Stop the deception
Posted on the campaign blog ,
June 6th, 2006
Pregnancy Help Australia is the trading name for The Australian Federation of Pregnancy Support Services (AFPSS), formerly the Australian Federation of Pro Life Pregnancy Support services, a peak body for 29 anti-choice groups masquerading as neutral pregnancy counsellors. Last year, they received $300,000 in Federal funding.
The AFPSS promotes their free 24-hour national hotline in the emergency section of the phone directory. What they don’t advertise is the commitment in their constitution “not to advise, provide or refer, directly or indirectly for abortion or abortifacients.†Nor do they promote their ties to the US-based anti-choice group Heartbeat International. (See Heartbeat's press release,
="http://www.heartbeatinternational.org/international_focus.htm"target=_blank">Australian Government Awards Grant to Heartbeat Affiliate.) A similar organisation, Pregnancy Counselling Australia, sent around posters to doctorsÂ’ clinics all around Australia, advertising their “free, confidential, compassionate counsellingÂâ€.
So we thought weÂ’d share a few case studies, recently submitted to the Senate Inquiry by a clinical psychologist, of what kind of harm this "counselling" is really doing.
-A father from a regional area contacted me by phone. His 16-year old daughter was five weeks pregnant as the result of being raped. He and his wife were aware of counselling available about the sexual assault via the Centre Against Sexual Assault (CASA) and had arranged this for their daughter. But the father was phoning to find out where they could get counselling for her around the pregnancy decision. As her father, he felt strongly that she should terminate the pregnancy, as did her local doctor. But, perhaps in part due to the pressure from these people to have an abortion, she now was saying she wanted to continue. He felt out of his depth and he wanted to make sure she had every opportunity to think it all through.
The local sexual assault unit (police) had looked up their list of services and given him Pregnancy Counselling Australia. So he phoned them. He was shocked and distressed by their comments. Once they heard that he favoured his daughter terminating her pregnancy, they called him a murderer. They seemed to have no sympathy for his situation let alone his daughterÂ’s. He hung up on them, in a very distressed frame of mind I phoned the police who had unwittingly put this father onto PCA. They were grateful for my call and shocked to hear that this service, which advertises in the 24-hour Emergency Service section of the phone book, was in fact anti-choice and so unprofessional and unethical.
-24-year old Karen and her husband presented to the clinic with an unplanned pregnancy. They had known about the pregnancy for six weeks and Karen’s pregnancy was now eleven weeks gestation. They had delayed coming into the clinic for an abortion because they had initially contacted a phone pregnancy service to find out about having an abortion. Unbeknown to them this service was a false provider offering “counselling†from an anti-choice philosophy. Karen had been married only a short time, her husband had recently lost this job, Karen was concerned that medication she had been taking might adversely affect the pregnancy, and neither felt ready to become a parent. They contacted the false provider feeling fairly certain that terminating the pregnancy was the right decision for them and for any children they might have in the future. The phone service informed them that abortion was an extremely dangerous operation likely to cause infertility and mental illness. The service would not refer the couple elsewhere, and the couple was left feeling highly anxious and hopeless.
-A woman in her early twenties attended the clinic for problem pregnancy counselling. She explained that she had an 8-month old baby and her partner had walked out on her when she had been 7-weeks pregnant with the current pregnancy. In desperation she had phoned a pregnancy phone counselling service. She spoke to a woman who told her that if she had an abortion she wouldn’t be able to get pregnant again because a large percentage of women having abortions became infertile. The woman suggested that she should continue this pregnancy – at least then she would have two children rather than ending up with one...
-A 40-year old woman attending the clinic told the counsellor: I am 40 years old and I have teenage children and I donÂ’t want another child. But IÂ’ve made it all even worse because I was feeling really worried and so I phoned a service listed in the front of the phone book. This person was so obviously trying to talk me into going ahead with the pregnancy. When I mentioned that I knew there might be risks of DowneÂ’s Syndrome because I was older she said I had nothing to worry about. I knew this wasnÂ’t true and I feel they shouldnÂ’t be allowed to be telling people things that are not medically true.
-A young woman attending our clinic told the counsellor: I rang a counselling line I found in the phone book. I thought I could discuss what I could do about being pregnant – what my options were. But this was not what happened. The woman told me if I had an abortion I would never be able to get pregnant again and that I could die. And she said that they cut the baby up. I was only about six weeks pregnant at the time, which I reckon means it’s not a baby. But I was still really frightened by everything she said. But I knew I had to have an abortion because there is no way I could cope with having a baby at 17. My boyfriend is only 18 and he’s just a student too. They shouldn’t be allowed to scare people like that and tell lies.
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June 7th, 2006
It is misleading and certainly not true what these so called "pregnancy counsellors" are offering.
In regards to the first instance, thank heavens the father rang them up. The poor girl had enough to deal with without some unfeeling, self inflated, uncompassionate zealot telling her to that she had to keep the baby!
HOW DARE THEY!
Thank god (ironic huh) that there are organsiations such as Get Up. Imagine what else they would try to get away with!