A British journalist named Jenny Stocks recently went undercover, pretending to be a woman in a crisis pregnancy, in order to investigate the practices of six pregnancy resource centers—some with pro-choice leanings, some with pro-life leanings. Her article about her experience is thorough and balanced, and is a must-read for anyone involved in the pro-life movement. Here were my top takeaways from the thought-provoking piece:
1. Women feel uncomfortable when counselors push for too much personal information. I can see how a counselor could do this in an effort to be friendly, but it’s easy for a woman in such an emotionally stressful situation to feel like her privacy is being invaded. Stocks writes of her experience at one pro-life Christian charity called LIFE:
For more than 20 minutes, Sheila asked a series of personal questions, ranging from where I went to university to the relationship status of my brothers and sisters. It then became clear why she was asking so much about my parents and my boyfriend’s parents. “So your baby’s their first grandchild?” she asked. She then dropped in an anecdote about a young couple whose five-week-old twins had brought ‘so much joy’ after LIFE had helped them…Like all the counsellors I saw, I truly believe Sheila cared about my wellbeing. But I felt manipulated. LIFE describes itself as non-directive (i.e. it won’t tell you what to do), but my experience suggests the opposite.
I have a feeling that the problem here wasn’t so much that Sheila pointed out the truth that a child could bring great joy to a family, but that her previous questions seemed disingenuous in light of their tie to her eventual efforts to influence Stocks not to have an abortion. A woman feeling scared and vulnerable would feel like she opened herself up to someone who didn’t really care.
2. Women feel uncomfortable when pregnancy centers aren’t honest about their agenda. In another part of the piece Stocks says that Sheila, the LIFE counselor, said that she couldn’t give her any information about abortion because they’re a pro-life organization. As someone who had not made up her mind about this issue, Stocks didn’t like that; though it seems like the main problem there is that they represented themselves as a “non-directive” organization, thus Stocks’ expectations weren’t set correctly, and she had gone in hoping to be able to learn more about abortion.
It was worse at the organizations with pro-abortion ties. One sexual health clinic that also provides abortions claimed to offer women “access to comprehensive, impartial and non-judgmental information” about pregnancy. Stocks writes of that encounter:
The message seemed very much to be that abortion was the best option. ‘It goes against our very nature to have an abortion,’ she said. ‘But we do things every day that go against our very nature.’ This was followed by: ‘You want what you want…is it worth having a child because you don’t want to deal with a bit of guilt?’ [...]
The session came to an abrupt end after 29 minutes and I left not knowing the medical or emotional side-effects of abortion. Keeping the baby was not seen as an option at all. I thanked my lucky stars that I wasn’t scared and pregnant for real.
3. Women feel insulted when counselors downplay the difficulties of one path. In both types of centers, Stocks encountered counselors who weren’t upfront about the challenges she would encounter by taking the path they recommended. The centers affiliated with abortion providers glossed over the real trauma that women often experience in wake of an abortion. And she says of her visit to one of the pro-life centers:
[The counselor] carried on trying to explain how to keep my life as it was, but just add a ‘little one’ into the equation. I left feeling angry—I may not yet be a parent, but even I know that a baby changes life dramatically. It might change for the better, but I felt it was wrong and naïve to suggest it might not change at all.
4. It adds to women’s stress if they’re made to feel like they’re incapable of good decision making. Though Stocks didn’t spell this out, you notice that the only time she reported walking away from a session feeling calm and confident is also when she makes the comment that she would likely not abort her child had she really been pregnant. After her meeting with the Christian group CareConfidential, she says:
After offering me a comfy chair and a cup of tea, [the counselor] started by saying: ‘What I can do is tell you what your options are. I can’t tell you what to do: that’s completely your decision.’
And that’s exactly what she did. Over the 50-minute session, she encouraged me to talk through my thoughts on continuing or terminating the pregnancy…it was the first session I left feeling equipped to make my own decision. Had I really been pregnant, I would have considered keeping the baby, without feeling pressured to do so.
In a grave life-or-death situation like this, I can see how it would be easy for a pro-life counselor to lean towards a more heavy-handed approach. But for a woman who feels scared and alone, and has not yet developed her own views about abortion, it seems that that tactic may make her feel disrespected, thus adding to her already enormous stress level and tempting her toward the option that (falsely) promises to make “the problem” go away.
5. Counselors are extremely influential. At the end of the article, Stocks remarks on what is obvious to the reader from following her descriptions of each encounter: Counselors can have a powerful effect on a woman’s emotional wellbeing as well as her decision making process—for better and for worse.
