The Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada (ARCC) is speaking out against anti-choice ads appearing at Metro Vancouver transit stations.
The coalition’s message comes as commenters on a recent thread in the Reddit community r/vancouver expressed concerns over an increasing prevalence of anti-abortion ads popping up in Metro Vancouver.
Pro-life ads at Skytrain stations
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Some commenters believe the ads are deceptive, and don’t provide vulnerable people with all of their options until an abortion becomes significantly more difficult.
Others say that while they’re not anti-abortion, they don’t believe that free speech rights should be curtailed because of political opinion.
ARCC Executive Director Joyce Arthur says that despite the benign nature of some of these ads, they can still have a lasting impact on the people who see them.
“But these more ‘sub messages’ can also be harmful as well because women, people who get pregnant, they see those messages, they recognize them, what they are, what they’re trying to do. It’s like a dog whistle, it’s just in between the lines that they read, and it does feel like an attack on our fundamental human rights,” Arthur told 1130 NewsRadio.
Many of the ads featured at transit locations include common slogans for anti-choice groups and often a link to the website of the group that produced the ad.
Arthur says the ads could potentially violate the Canadian Code of Advertising Standards
“That’s considered a part of the ad, because people would go to the website and check it out — if you look at that website, it’s full of misinformation about abortion like exaggerating and scaremongering about abortion risks, and all kinds of things,” Arthur said.
Arthur says many of the ads produced by organizations like Love4Life are misleading and can lead to more harm for those considering an abortion.
“What’s happening is that these messages are masquerading under the real message of ‘let’s criminalize abortion, abortion is wrong, abortion is bad, we need to stop abortion,’” she added.
On the website for Love4Life, the organization claims that abortion up until the point of birth is legal in Canada.
While that can be true, most provinces do have limits on when an abortion can be performed. Late term abortions are incredibly rare and are only performed when there is a serious health risk. In British Columbia, abortions are usually done within 10 weeks of conception. The limit in B.C. is 23 weeks, and abortions performed that late are very rare in the province.
In 2018, TransLink lost a court case and was ordered by the B.C. Court of Appeal to reverse its decision to deny advertising space to anti-abortion group Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform (CCBR).
In a statement to 1130 NewsRadio, TransLink says a public agency must accept advertisements that do not violate any federal, provincial, or municipal laws or advertising standards. As per their advertising policy, it says, “acceptance of an advertisement does not represent TransLink’s endorsement of an advertiser, express or implied.”
At the time, Translink was told they did not consider CCBR’s freedom of expression rights in denying it ad space.
Arthur says anti-choice groups may themselves be violating freedom of expression rights to people who see their ads.
“It’s kind of a violation of freedom of expression in the sense that when you put something on a bus or in a transit platform, people have to walk by it, people have to see it. You’re like a captive audience. And that’s not freedom of expression,” Arthur claimed.
Despite abortion being a settled legal issue in Canada, Arthur says those rights are always at risk.
“It’s just so painful and heartbreaking to watch because people are dying around the world and they’ve died in the U.S. already too. I never want to see that happen in Canada. So we always have to keep fighting back, even though it seems like we’re secure, because we’re not.” Arthur said.
1130 NewsRadio has reached out to Love4Life and the Canadian Ad Standards Council for comment.