Over the weekend, in the British Columbia city of Chilliwack, the Rosedale Harvest Festival held a parade. One of the groups sponsoring a float was the Chilliwack Pregnancy Care Centre, an anti-abortion clinic known for spreading misinformation about the options available to pregnant women who don’t necessarily want to be pregnant.

And instead of handing out candy (as most floats do), they were giving out mini-fetuses. Their lollipops also had footprints on them.

This is what was handed out at the Rosedale Harvest parade this morning by a pro-life ‘pregnancy care centre’ float. I’m embarrassed of my town but not surprised. Won’t be taking my kids ever again. #chilliwack @GlobalBC @TheProgress @AgassizObserver @NEWS1130 pic.twitter.com/KhPcCfBSQk — Humanist Home (@TheHumanistHome) October 5, 2019

What was in the bag pic.twitter.com/cLAQ8zHsQn — Humanist Home (@TheHumanistHome) October 5, 2019

Besides the obvious, there are reasons this was just a bad idea. Handing out mini-fetuses may have an unintended effect on women who have suffered miscarriages. More importantly, a community parade is no place to pass out propaganda. It’s hijacking an event that’s meant for everybody. Even if it was permitted by the rules, it’s arguably unethical.

But if you’ve ever been around anti-abortion groups, you know how much they love these things. They believe if you can see that a fetus looks like a smaller version of a baby — shocking! — then you couldn’t possibly want to have an abortion. They’re playing with people’s emotions in order to get them to ignore women’s rights, ignore birth defects, ignore what might happen to that fetus if it’s raised in an unhealthy environment, etc. It’s manipulative and it overshadows the very real concerns women often have before they go through with the procedure.

The parade organizers were caught off-guard too. While their rules They said Saturday night that the mini-fetuses came as a surprise to them and that future parades would require groups to limit their giveaways to candy alone.

We understand there were some things distributed in the parade that caused unease. We want to reassure everyone that this came unawares to us as well and we hope from here on out to limit the handing out exclusively to candy!

They need to be more specific or else those anti-choice groups will no doubt give out gummy fetuses…

Truth be told, if the anti-abortionists’ goal was to prevent abortions, they would’ve been better off putting a condom in those bags. But these groups never seem to prioritize contraception, do they?