Again, the whole article is well worth reading, especially the part at the end where she talks with women who have actually been pregnant and gone through this process. As I read Stock’s stories of these meetings and the intense effect they had on her, it reminded me of something that Austin Coalition for Life Director Elizabeth McClung often says: As important as pro-life writing or speaking or media efforts are, the real power to transform our culture’s attitude toward abortion lies in our willingness to lovingly engage with those who are contemplating abortion, one person at a time.
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Well written article, I’m smarter for reading it, Thanks.
I especially love your last line: “the real power to transform our culture’s attitude toward abortion lies in our willingness to lovingly engage with those who are contemplating abortion, one person at a time.”
I was pondering this just this morning in the car while listening to the NPR anchor share the news that a judge up there in Austin has struck down the ultrasound law. It’s unfortunate, I guess, but I’d be lying if I said I was 100% comfortable with laws mandating that a woman/doctor HAS to do this or that. It seems a bit, well, demeaning and manipulative—what are they going to do, grab her chin and force her to stare at the ultrasound screen? And it makes the abortion advocates, and those in the middle, continue thinking that the pro-life movement wants to go all Taliban on women and impose our beliefs by force. This does not help us make friends and influence people. I think if we’re ever going to stem the tide on people thinking that abortion is A-OK, it has to be by gently and respectfully influencing the thinking of the people who know, love and trust us. People won’t be open to our pro-life ideas if we don’t treat them with respect, period.
@Ericka,
When I had my youngest, she never turned properly and I was in for a very long, rough, pitocin-fueled labor. Imopted to get an epidural so that I could relax a bit while the doctors tried to turn her before we got to the pushing phase. Before they would administer the epidural- which is a routine procedure that’s considered very safe- by law I had to sit through a 15-minute run down of all the potential complications, etc of an epidural and sign off on it. All while in hard labor. My husband recently had some minor outpatient surgery and he had to have a full hour consultation 24 hours prior. My mother had some skin cancer removed from her face a month back and had the same kind of consultation. The point is that doctors and specialists are regularly required, by law, to inform you of everything they can surrounding any procedure. Why on earth should abortion be different? Performing and showing a woman an ultrasound should be routine for any pregnancy, period. It’s about getting all the information possible and allowing a patient to make their decision from there. If we let doctors pretend that the child inside is just some lifeless “clump of cells” then we’re allowing them to flat out lie to their patients. I know it’s a sensitive topic, but is it really appropriate to subject abortion to lesser standards of informed consent than we do dental work?
Thanks for sharing this article. I totally agree with Elizabeth McClung statement. I agree with MandyP, an ultrasound should be a required form of prenatal care, IMO.
Awesome article! I have 4 kids - the first 2 I had ultrasounds for because I was told it was routine. Not until our 3rd did we learn of our choice. The 3rd we opted not to have an US unless it was deemed medically necessary, which it wasn’t. The 4th we opted not to have an US but it WAS deemed necessary, so we did. I think my point is, informed decision making, not forcing. “Lovingly engage” the women who are contemplating abortion, offer an US, do not demand.
I would like to say, kind of in defense of the pro-life counsellors, as far as I know they volunteer their time, or maybe are receiving a stipend to cover their travel expenses. In other words, they’re there because they care. It always helps to see things from a new perspective, and to be aware of how you’re ‘coming off’ to the client, but keep in mind these people could be doing other things much more profitable to themselves (financially speaking) if they did not care about their clients.
I would like to clarify that I don’t mean ultrasounds should be mandatory at crisis pregnancy centers (although if they’d like to offer them then that’s wonderful) but at actual abortion clinics and facilities. We’re talking about a procedure that has potentially dire physical consequences for the woman involved as well as the child. Most women are not aware of the serious risks they put themselves in by having an abortion and again, informed consent should include all available information. The sad thing is that, in spite of all the wailing you hear from Planned Parenthood and their compatriots, we do an incredibly poor job of regulating the abortion industry in this country. In most states, your local veterinarian’s office must comply with stricter rules and regulations than an abortion clinic.
As far as crisis pregnancy centers go, I would hope they are gentle and loving towards the women who walk through their doors. Lord knows they surely need someone to be truly kind to them at such an emotionally delicate time.
I would guess that most pro-life counselors would consider it a mortal sin to take a neutral position in exploring options.
“In most states, your local veterinarian’s office must comply with stricter rules and regulations than an abortion clinic.” When people make statements like this, I tend to use a tool called a sniff test. This statement fails the sniff test. As a matter of fact, most clinics must meet the same requirements as other out-patient clinics. Because they ARE outpatient clinics. The simple fact of the matter is that it is a transaction between a doctor and their patient, so unless your either the doctor or the patient butt out.
