(LifeSiteNews) – The head of a Canadian pro-life group says she is worried that a bill that could strip pro-life pregnancy centers of their charitable tax status will negatively affect their ability to help new moms who chose life over abortion.
“Are we worried at all? Absolutely. Yeah,” Jean Landry of Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, Right to Life (MJRTL) said in a recent report published in a local news outlet.
Landry said that new legislation targeting pro-life charities seems like an “unfair thing when you’re helping people and then to be shut down.”
Her concerns surround new legislation promised by the Liberal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that could see pro-life pregnancy centers stripped of their charitable tax status. The bill was recently tabled by Canadian Minister for Women and Gender Equality and Youth Marci Ien.
The finance department said the new law will “require registered charities that provide services, advice, or information in respect of the prevention, preservation, or termination of pregnancy” to disclose that they “do not provide specific services, including abortions or birth control.”
Landry noted that should the new law become a reality, her organization won’t be able to help new mothers in need of clothes and other items for their newborns because losing its charitable status would be a death blow as donors would not be able to get a tax receipt.
“It’s just so sad,” she noted, “that someone would pick on groups that are helping others. It just doesn’t make sense.”
Campaign Life Coalition (CLC) raised the concerns with its followers, with its president, Jeff Gunnarson, saying the bill will make vulnerable “the very existence of these crucial (pro-life charities) organizations.”
“They would be forced to close,” he told LifeSiteNews, adding it would leave the women and babies they serve without the “support they need.”
The government says that “under this legislation, a registered charity that provides reproductive health services would need to disclose if, at a minimum, it does not provide the contact information for an abortion services provider and a birth control service provider.”
As it stands, most pro-life charities that help women already state they do not offer or refer abortions, with Gunnarson noting Trudeau’s new rules will place these groups under “unfair scrutiny and perpetuates misinformation from abortion-activist organizations, which falsely claim that they aren’t transparent.”
Gunnarson told LifeSiteNews that with the proposed legislation “the Liberal party is once again reaffirming that it is not the party of ‘choice’ but the party of abortion as the only choice.”
“We call on opposition parties to unite to oppose this legislation,” he said. “It must not pass. Lives depend on it.”
Trudeau has in recent weeks ramped up his abortion rhetoric on social media in an apparent bid to rally his base, consistently boasting about his government’s desire to make killing a child in the womb easier than ever. He has also repeatedly bragged about his pro-abortion record in the House of Commons.
For years, Trudeau has professed his support for abortion despite having been baptized Catholic. Since taking office in 2015, his Liberal government has put forward pro-abortion policies such as stripping pregnancy resource centers of their charitable status for promoting life instead of abortion.