Instead of offering neutral counselling around pregnancy, many of the UK’s crisis pregnancy centres act as an anti-abortion space, according to research last year by the Education for Choice project. And now CPCs are back in the spotlight, thanks to a sizeable donation to an English CPC - Choices Stortford – from the charitable foundation set up by Brian Souter, the Stagecoach boss.
A report by Education for Choice – part of the young people’s sexual health and wellbeing charity Brook – sent volunteers into CPCs across the country, and we found that far too many give people a dose of anti-abortion propaganda and misinformation, rather than a truly impartial space to talk through their feelings about unplanned pregnancies and come to an informed decision.
After all, when faced with an unplanned pregnancy, surely everyone can agree that people of all ages deserve impartial, non-judgmental and medically accurate information about all the options open to them, including, but not limited to, abortion.
We were really glad to see the media pick up on the uneven quality of counselling provided by CPCs, shining a light on what goes on in these secretive places. But unless you are someone who has Googled “I’m pregnant and I’m not sure whether I want to be”, or are a dedicated pro-choice activist, it’s unlikely you will have come across this issue. Sunshine is the best disinfectant, and if a CPC advertises itself as providing non-directive counselling, the public has a right to know whether this is indeed the case.
Brian Souter has of course a perfect right to spend his fortune as he desires, even if it means trying to keep homophobic laws on the books, or – as in this case – supporting CPCs. But it’s hard not to look at the donation and think that, if he really wanted to reduce the number of abortions in the UK, Souter could have thrown his weight and his cash behind any number of causes – from campaigning for better parental leave and support for single parents, to ensuring that young people are given comprehensive, age-appropriate relationship education, and improving access to contraception and sexual health services.
How will Souter’s donation be used? We can get an idea from Choices Stortford’s Facebook page, which links to an article in a local paper proclaiming that six of its counsellors have received training on how to deliver a “post-abortion recovery programme” called ‘The Journey’.”
It’s hard to find more than the most basic details about this type of programme online, but we found a blogpost by a CPC about it (taken down, coincidentally, after our report’s publication), which said: “Accountability: After the grieving process, a woman may become more open to the part she played in the abortion, and willing to face its consequences”. (See page 16 of our report). This doesn’t sound like the most neutral language in the world to us, and casts doubt on whether use of “The Journey” is compatible with the tenets of non-directive counselling – which Choices Stortford says it offers to people with “post-abortion syndrome”, a pseudo-medical condition much touted by the anti-abortion movement.
The issues of unplanned pregnancy and pregnancy options, including abortion, are ones we have a problem talking about with honesty. It’s really important to note that there is a strong pro-choice majority in the UK. But we can’t ever take our abortion rights for granted: abortion is illegal in Northern Ireland in most circumstances, Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, said in 2012 that he backs cutting the time limit for abortions from 24 weeks to 12, and anti-abortion protests outside clinics are becoming more visible, using tactics borrowed from the US.
An Education for Choice report from 2013 into how abortion is taught in schools found widespread failings, finding that young people were often left “ill-equipped to make decisions about pregnancy”. Our CPC report, meanwhile, found that many of the centres that gave our volunteers misinformation about abortion also go into local schools to deliver sex and relationship education. Improving education about pregnancy options must be a priority for all schools, both to fight myths about abortion, and to reduce stigma.
Money talks. When it comes to crisis pregnancy centres, we have good reason to be worried about what message the anti-abortion pound can communicate to people facing difficult circumstances.