“In most states, your local veterinarian’s office must comply with stricter rules and regulations than an abortion clinic.”
I’m not sure what this actually means. A veterinary clinic could simply have more rules to follow because of the nature of their business. In fact, they could possibly have more rules to follow than a hospital, for example. Where’d you come across this information?
“it is a transaction between a doctor and their patient, so unless your either the doctor or the patient butt out.”
The child gets left out of that equation. No thanks.
“The child gets left out of that equation. No thanks.”
That’s a fine view. As long as it’s the view of the mother. Else butt out, it’s none of your business.
Thank you. I am pro-choice (not pro-abortion) and this is one of the best pieces I have read on the realities of those who need to make a choice. This is why I call myself “pro-choice,” because a choice WILL be made. Whether it is a legal choice, a moral choice, an ethical choice or a right choice by someone’s standards, it will be made and it will be made by the mother. Others will influence her, but no one else will make that choice for her. She must be given the space and tools to make the right choice for her and her child. Ensuring that she has those in a nonjudgmental way by someone she can respect is the best gift anyone can give to the mother and potential child.
“I’d be lying if I said I was 100% comfortable with laws mandating that a woman/doctor HAS to do this or that.”
You failed to comment on the reduction of funds that will close many centers that were helping low-income women on this decision and other completely unrelated health problems. Wouldn’t these topics make good topics for Jennifer to comment on?
“The point is that doctors and specialists are regularly required, by law”
or by their insurance company? Malpractice due to failure to inform?
“It’s about getting all the information possible and allowing a patient to make their decision from there.”
And that’s why the Republican legislature and governor passed it? I think not. They are anti-abortion of course.
“If we let doctors pretend that the child inside is just some lifeless “clump of cells””
I doubt that very many doctors do that.
Last line is most important. That’s the only way.
“Posted by JM on Friday, Sep 2, 2011 10:40 PM (EDT):
Thank you. I am pro-choice (not pro-abortion)”
JM, this comment makes me see red. This “choice” is not comparable to any other scceptable choice. Are you willing to extend your “selective” pro-coice tolerance to a mother of an inconvenient baby or an expensive 10-yr.old or a snotty teenager?!?!?!
Cut the semantucs crap. The “choice” is EITHER life or death for a fellow human being. You cannot be pro-choice and anti-abortion.
PRO-CHOICE = PRO-ABORTION = PRO-DEATH.
Therese,
Every abortion is wrong (except the one you or your daughter or your niece has).
Every abortion or crisis pregnancy is a sad situation. Pro choice is not pro abortion any more than pro catholic is pro priest scandal.
Sorry you disagree with me, Therese. But like or not, a choice will be made by a pregnant woman. You may be right that we need to “cut the semantics crap.” So let’s do. Are you forced motherhood in every situation? Sorry, but to me, that is not “pro-life.” @Rover, thanks for understanding nuance.
“pro-coice tolerance to a mother of an inconvenient baby or an expensive 10-yr.old or a snotty teenager?!?!?!”
Except an embryo is not a snotty teenager or 10 year old. One could come up with thousands of examples of what a embryo is like other than a human. That wouldn’t have any merit on the argument either.
LM, Rover a,d Yeah Right,
An embryo is what it’s unique DNA is: human, frog, dog, snake, plant, etc….
Because it doesn’t work for you, we should ignore the actual scientific facts? Check out any embryology textbook to find out that life does indeed begin at fertilization (not implantation)or work in a high risk labor and delivery unit and care for the patients who are suffering a miscarriage. I have done both as I am a registered nurse (35 years) and a certified science teacher (10 years).
You are choosing to deny humanity to a human being that doesn’t fit your qualifications. It absolutely is a semantics game - and the choice is life or death.
@Therese, I never argued that an embryo isn’t human. You make an assumption of my opinion without knowing me. But again, you have not answered my basic question. Are you in favor of forced motherhood in every situation? Do you recognize that a choice is going to be made by a pregnant woman, anti-abortion laws not withstanding? Do you agree with the article above that the best thing we can do is support the woman with accurate information and a loving, compassionate presence?
Therese: What freedom do people have without reproductive freedom? I don’t deny the fertilized egg is of human origin BUT, is a woman obligated to house, feed, suffer physically and financally and birth an unwanted intruder? Not to mention the social suffering for being “one of THOSE kind of girls”. Women are chattle without reproductive control.
You say yes, I say it is her choice.
