Wednesday, March 15, 2006

PP, abortion providers push feeling of crisis to sell abortions

Abortion In Washington: Project Rachel Director Testifies before Washington State Pharmacy Board
Planned Parenthood and other family planning providers figure regularly in women's stories of abortion trauma. Most prominently described are failure to take time to adequately assess well-documented risk factors predicting post-abortion psychological trauma, failure to take time to provide adequate information, and failure to take time to proactively provide support for alternative choices.

Each of these failures represents a failure to take sufficient time with women who are experiencing a state of crisis and are in conflict about their choices. A woman's best interests are served by calming the sense of crisis and slowing down her decision-making process, taking time to adequately inform and proactively support alternative choices. Instead, women report that their clinic experience engendered a sense of urgency to make a choice which caused them lifelong negative health consequences.

I was contacted by such a young woman at the beginning of March. Planned Parenthood confirmed her pregnancy on a Tuesday afternoon, scheduling an abortion before the end of her brief visit. The following Thursday the pregnancy was terminated; by evening the young woman was depressed to the point of suicidal ideation. This story has been reported to me in hundreds of variations.

I've noticed this before myself. Though abortion is legal on-demand up to the start of the third trimester, abortion advocates like to present the situation as a crisis that needs to be solved immediately, cashing in on the normal psychology of crisis to make a sale.

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