still bound by provincial COVID-19 public health restrictions. Agencies that support abortion access have decreased their accessibility to services in spite of federal government funding, whereas family and life-oriented agencies continued to offer their complete suite of services to women in crisis and rely on the generosity of their donors.