Cathy van Spronsen frowns as she looks over the red jogging stroller that takes up most of the space in the small room. “The shoulder straps are missing,” she explains, pointing to the seat of the stroller. “It’s not safe.”
The stroller was donated to Hope for Women, a pregnancy care centre in Abbotsford, but van Spronsen checks every donation carefully to ensure it meets safety standards. After spending some time online to see whether she can buy replacement straps for the stroller, she decides reluctantly that it needs to be discarded. “It’s just not safe,” she determines with concern in her voice.
That consideration for the women who walk through the doors of Hope for Women is evident in everything the workers do. The office is tucked into a strip mall in Abbotsford, but the quiet, calm atmosphere inside is a contrast to the busy, loud parking lot outside. Pamphlets about pregnancy sit neatly on a table by the door, plenty of houseplants brighten the space, and a letterboard on the desk jokes, “We’re on a seafood diet; we see food and we eat it.”
“Abortion is such a controversial topic,” assistant manager Emily Stuart explains. “So to give people space to actually talk about it and be accepted is rare.”
With a social work degree and a year and a half’s experience at Hope for Women, Stuart says it’s “an honour to be someone’s person – that they would walk through the door to take a pregnancy test … share that news with me and maybe no one else.”
The start of the day
The day begins at Hope for Women with a staff meeting. Director Marlo Muscutt gathers her coworkers and volunteers to discuss what’s happening today, client needs, and projects such as overhauling the website. Muscutt is getting ready to head out-of-province on summer vacation, but she ensures her office is prepared to meet the needs of particular clients while she’s away, even letting workers know she’s available by text to two clients should they need additional support.
The office quiets as the four women settle down at their desks. A cell phone starts getting passed around as they text clients about upcoming appointments. Some clients message them to change appointments – a frequent occurrence.
During the next several hours three clients will come in. Each is warmly greeted by the staff. Van Spronsen has a special toy set aside for one client’s toddler, and his mom takes a sippy cup for him on her way out the door.
Most of the women who come into Hope for Women face other difficulties in addition to an unexpected pregnancy. “We see a lot of abuse, a lot of women in unhealthy relationships,” Stuart said.
Other women are dealing with addictions or mental health struggles. Hope for Women connects them with local community resources that can support them.
“Through this work we see so many different areas of inequality and injustice,” Stuart said. “We help women with pregnancy but see how broken the system is and help women with housing, food, etc.”
Cassidy Loewen, a counselling student working as an intern at Hope for Women, answers phones and works the front desk. Her cheerful voice or welcoming smile is usually a woman’s first connection with the centre. “We can actually provide practical support,” which is the best part of the job for her.
A 30-minute drive to the west in Maple Ridge is the WomanCare Pregnancy Centre where director Heather McBride echoes Loewen’s comment about women’s need for support. “Many women have no community, no support. We aren’t raised to know how to care for a baby.”
WomanCare strives to become that support for women and to connect new moms with other supports, such as local churches and other resources where they can find friendship and encouragement.
Heather McBride, director of the WomanCare Pregnancy Centre in Maple Ridge.
“We hold the baby, they have coffee, and we chat.”
Many of the women who come to WomanCare are new refugees or immigrants. “The federal government is slow to process paperwork so clients can’t get MSP. They have nothing; now they are pregnant and need help to get started,” McBride said.
WomanCare helps them find local doctors or midwives while also providing practical needs such as baby and maternity clothing so they can afford to pay their medical until they are approved for MSP.
Some moms come into WomanCare once a week just for a break. “We hold the baby, they have coffee, and we chat,” McBride said. While the clinic staff are Christian, clients come from all backgrounds, including Muslim, Ukrainian Orthodox, and Catholic Filipinos.
“We’re not a political organization,” McBride makes clear. “We’re not here to make a political stand, and we really try to avoid it. People want to pigeon-hole us into pro-choice or pro-life.”
McBride describes the practical reality. “We want people to choose life for their children. But we live in Canada where abortion is legal. We want women to make an informed choice, and many women who come in here are pressured to have an abortion. We try to help them press pause. We don’t make the best decisions in crisis situations when our vision for the future is crowded by fear and judgments. So this is a safe space where women can talk and explore their options.”
WomanCare is hidden around the rear of a strip mall in Maple Ridge, and like Hope for Women in Abbotsford it presents a relaxed and welcoming space. There’s a waiting room, a private sitting room where women can chat with a peer counselor, and a large storage room filled with baby clothing, diapers, wipes, and other essentials for new and prospective moms. Like Hope for Women, WomanCare ensures that women who choose to parent are given support until their baby turns two.
Although opponents often misrepresent the clinics as determined to pressure women out of abortion, both the Abbotsford and Maple Ridge centres strive to be a judgment-free, unbiased refuge where women can simply talk, ask questions, and receive information to make an informed choice.
“Most women who come in here know what they want to do,” said McBride. “They just need someone to listen and support them. Even women who choose abortion express that they were glad they had a chance to talk and have someone listen.”
Donations to pregnancy care centres, including a portable ultrasound. “We help women with pregnancy but see how broken the system is and help women with housing, food, etc.,” says one worker.
Van Spronsen at Hope for Women says the same thing. Some women come in for options counselling and have only a single appointment. They still say, “it was nice just to sit and talk.”
Offering a judgment-free environment is more than just an open and compassionate way to listen to women. Anita Cheung, director of Pregnancy Concerns in Coquitlam, says research shows most of the decision-making by women happens within 72 hours of learning they’re pregnant. “We know it’s a small window, and our clients experience very strong emotions because it is a crisis they are experiencing. So we try to really help them slow down and be compassionately caring so that they can process their emotions.”
Whether a woman walks in the door or calls to ask questions and book an appointment, they receive the same welcome, said Cheung. “We invite them to come in, sit down, and we give them some information about options, such as parenting, abortion, and adoption, so they are able to process some emotions and find out some fact-based information so they can make an informed decision.”
All three pregnancy centres provide free pregnancy tests and offer women peer counseling about their options if their test is positive. Hope for Women also offers non-diagnostic ultrasounds once a week with a professional ultrasound technician.
“So many women need to be surrounded by love and friendship,” said van Spronsen, a peer counselor and manager’s assistant. “When you support a woman and see her response to being supported, being empowered, seeing that there are people there [for her]. I love that … seeing women have the hope they didn’t have before.”
Working in a pregnancy care centre has been personally enlightening for Stuart and shown her “how resilient and strong women are,” she said. “There’s so much mom-shaming, but once you see what a mom is going through, what she’s doing, it’s amazing.”
Canadian pregnancy care centres have so far escaped the wave of threats and vandalism their U.S. counterparts have been subjected to in the wake of the recent Supreme Court decision overturning the Roe v. Wade abortion decision. Angela Franey, executive director of Abria Pregnancy Resources in St. Paul, Minn., thinks the attacks on her centre and dozens of others stem from anger and misunderstanding about abortion and the mission of centres like Abria.
McBride at WomanCare agrees. “The vitriol of some people, in comments in newspapers, makes me realize they don’t even know what we do. They think we coerce women into having their babies, and that really demeans women.”
In St. Paul, the approach toward women mirrors that of the Lower Mainland centres. Franey told The Catholic Spirit her staff “love and help women and provide a variety of information so they know they have options. We never tell them what to do, but instead offer them information to help make a fully informed decision. And we respect their ability to do that.”
That emphasis on informed decision is echoed by the three B.C. directors, each of whom spoke of the fear and judgment women experience when they’re unexpectedly pregnant, the pressure from family and friends, and the women’s need to have a safe, compassionate space to make a decision that’s best for them.