My wife had a miscarriage so I know that pain btw. I also have 2 sons.
Whoa! I am one of those,apparently, old-fashioned people who feels the choice comes before sex. (Less than 1% of all abortions are the result of rape.) Since when does being irresponsible with your sexuality give a green light to killing off the result - a human being co-created with God in His image and likeness? “Unwanted intruder” - damnably self-centered view. That intruder was invited in when that mother chose to have sex.
So, yes, I absolutely do believe that the woman who gets pregnant now has a personal responsibility to allow her child to live. She can offer him for adoption if that would work best for her, but kill him? No.
BTW - my 6 sisters and 5 daughters also understand the sanctity of life.
Thanks Therese60640, interesting reply.
“damnably self-centered view”. When it comes to reproductive freedom, yes. We had 2 children, both planned and wanted.
I trust the last statement about you, your sisters and 5 daughters implies all remained pure till marriage and never used birth control before or after. Statistically, that would be very impressive (and none of my darned business!)
Loved the poem from the movie jaws by Quint: Here lies the body of Mary Lee; died at the age of a hundred and three. For fifteen years she kept her virginity; not a bad record for this vicinity.
Be well, Rover.
@Therese. Indeed, one of the choices comes before sex. That is why I support comprehensive, age-appropriate sexuality education, the “comprehensive” part of which is generally opposed by the Catholic bishops. This type of education helps young people know what their choices and their responsibilities are, and equips them with tools to make the right ones.
How about you? Are you one of those who is against both abortion AND comprehensive sex education? If so, you are part of the problem. If not, bravo to you!
JM,
Interesting you should ask. One of the subjects I teach is Health, using the abstinence approach. The girls LOVE hearing that they are not expected to have sex just because the culture pushes it. As an obstetric nurse, I can give them all real facts about birth control - failure rates, damage to health, etc. The chapter on STD’s is especially informative. I give them a demonstration of how I scrub for surgery - and then pull out their protection - a condom! We look at the statistics of the past twenty years - a real eye-opener. We discuss REAL love, not lust. They get it!!!
Now about the research. Several years ago, a study was published in a major pediatric journal comparing sex education and results over a two-year period in the Washington D.C.area. There were over 700 middle schoolers involved. Results: COMPREHENSIVE SEX ED students had a >50% sexual activity rate 2 years later. NO SEX ED were BELOW that number (No surprise there if you’re honest about children modeling adults.) ABSTINENCE ED: sexual activity was closer to 35% in this group two years later. This is, by far, the biggest, most well-designed study on the efficacy of different approaches to sex education yet done. The results only confirm common sense.
Here is a link to just ONE of many studies supporting abstinence teaching. http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/archive/ldn/2010/feb/10020108
Sorry, JM - I firmly believe, based on legitimate research as well as anecdotal evidence, that your approach is a major part of the problem.
“Women feel uncomfortable when pregnancy centers aren’t honest about their agenda. In another part of the piece Stocks says that Sheila, the LIFE counselor, said that she couldn’t give her any information about abortion because they’re a pro-life organization. As someone who had not made up her mind about this issue, Stocks didn’t like that; though it seems like the main problem there is that they represented themselves as a “non-directive” organization, thus Stocks’ expectations weren’t set correctly, and she had gone in hoping to be able to learn more about abortion.”
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Now hold on. The name of the place is LIFE. That in itself suggests something to expect, doesn’t it? To complain about it after the fact seems disingenuous.
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Yeah, Right: culturally-sanctioned genocide is everyone’s business. Also, you can’t get around the fact that every snotty teenager or ten-year-old was once an embryo, and I was, and so were you. Peter Singer may be one of the few on the “choice” side who is actually consistent.
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Mike:
“If we let doctors pretend that the child inside is just some lifeless “clump of cells””
I doubt that very many doctors do that.
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Then for all your presence on this site, and presumably others like it, you evidently haven’t been paying much attention.
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Rover: No, those ones are pretty much wrong as well, regardless of the bonds of blood and affection. I can name a few times in my life when sentiment blinded me to the truth (hindsight is 20/20). And I daresay the right to live is a little more basic right than “reproductive freedom.” What a pregnant woman has is a human child, not “of human origin” and not some kind of disease, parasite, intruder, etc. All of this dehumanizing language is not only ridiculous, it’s an attempt to distance ourselves from what abortion really is. Speaking of women being chattel with no choices, are you forgetting who else often benefits, and arguably more, from getting a woman to kill her baby to cover up HIS irresponsibility or even criminality? This is why Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and others were known to be against it. Things haven’t changed that much.
