As we move back into the school year, there is a growing concern among parents and educators that students aren’t getting the sex-ed that they deserve. Over the years, a growing number of anti-abortion “crisis pregnancy centres” (CPCs) have been delivering sex education in public schools using a biased, religiously-based perspective that can be misleading and stigmatizing.
Crisis pregnancy centres often present themselves as impartial medical clinics or counselling centres for pregnant individuals. In reality, most CPCs are anti-abortion organizations with religious affiliations whose primary objective is to dissuade pregnant people from exercising their choice to terminate their pregnancy.
Staffed largely by untrained volunteers, CPCs offer counselling rooted in “traditional” Christian values. They do not refer clients for abortions and frequently share misinformation, such as the idea that most people who have abortions suffer from “post-abortion stress,” a made-up medical condition not recognized by healthcare professionals.
A March 2023 study by the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada (ARCC) and BC Humanist Association (BCHA) reviewed 143 CPC websites in Canada, revealing that most disseminated misleading information about abortion and sexual health. Many CPCs conceal their anti-abortion stance and religious affiliations, thus violating clients’ rights to autonomy, informed consent, and free choice.
Contrary to the 2019 Canadian Guidelines for Sexual Health Education, sex-ed across Canada is inconsistent, with some school districts favouring abstinence-based education. Provincial government guidelines on sex-ed are usually non-specific or quite sparse. This has led to CPCs, presenting themselves as legitimate educators, being invited to deliver biased sex-ed.
Nationwide, 40 per cent of CPCs offer sexual education classes to schools according to their websites or other sources.
For example, in British Columbia at least 11 anti-abortion groups have developed sex education programs. At least three of these are known to be operating in public schools, with several others having done so in recent years.
The study by ARCC and the BCHA found that several CPCs provide sex-ed programs in both private religious schools and public schools across Metro Vancouver and the Fraser Valley. These programs often operate under different names, obscuring their affiliations and misleading educators about their underlying religious or anti-choice agenda.
The five sex education programs identified in BC are:
- SHIFT (Hope for Women)
- S.H.A.R.E. (Options Crisis Pregnancy Centre & Christian Advocacy Society)
- I Stand (South Fraser Pregnancy Options)
- Healthy Relationships (Pregnancy Concerns)
- True to You (Okanagan Pregnancy Care Centre)
These programs emphasize Christian virtues and abstinence, frequently using terms such as “sexual integrity” or “sexual risk avoidance” to deceptively present abstinence as morally superior to premarital sex. They promote the idea that individuals should only engage in sexual activity for reproductive purposes, and only while in heterosexual, married relationships. 2SLGBTQ+ content is also deliberately excluded from these programs, leaving out many students who identify within these groups.
Currently, CPCs are not bound by any sort of regulation anywhere in Canada, unlike abortion clinics and other legitimate medical facilities that adhere to stringent standards related to medical integrity and the optimization of patient well-being. This regulatory gap leaves Canadian youth vulnerable to harmful, biased, and insufficient sex education. The lack of proper information and the presence of misinformation can have serious consequences. We need greater transparency and oversight in the provision of sex education in schools.
Students and teachers want evidence-based sex-ed. In the “Benchmarks for Effective Comprehensive Sexual Health Education” report by the Sex Information & Education Council of Canada (SIECCAN), both youth and professionals call for an education system that is consistent, evidence-based, and addresses the diverse needs of all students. For example, 82.5 per cent of youth believe that access to age-appropriate sexual health education in schools is a basic right; most also support the inclusion of a wide variety of sexual health topics yet reported that their education began later than desired or omitted key topics altogether.
Relatedly, less than a third rated the sexual health information they received in school as good or excellent, and cisgender girls/women, trans, nonbinary, and 2SLGBTQ+ youth were less likely to report that their sexual health education met their needs compared to cisgender boys/men and heterosexual youth.
Similarly, 96 per cent of educators agree that access to age-appropriate sexual health education is a basic human right.
These findings demonstrate the importance of ensuring that all young people have access to the information and skills needed to enhance their sexual health and well-being, tools that they do not receive from CPC-led sex-ed.
To ensure that sex education in public schools is comprehensive and evidence-based, several actions need to be taken:
- Non-Affiliation with Religious Groups: Third parties providing sex education should not be affiliated with religious organizations or groups that oppose reproductive rights or the rights of 2SLGBTQ+ students. Any organization delivering biased or misleading information should be disqualified.
- Adhere to SIECCAN Guidelines: Schools should follow not only their provincial guidelines on sexual education but supplement them with SIECCAN’s guidelines to ensure that sex education is factual, inclusive, and comprehensive.
- Dedicated Funding: Schools need dedicated funding for sex education, reducing the reliance on free, potentially biased programs offered by CPCs.
- Teacher Training: Teachers should receive training to help them feel comfortable and competent to teach such topics themselves, or how to identify qualified sex-ed trainers and to distinguish professional, evidence-based programs from religiously biased ones.
- Clear Policies: Provincial or school district-level policies should require that sex education be professional, unbiased, factual, inclusive, ethical, respectful, positive, accessible, and comprehensive, such as the Vancouver School Board’s policy on Sexual Health Education.
As CPCs continue to expand their reach into Canadian schools and communities, it is crucial to critically evaluate the content and intentions behind their sex-ed programs. If you are a parent concerned that your children are being exposed to CPCs during health class, you can do your part in preventing that by emailing your child’s school principal or school board representative to discover who is in charge of the health curriculum and express your desire for unbiased, factual, and age-appropriate health information, asking related questions at PTA meetings, spreading awareness about CPCs to educators and other parents, and creating a safe environment at home for your children to feel comfortable asking and becoming well-informed about sex-ed topics.
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