Crisis Line Has Secret Agenda
Sun Herald
Sunday July 30, 2006
KATE is a pregnant teenager. Distraught, she scours the telephone book for a crisis counsellor and hooks up with a 24-hour hotline.
The advice she receives is polite but blunt: termination is not an option. Keep the baby or adopt it out. The counsellor won't even discuss the option of abortion.Kate didn't know she'd rung one of 29 counselling services under the Pregnancy Help Australia umbrella.Pregnancy Help Australia, the only dedicated pregnancy counselling service funded by the Federal Government, doesn't advertise itself as anti-abortion, nor does its website disclose its philosophical position.Its service charter says its counsellors offer "non-directive" advice. But its unpublicised constitution states its counsellors will not refer for abortion or abortifacients.Pregnancy Help Australia receives a whopping $295,000 from Health Minister Tony Abbott to provide "non-directive" pregnancy counselling."Non-directive" is supposed to mean advice that lays out for a troubled pregnant woman her three options: keeping the child, adoption or termination.But advice lines refusing to counsel on the abortion option can parade as impartial because there are no standards of truth in advertising that apply to them.Because their services are free, they aren't subject to the misleading or deceptive advertising provisions of the Trade Practices Act. You'd think Government ministers would want to fix such an outrageous anomaly. But not if they're happy with the hoodwinking, they don't.A private member's bill sponsored by Democrat Senator Natasha Stott Despoja would end the masquerade by forcing organisations to advertise the nature of their counselling - a proposal which has struck dumb the vociferously anti-abortion Health Minister.He has no comment at all on it, says his spokeswoman.Stott Despoja's Transparent Advertising and Notification of Pregnancy Counselling Services Bill 2005 is being scrutinised by a parliamentary committee. It will come before the Senate next month.If it doesn't gain Coalition support it will fail. Labor's Health spokeswoman Julia Gillard says the ALP supports full disclosure of bias by counselling services. But the Government? The Health Minister's silence speaks volumes.Stott Despoja's bill would ensure women at their most vulnerable know if the advice they receive isn't loaded.Its importance will be magnified when Abbott calls shortly for tenders for a $51 million package of pregnancy services, including a 24-hour hotline and Medicare-rebated counselling services.Announcing the package, PM John Howard vowed that the referral process would not be "cooked in favour of a particular attitude". It would be a "completely transparent choice process".There shouldn't be any problems supporting the Stott Despoja bill then, just to make sure, right?
© 2006 Sun Herald
