Pre-abortion “Counseling” Often A Sham

(Sept. 20, 2008) Sue was 15 when she found herself pregnant and sought help from an abortion center. Rather than getting compassionate counseling and hearing of her options, she says she was treated like "just another stupid teenager who got pregnant."

"Their reasons were I could not take care of myself, let alone a baby. I had no permanent home, and to even think of keeping 'it' was totally selfish on my part. They gave me no options and no information," Sue recounts after getting the abortion.

She says she wanted so much to talk to someone who could offer her encouragement to keep her baby. "Instead I was herded into a room with about ten other girls like cattle and spoken to like I was a piece of dirt and treated as such."

Sue's story is one of many whose experiences are told in a recent book that has just now been published in the United States. The book, Giving Sorrow Words: Women's Stories of Grief After Abortion, by journalist and women's rights advocate Melinda Tankard Reist discusses how pre-abortion counseling today actually contributes to a lack of choice.

Women in Cicero, Berwyn, Stickney, La Grange and nearby Illinois communities would be helped to know that abortion is not always the best decision for every woman. WomanCare Services in Berwyn, IL feels that adequate counseling and education about long-term consequences are needed before an abortion is obtained to properly make this life-long decision.

Most women whose stories are recounted in Giving Sorrow Words felt poorly treated in the pre-abortion process. Counseling for them was non-existent, token or over-directive. Their ambivalence was either dismissed or exploited to secure a "yes" decision, while risks were either not mentioned or simply downplayed, the book says.

Only eight states require that a woman be informed that she cannot be coerced into obtaining an abortion, according to a recent report of the Alan Guttmacher Institute, the research arm of Planned Parenthood. Also, only ten states require informed consent prior to an abortion procedure.