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JM: Funny, I thought we were the ones who supposedly things in black and white…so either we’re totally on board with contraception or we are “part of the problem”? I am in awe of the sophisticated logic there.
No, JM, people need to realize that sex has a tendency to create babies because that’s largely what it is here for, and with all our human ingenuity we still haven’t yet managed to outsmart nature. In a strange reversal of sense, contraception gets painted as “being responsible.” How in the Sam Hill is it responsible to take ANY risk you can’t afford, as opposed to taking none?
I’ll give just one example, there are many more out there. In my area, a representative of a pro-life organization and a regional VP of Planned Parenthood were invited onto a radio show (in what was originally supposed to be a debate, until the VP backpedaled, but that’s another story). A woman called in lauding PP for having given her birth control when she was in an abusive relationship. She told the clinic worker that she was there without her boyfriend’s knowledge, no questions were asked, and a year later she finally left the dude. Apparently nobody asked themselves why she was reluctant to tell her boyfriend, if she could possibly be afraid of him, or had the training or sense to suggest to her any other resources, and thus the boyfriend got to continue abusing her for another year with the added bonus of not having to be responsible for any babies! And she not only accepted this situation with a bizarre satisfaction, she called in to defend them for “helping” her SO MUCH! This whole travesty of justice to her made me so sad and angry I wanted to cry. If that’s the kind of “help” they offer women—well, they can keep it.
Thanks THERESE60640! It’s great when an expert adds clarity to the confusion.
I saw this mentioned, that when we WERE in school, that life did indeed start at conception. Has that changed? For I love when idiots at abortion clinics and prochoice advocates say “it’s not a baby”. Really? Then how come doctors suggest to mothers not to smoke, drink or do drugs for it can hurt THE BABY growing in the mother’s womb?
Librals such as pro-chiocers really do know how to show their stupidity!—For they love to make things up to try to justify their own dangerous delusions and ideals.
“As important as pro-life writing or speaking or media efforts are, the real power to transform our culture’s attitude toward abortion lies in our willingness to lovingly engage with those who are contemplating abortion, one person at a time.” I think this last comment says it all!
What is ignored is the scientific basis of SEPERATE life that is, a life seperate from the mother. Though the mother may carry the child, the growing child is in and of itself, a seperate being with a distinct genetic code. Many have compared abortion with the removal of a tumor, the excising of a parasite, or other medically necessary procedure to save a mother’s life. In those cases, the tumor has the mother’s genetic code, no problem. The parasite, while having a distinct genetic code itself, will not grow to be human. The parasite is alread at a point where it is an adult, so excising it is not the same as aborting a child.
The argument has also been made that aborting a child is no differnt than removing life support from someone who will not live very far past the removal of the support. This is disngenious at best. Someone on life support, before their support is removed, has their case reviewed to see if the person’s existence off of life support, in the future, is viable. In the case of an unborn child, that viability is guaranteed after at least 6 months in utero. If this were brought up before a judge using the same paramaters, there is no way that the judge would grant an cessation of life support measures.
Let’s admit it…this is all about men keeping their flies and their options open. This is all about men being able to use women for pleasure and then place the burden of murder upon them. Abortion is the method that selfish men use to both use women, and abuse women afterwsrds. For women, many have been sold a bill of goods that tells them that killing a child is the same as taking a pill. They are the ones who suffer. In Texas, we had a sonogram bill that did nothing to restrict access to abortion. Pro abortion advocates howled about this…why? Isn’t getting all the information about the procedure called informed consent? Why was the information not part of that consent? Simply this, because at that point, their contention about this being “a piece of tissue” or a clump of cells would go right out the door.
In response to JM and a few others, how can you ignore the fact that we have made it legal to kill the innocent child? Would an unborn child choose death if it had a choice? Our county will put you in jail for destroying an eagles egg but does not protect the unborn human.
I personally am one of the unfortunate women that was sent to planned parenthood just a year after abortions were made legal. I was mislead, lied to and pressured and sadly bought into the lies. If I would have seen an ultrasound I would not have gone through with it. I should not have had the choice to kill my baby and will regret it for the rest of my life.
No one ever talks about the damage, pain, emptiness, guilt and shame so many women feel after an abortion. Over the years I have been astounded by the similarities in the shared stories of other post abortive women. The pain and harm that is done to the mothers psyche can last a life time without help and healing. I believe no mother that is honest with herself can say that she felt good about killing her baby. A wonderful video called 180 degrees has another perspective on abortion at heartchanger.com. You can view it for free at this site.
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