---
title: "Anti-abortion &#8216;counselling&#8217; services peddling misinformation to vulnerable women"
date: "2014-02-11T14:56:53+00:00"
modified: "2014-02-11T14:56:53+00:00"
url: "https://rationalists.org.uk/2014/02/11/anti-abortion-counselling-services-peddling-misinformation-to-vulnerable-women/"
post_id: 6143
categories: ["Uncategorised"]
---

# Anti-abortion ‘counselling’ services peddling misinformation to vulnerable women

Could abortion make you more likely to sexually abuse your children? To develop breast cancer? To become sterile? The answer to all these questions is, of course, no. But that has not stopped unregulated abortion counselors giving out these warnings.

Reporters from the [Daily Telegraph](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-health/10621472/Abortion-scandal-Inside-Britains-unregulated-pro-life-clinics.html), posing as women considering abortions, went to two Crisis Pregnancy Centres (CPCs) and filmed the advice they were given. The results were shocking. At the Central London Women’s Centre, one reporter was told that there was “an increased statistical likelihood of child abuse” after an abortion, because the procedure broke “natural barriers that are around the child that you don’t cross”. The same advisor said that a woman who had an abortion was 25 per cent less likely to be able to carry a full pregnancy to term. Of course, there is no medical basis for either claim.

There are more than 100 CPCs across the UK. They present themselves as confidential services for women seeking terminations, offering “trained advisors” to provide impartial advice on whether women should go ahead with unwanted or unplanned pregnancies. However, some of these organisations have a strong anti-abortion agenda that is not made clear.

Abortion is an area of health care where the NHS relies heavily on the private sector. More than half of all terminations are carried out by the British Pregnancy Advice Service (BPAS) and Marie Stopes International. As such, their services are regulated by official guidelines. Counselling is provided by trained professionals who are independent of the clinics’ doctors. Women can decide whether to take up the advice service or not: it is recognised that some will have made their minds up already.

CPCs are also privately run, but unlike BPAS or Marie Stopes, they operate independently of the NHS. This means that they are unregulated by any official public body and are not legally obligated to provide medically accurate information – as the Telegraph investigation clearly shows.

These centres frequently make themselves look like official organisations, and since most British women have never heard of them it is easy to be misled. Women who are unfamiliar with health services or unwilling to go to their doctor are likely to be the worst affected; for instance, the very young.

There is a major lack of transparency when it comes to CPCs. The Telegraph notes that “it is often unclear who funds or runs them: many are not listed at Companies House, the official registry of company accounts and directors, or registered as charities.” It is thought that many CPCs are linked to religious groups and modelled on America’s controversial anti-abortion services.

Abortion rights have been hotly debated in recent years. In 2012, the Conservative MP Nadine Dorries lobbied to have the maximum time reduced from 24 weeks to 20 weeks (but was defeated). In 2011, she also got the government to agree to make it compulsory for women seeking abortions to receive independent counselling, although this was overturned in 2012 when Anna Soubry became health minister. Dorries’ argument was that Marie Stopes and BPAS had a “financial incentive” for encouraging abortion, and that their advice could not therefore be totally independent.

An [undercover investigation](http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2011/aug/02/abortion-pregnancy-counselling-found-wanting) carried out in August 2011 by the pro-choice charity Education for Choice found very similar results to today’s report. In its survey of 10 CPCs operated by Christian and anti-abortion organisations, it found “evidence in most of them of poor practice and factually incorrect advice”. This included linking abortion to breast cancer, and showing baby clothes to the women.

Continued evidence of bad practice demonstrates that Soubry was right to shelve plans to make these services compulsory for women seeking abortion. However, the fact that this disturbing trend has been allowed to continue and grow over the course of several years also demonstrates that there must be some regulation and oversight of these organisations, which are peddling misinformation to vulnerable women. Dorries was concerned about established, official abortion providers having an ulterior motive. What about the agenda of the legions of “independent” CPCs, that appear to have no regard for medically accurate information?