More honest than most, some abortionists escew the semblence of "counseling"

HT: Jivin' J via Jill Stanek

The Abortioneers: What I Hear You Saying Is...

Part of the pre-abortion process at my clinic is counseling. Clients talk with a counselor one-on-one to review their medical histories, discuss the details of the procedure, ask questions about the aftercare instructions, and work thorough any lingering doubts or concerns they have.

Note that the "counseling" lacks giving the women any actual information unless it pertains to "details of the procedure" and "aftercare instructions". And I doubt that the "details of the procedure" go into any real details of the procedure. "Your baby's heart will continue beating during much of the dismemberment process. He or she will wriggle and squirm so much that it's easier to pull off limbs if somebody presses on your uterus to hold the baby in place. And the edges of the bones can be sharp enough to lacerate your cervix. Then bits of your baby's tissue can get into your blood stream. Brain tissue is the riskiest -- it can cause a fatal clotting disorder." Hm... too many "details of the procedure". Those kinds of "details of the procedure" can interfere with "work[ing] through any lingering doubts or concerns" the woman may have.

And note that it's about "work[ing] through any lingering doubts or concerns", and not about ensuring that the woman is making a fully informed choice. And first and foremost among those things the woman ought to be told is that her distress, and even her rejection of the pregnant state, are not evidence that she won't be able to cope with motherhood. In fact, this distress and ambivalence, and even rejection of the pregnant state, are normal and typically self-limiting. Given an opportunity to bond with their unborn babies, most women will quickly change their minds about wanting to abort, and will begin normal preparations for the impending birth. And given a chance to address their fears, they will typically overcome them.

This has been well known for more than half a century. Planned Parenthood's own Mary Calderone noted, in her summary of the findings of the Planned Parenthood 1955 conference on abortion:

Conference members agreed, and this was backed up by evidence from the Scandinavians, that when a woman seeking an abortion is given the chance of talking over her problem with a properly trained and oriented person, she will in the process very often resolve many of her qualms and will spontaneously decide to see the pregnancy through, particularly if she is assured that supportive help will continue to be available to her.

I seriously doubt that you'll not find an abortion facility anywhere in the United States -- not even one with Charlotte Taft involved -- that tells women this.

"Treating" normal pregnancy ambivalence with abortion -- which is, after all, irreversible -- is every bit as irresponsible as "treating" a stonefish sting by complying with the patient's pleas to amputate the affected limb. Using irreversible and risky "treatments" on self-limiting conditions is appalling, and only the politics of abortion have made it acceptable.

Some clients ... roll their eyes at the idea and assume that counseling is yet another law with which the clinic must comply, a law created with the assumption that women don’t understand what an abortion is or that every human was once a fetus.

But clearly a lot of women undergoing abortions don't understand what abortion is. Planned-Parenthood-trained youth activists are convinced that the typical abortion removes "two cells". Planned Parenthood, the nation's largest perpetrator of abortions, clearly depends on patients not knowing what abortion is; otherwise, their lies would be easily seen for lies, and their patients would never trust them.

But the majority of the clients welcome the opportunity to talk with someone whose job it is to listen and to be pro-choice.

We can go back to what Mary Calderone noted and conclude that by "pro-choice", The Abortioneer means, "prepared to say whatever it takes to make sure they go through with an abortion." If the counselors were really pro CHOICE, the women would be, as Mary Calderone observed, able to resolve their qualms about having their babies. The fact that the patients uniformly end up going through with the abortion -- unless they stop to speak to the prolifers outside -- is abundant evidence of the slant the "counseling" takes.

I actually took the counseling portion of the program for granted until I learned that some very compassionate, professional clinics don’t offer counseling to their clients.

I'd love to know what the Abortioneer means by "compassionate" and "professional". Though if typical pre-abortion "counseling" is anything akin to what Planned Parenthood does, the patients are probably better off without it. They'll walk away with only the misinformation they came in with; they won't walk out with a head full of fresh lies. As is the fact that women "counseled" in abortion facilities have been known to change their minds after the abortion is started -- or even after the abortion is finished and they learn that the baby survived.

It could be a trick to save time ... or minimize cost ..., and it could simply be what has worked and continues to work for individual clinics.

We're paging Captain Obvious here.

Our Abortioneer asks for feedback from abortion workers and patients about counseling.