I support Senator Stott-Despoja's argument that pregnancy counsellors who won't refer for terminations should advertise the fact.

If Timkin wants to increase the live birth rate in Australia he would be better served improving support for families and single parents so that
1. women with children know they have financial support if the father departs,
2. there is affordable and accessible childcare
3. workers know they can find work that gives them time to be parents
4. children have access to good quality health services
5. children have access to good quality education and training opportunities

Amanda,
You’re “off-topic”
You carry out “deluded rantings”
You’re “very boring”.
You “cannot come up with any comments to address the issue”
You’re “someone who appears to genuinely hate women”
The issue “has nothing to do with you at all”
You should “get a life”
You’re “competing to be the first comment on any article”
You “pursue your paranoid agenda.”

I’ll try and explain the situation another way.

The article incorporates a private member’s bill, choice, abortion clinics, abortion referral, pregnancy counselling services, and public surveys or opinion polls on abortion.

However, a referral for an abortion, (together with prior pregnancy counselling), is only required in WA, and in all other states, it is not required.

The author writes “I am yet to meet anyone who is "pro-abortion"”, but there are minimal statistics and studies being undertaken into abortion in Australia, which makes abortion largely unknown and also unaccountable. I have provided a link showing people in the US, (including doctors), who were highly pro-abortion for monetary reasons, and without adequate controls and accountability in Australia, pregnancy-counselling services can easily become shopfronts for persons who want to make money from abortion also.

The author writes that women should have “control over their bodies and their lives”, but having an unwanted pregnancy is not control, (nor “choice”), and Australia has fallen behind in methods to control unwanted pregnancy. I have proposed a national goal of reducing abortions by 25% every 5 yrs, to help ensure that rates of abortion and unwanted pregnancy decrease, if that’s what people want, (or is it?)

Any statistician will also confirm that surveys and public opinion polls can be easily manipulated, and there is minimal knowledge about abortion in Australia for the public to give informed opinions anyway.

Most of this was mentioned in my earlier posts, and all involves aspects contained in the article.

However the word “woman” (i.e. the mother) was mentioned 14 times in the article, but the word “father” 0 times, and the father is likely considered irrelevant. This now appears to be the norm when female authors write about parenting.

In response to Confused’s question about my last post, perhaps I didn’t express myself very well. Senator Stott Despoja criticised Kathy Wolf for being “inaccurate and misleading”. Stott Despoja quotes Wolf as saying the bill would "force pregnancy counselling services to refer women to abortion clinics when requested".

But Stott Despoja has selectively quoted Wolf. What Wolf said was that the bill would “force pregnancy counselling agencies to refer women to abortion clinics when requested, or lose their listing in the White Pages.”

My earlier post quoting from Stott Despoja’s bill shows that Wolf is correct and that it is Senator Stott Despoja who is being misleading and inaccurate.

In broad terms, service providers are in two groups. The first group provide women with help if they wish to continue their pregnancy or if they suffer grief after abortion and the second group are primarily referrers for abortion. So the effect of Stott Despoja’s bill would be to censor service providers offering practical abortion alternatives from the health and help call pages of telephone directories.

Service providers that don’t refer for abortion would be excluded from the health and help pages whether they declared their position or not. And of course, groups that refer to abortion clinics don’t have to declare their position or that they won’t support women through pregnancies because if they support abortion they can’t be biased, can they?

TimKins,

Would you like your doctor to deny you referral to a specialist medical practitioner if that was your request? If I were pregnant and wanted advice about an abortion from a counsellor, I would be very disappointed post fact to learn that the information I had received was inaccurate and biased. I may in fact feel the desire to prosecute the councillor for providing misleading and inappropriate information in my time of need - or at least issue a complaint to a government body. I probably don't have the option to do this currently if councillors are not accountable for the information they provide.

Personally, I don't see what your comments about reducing unwanted pregnancy or abortion rates have to do with this bill. It seems like a smokescreen to scare others from supporting this piece of legislature, which aims to stop the misleading promotion of some counselling services that provide "biased" advice.

Freda, I also don't see the issue behind “force pregnancy counselling agencies to refer women to abortion clinics when requested, or lose their listing in the White Pages.”. If I wanted a referral for an abortion from a group that promotes itself as a pregnancy counselling service, then that is what I should be provided together with rational, medically sound counselling. If I did not obtain this I would go someplace else and I would want the uncompliant service to be de-listed. Having said this I would request information about all of my choices in that situation - not just abortion - but I would want to know that abortion is not ruled out. Perhaps the best way forward would be find a different label or classification for the type of service that doesn't provide this choice? Pregnancy Continuation Support Services perhaps?

Amanda, I don't believe TimKins hates women - I just think he wants to have control of their options. It's not "pro-life" - it's "anti-choice".

Freda - clinics wouldn't lost their listing. They would just not be allowed to list themselves as counselling or referral agencies - they would have to make it clear that they were only willing to offer support and advice about two of the three possible options. Just as abortion clinics are required to call themselves abortion clinics.

Timkins - this isn't just about referrals, it's about infomation and advice. See above - services that provide limited, biased or incorrect information about abortion cannot list themselves as unplanned pregnancy support services, without making it clear that they will not discuss one of the three possible options. This doesn't prevent a single person who doesn't want an abortion from using these services, it just means that people who want advice about all options can find somewhere that will help them get accurate and full information. And no, the article doesn't mention fathers, because I am fairly certain that fathers cannot, by definition, get pregnant. AGAIN, this particular article has nothing to do with the morality of abortion, parenting, child support, or any of your obsessions. It's about honesty in advertising.

Confused/ The Big Fish - you may be right that hate was an innaccurate word, but I'm at a loss to find a word to describe the attitude of someone who thinks that they have the right to dictate what half the population does with their body. Certainly not respect or affection.

Confused
You want to “control” women’s “options”
You are “not pro-life”
You are "anti-choice"

You wrote
“I may in fact feel the desire to prosecute the councillor for providing misleading and inappropriate information in my time of need - or at least issue a complaint to a government body.”

This relates to my first post (which some people believed was “off-topic”, but obviously it was very “on-topic”)

I.E
“What information should or should not be given during counselling?
”Should counselling services become uniform in the information they provide?”

So, who decides what information a pregnancy counselling service can or can not give, and who decides if a pregnancy counselling service is operating properly or not?

If the pregnancy counselling service is not operating correctly, then it cannot be accredited as being a pregnancy counselling service. So the senator has a accreditation problem regards pregnancy counselling services, and the senator wants to solve this problem by removing telephone numbers from a telephone book, which will not really solve the problem much at all, as a pregnancy counselling service can continue to operate, but still not be operating correctly.

But pregnancy counselling services, (and even abortion clinics), are not the main problems. They are just No2 problems. The No1 problem is the high rate of unwanted pregnancy.

The senators proposed bill does nothing towards trying to reduce the high rate of unwanted pregnancy, (the No1 problem), and the bill only tries to solve a problem with pregnancy counselling services, (a No 2 problem)

However I have not heard of any other politician or anyone from the abortion industry put forward any suggestions on how to solve the No 1 problem either. So maybe I shouldn’t be concerned about the high rate of unwanted pregnancies also, and just buy shares in an abortion clinic, and hope the rate of unwanted pregnancies increases as much as possible.

Amanda
You are “obsessed”.

The senator mentions “referrals” 5 times, but maybe the senator doesn’t understand that abortion clinics don’t require “referrals”, except in WA.

I still believe Natasha thinks fathers are unimportant.