Amy:”This is why the measures I have described are so needed.”

These ones?

Amy:”we should be calling out the abortion industry and abortion advocates for opposing common sense measures like making sure women are screened for coercion and pre-existing risk factors for psychological problems.”

It sounds simple and like a good idea but then so does sending a snow ball down a hill.

I’d not want to see woman coerced by shrinks into having unwanted children either or the sneaking in of any laws where a woman with identified psych problems is denied an abortion. I suspect the power we give our psychologists etc is already at dangerous levels.

Maybe a little sign outside a clinic saying “Google it” would be enough.

If women actually WANT decision making counselling, then great, they can. Medicare already reimburses consultations with GPs and registered psychologists who provide independent counselling. And remember in 2007, Tony Abbott introduced a free, pregnancy counselling hotline and despite Government advertising and a great deal of media attention at the time that it was introduced, the hotline received about 430 calls a month during the first 9 months.

I suspect that the "counselling" you would like to be made mandatory, would require all women be made to view an ultrasound, or photos of a late term fetuses (even though the woman may be only 5 weeks), or given statistics and literature which is not based on peer reviewed evidence but flawed studies performed by right-to-life interests and rejected by medical bodies. This is not counselling by any definition.

In a free country where we trust people to make potentially life changing decisions themselves without mandated counselling, eg. getting married, having children, buying a house, going into business, etc etc, many of these choices later end up in catastrophe but I don't hear anyone advocating that the government legislate to make counselling mandatory for these decisions.

To have a termination is a decision that ultimately can only be made by the woman, hopefully with the support of her partner or family. Like all medical procedures, if a woman feels that information provided by the doctor was not truthful or failed to warn of risks, it would be easy to sue the doctor for failing to obtain informed consent. I wonder how many of Tankard Reist's women ever had their claims tested in court?