The Quest For Meaningful Help On The Other End Of The Line
The Age
Saturday January 6, 2007
'WE SEE ourselves as a group of people who want everybody well informed," said the woman who answered the phone at the Pregnancy Help Line one night this week, her voice steady and reassuring. "So I take it you're feeling pretty shocked?" she says.
"Do you know how many weeks you are? Have you missed one period or more than one?""Just one, I think.""OK, so you're just pregnant. So you've got some time to decide what to do."She thought she was talking to a distressed single woman reeling after a home pregnancy test came up positive. But the caller was actually an Age journalist investigating whether this service, accessed through an umbrella group that receives generous funding from the Federal Government, gives meaningful assistance to women wanting a termination.The same question is being asked of the Government's new pregnancy helpline, after it emerged that two pro-life agencies are to play a key role in setting up the service.The woman on the phone explains how the service provides telephone or face-to-face counselling. "What they'll do is take you through three options: termination, adoption and single parenting . . . ""OK, look I'm pretty sure I'm going to want an abortion. I mean, what else am I going to do? So how do I go about that?""Yes, well most people do opt for that. Now, we're an information service, not a medical or scientific service. We don't refer people to abortion . . . we explain some of the things that may or may not happen in relation to any procedure.""Like what?" "Well, some people have no difficulties with it, most people don't, but some people do have difficulties. That's why we run this service so nobody can say they didn't know. A lot of people when they find out they're pregnant think abortion is the only option, but it's not. Sometimes it just replaces one set of problems with another." She asks whether the father knows about the pregnancy and whether there's any intention of telling him. Sometimes it's worth telling the father, she says. "So are you just going to tell me not to have an abortion? "Oh, certainly not! We don't say to anybody 'do or don't do this'. If you choose an abortion, we're still there to support you - but we just can't refer you."This helpline was until recently run by Pregnancy Help Australia or the Australian Federation of Pregnancy Support Services. (Callers now get referred to the group's state affiliates.) It was also the only pregnancy counselling hotline Canberra directly funded. According to Health Minister Tony Abbott, this type of counselling is still "non-directive" and therefore professional, even though callers don't get abortion referrals. "Non-directive counselling is based on the understanding that in many situations, people can resolve their own problems without being provided with a direct solution by the counsellor," Abbott's spokeswoman says.The Government insists its new helpline will have the same philosophy. But it's hard to escape an underlying paradox. When a government launches a $51 million counselling plan with the aim of reducing abortions, doesn't this raise the danger of the services being skewed to deliver a preferred outcome? "Yes, and that's why we were totally and utterly against the process," says Australian Medical Association president Dr Mukesh Haikerwal. Last March the Government indicated religious groups refusing to refer women for abortion would not qualify for the tender to run the hotline, while also barring counsellors linked to abortion clinics from claiming a new rebate for pregnancy counselling. "I think that was all really fair enough," Haikerwal says. "But now the involvement of vested-interest groups (Centacare and the Caroline Chisholm Society) really brings this whole thing into disrepute again." The two pro-life groups will be part of the working party that produces a training manual for counsellors. The problem, as some see it, rests on the fact that their philosophy prohibits any role in facilitating abortion. Says Melbourne GP Sally Cockburn, also known by her celebrity title Dr Feelgood: "I want a place - a big place - for those sorts of organisations when it comes to setting up something like this. They're very committed to women who want to keep their babies; they assist emotionally, materially and all power to them. But they must respect the law of the land and, provided it's within clinical boundaries, abortion is legal."The helpline's counsellors, Abbott's spokeswoman says, would not be expected to give referrals to any agencies, but "will be expected to provide generic information about where clients can find such information".Given these parameters, Caroline Chisholm Society chief executive Mary D'Elia, doesn't anticipate any conflict between her group's moral stance against abortion and the helpline's "non-directive" counselling brief. In the case of a woman wanting an abortion, D'Elia says the society's current practice is to suggest they see a GP."There's this misconception that as a pro-life service we don't talk about abortion - we do, we explore all three options. But I do think it's important that counselling is independent of abortion providers."Can a service still be genuinely non-directive if it refuses to refer women for abortion?Clinical psychologist Susie Allanson, from East Melbourne's private Fertility Control Clinic, thinks not. "You just can't call that non-directive."Meanwhile, there's no shortage of advice for the minister about more effective measures than helplines for reducing abortions. Subsidise newer, more user-friendly contraceptive pills, says the AMA's Haikerwal, and boost sex education in schools. Swinburne University sociologist Lyn Turney suggests investing more in education programs that promote equality, celebrating parenthood in all its forms and better supporting single mothers.Julie Szego is a senior Age writer.
© 2007 The Age
