If “protecting women” entails ambushing them with religiously motivated bureaucratic roadblocks just when all they want is to be not pregnant, then women could do with a lot less protection.

You don’t catch anyone counselling patients about to have their elbows fixed. Why the fuss over women seeking terminations? Plain and simple, you’re not protecting them- you’re just taking the last available opportunity to make her live her life by your rules.

If you disagree with abortion, you should never have one, but you never have the right to harass or paperchase someone into your way of thinking.

I’ll trust the intentions of the belief-based do-gooders like Bronwyn Pike and Tracy A when they advocate for “another layer of support” that involves access to quality and affordable childcare, expanding funding to parenting programs and advocating for RU-486 (mifepristone) to be made available in Australia.

Until such time as all women who are pregnant are forced through a layer of support by the Victorian government; this remains a discriminatory, belief-based, unnecessary procedure.

I never regretted that decision and no amount of counseling would have changed my mind. Women don’t go into these kinds of decisions without any thought at all and no man will ever have to face our choices.

By the way, the psychiatrist said I was the sanest person he’d seen all week.

Do you think that failure to receive conselling to this point means the patient should not receive counselling at all, just because it’s far from the best place to have it?

“If that is the case, do you also advocate for a woman to be evaluated as suitable for continuing a pregnancy at the late term stage as she meets with her midwife?”
The fact that this is a late-term abortion already indicates there is substantial turmoil about the decision, and if the patient has not had adequate counselling about her decision prior to this, she may be made aware of support services that she previously hadn’t been aware of. This may change her decision. Is that bad?

“What criteria does the counsellor use? Will counselling be a meaningful exchange for the client and the counsellor or will the client be largely non-compliant?”
I don’t know. I believe I said in my post that I would be interested in finding out details of this counselling. This would indicate that I don’t know. Shouldn’t this be investigated?

“What will the consequences be for non-compliance? How will the details of a ‘potential client’ be provided to the counsellor without breaching her right to privacy?”
I don’t believe I suggested any ‘consequences’ for ‘non-compliance’ - please point out if this is wrong. Ultimately the choice is the woman’s - or in the case of escalating teenage pregnancies, the child’s - or her parents’.

“Who provides aftercare *if* the client is assessed as unsuitable for a late term abortion? Who pays for this and the upkeep of the child if it is born?”
I don’t believe I’m writing the policy, Suki. Just raising points.

“A woman who has “experienced prior psychological distress” has the right to make a choice.”
Absolutely.

“She is not diminished in her ability to exercise her reproductive rights by her history of mental health.”
Not at all. Did I say somewhere that she had diminished ability?

“Many women who have significant mental health trauma become mothers and many women don’t - It’s their choice.”
Again, I don’t believe I said anywhere that is wasn’t. Just that abortion doesn’t benefit all women all of the time, and that more care should be taken to help ascertain which women will not benefit, and give them the appropriate support prior to, during, and after their decision.

“Your comment is tied neatly with pretty pink and blue ribbons of care and support, but your message remains anti-choice.”
No Suki, that statement is is defensive, patronising and antagonistic, where I don’t believe it is justified. I don’t believe there is anything ‘anti-choice’ about wishing to prevent psychological trauma to women (or children, in the case of teenage pregnancies) for whom the decision to terminate a late-term pregnancy would cause significant depression and grief.

Or do these women not deserve adequate assessment and protection?

The only reason to add any steps to the process of obtaining termination services is to dissuade women from obtaining terminations- and Tony Abbott and his flying monkeys know this fully. It’s nothing but harassment intended to force women to bear children when they don’t wish to.

Why can’t women just get the medical services they need without being harassed with political and religious messages? From a biological and medical standpoint, there’s not a damn bit of difference between a uterus and an elbow. Politics and religion don’t have any place in a conversation about a woman’s medical care decisions between she and her GP. She went to a doc to get medical care, not a political argument or a sermon. If she wanted a bit of political Stoush™, she could hang around Tony Abbott’s electorate office. If she wanted a theological debate, she could go verbally duke it out with George Pell on a Sunday after mass. If she’s at a women’s clinic seeking termination services, she’s clearly not looking for an anti-choice lecture.