Canada Pregnancy Center Withdraws From Ottawa Senators Fundraiser 
Email this article
Printer friendly page
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
December 7, 2007
Ottawa, Canada (LifeNews.com) — A Canadian pregnancy center that helps women in difficult pregnancy situations has withdrawn from a fundraiser organized by the wives of the Ottawa Senators hockey team. The move comes after Planned Parenthood officials publicly attacked First Place Pregnancy Centre and falsely accused it of misleading women.
The hockey players’ wives formed a charitable group called "The Better Halves" and named the pregnancy center as one of three groups to receive proceeds from a raffle of players’ items and memorabilia.
The Sens Foundation, the team’s registered charity arm, is matching every dollar the wives raise during the campaign.
But Planned Parenthood Ottawa attacked the pregnancy center so viciously that Terri Mazik, its director, said it would withdraw from the fundraiser to not hurt the wives’ charitable efforts.
"We felt, under the circumstances, they were doing a wonderful thing by including us and they did not deserve to be receiving the negative press," she told the Ottawa Citizen newspaper Friday.
Heather Greenwood, the options program co-ordinator at Planned Parenthood Ottawa, told the newspaper the abortion business "considers them to be an anti-choice organization" because it provides women alternatives to abortion.
Senators Foundation president Dave Ready released a statement saying the foundation "respects the decision of First Place Pregnancy Centre to withdraw from participating in the raffle."
Mazik previously responded to some of the criticism in a press release LifeNews.com obtained.
"I was disheartened to read statements made by our colleagues at Planned Parenthood Ottawa that mischaracterize First Place operations," she said.
"While it is true that First Place does not provide referrals to abortion services, we do provide complete and accurate information on abortion, and allow each woman to make her own decision in a non-judgemental, compassionate environment," Mazik said.
Mazik said Planned Parenthood Ottawa misrepresented First Place by claiming that it tries to trick women into not having abortions and she said the pregnancy center discloses at the beginning of counseling women that it does not make abortion referrals.
ACTION: Contact Planned Parenthood Ottawa at (613) 226-3234 or [email protected] to complain about its mischaracterization of the pregnancy center. LifeNews.com also encourages readers to make a donation to First Place to make up for the lost funding Planned Parenthood cost the center.
Related web sites:
First Place – https://www.first-place.ca
