Abortion Grief Counselling Association (AGCS) has sent letters to all members of federal parliament asking them to consider strategies to cut the number of abortions, including a ban on coercion.

"Across Australia the (pre-abortion) counselling is a smorgasbord of what some would consider to be state of the art counselling through to plain old sales pitch to vulnerable people in crisis, with the occasional outright coercions,"

"We recommended strategies that give women more time, ensure they are adequately warned, a legal penalty for those who coerce women to abort and for the training of health care providers to identify and treat abortion trauma." – AGCS national coordinator Julie Cook.

There are stringent, regulations on Counsellors. Can we make that assertion for politicians?

If you know of someone who coerces their clients (on any issue) call their peak body and report them. The organisation will take your complaint seriously and the offender will be banned from practicing if an allegation is proved.
Get them out of the system.

Coercion
transitive verb
Inflected Form(s): co·erced; co·erc·ing
Etymology: Latin coercEre, from co- + arcEre to shut up, enclose
1. To restrain or dominate by force
2. To compel to an act or choice
3. To bring about by force or threat

Counselling is about offering information, choice, options and support.
Your assertion that counsellors are motivated by the desire to socially engineer is without basis.

Your legislation is beyond naive.
If you plan to impose "legal penalties" on those that coerce women into having abortions, be prepared to prosecute fathers, boyfriends, partners, casual lovers and husbands in this policy.

Happily pregnant women do not search for alternatives to ‘being pregnant.’ They buy baby clothes, they telephone all their friends and family, they name the spare room the nursery and paint it a ‘calming’ color, and they stay busy being happily pregnant.

Unplanned pregnancies exist, let the information, choice, options and support continue.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 11th, 2004 at 11:51 pm and is filed under Pro-choice. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Click to leave a comment.