Report released today – ‘Crisis Pregnancy Centres’ in the UK

EFC is pleased to be able to release the first in-depth investigation of ‘Crisis Pregnancy Centres’ (CPCs) in the UK. Following on from today's reports of two pregnancy counselling centres in London providing biased and inaccurate information we are able to provide further information.

CPCs are organisations independent of the NHS which provide pregnancy counselling – over half also provide sex and relationships education in schools. They are often run by charities which are outwardly anti-abortion or which have ties to anti-abortion organisations. The tactics of CPCs in the U.S have been documented by groups like NARAL, but this is the first full-scale investigation of CPCs operating in the UK.

EFC has identified 135 CPCs in the UK. Just under a quarter of these centres (33) were visited by volunteer mystery shoppers and background research into the remaining CPCs and their affiliations was also carried out.

Unfortunately the majority of CPCs visited were found to be giving misinformation about abortion and/or biased, unethical and unprofessional counselling methods. We are particularly concerned that many of these centres specifically market their services to young women. To give you an example, here are some quotes from the centres visited:

“The only other thing that has been reported with quite strong evidence is the increase in the possibility of breast cancer following termination of pregnancy” Oxford Care Centre (LIFE)

“There’s more risk of infertility from termination that there is from giving birth...some reports will say as low as 1% chance of infertility from termination and some will say as high as 25%” Central London Women’s Centre (Good Counsel Network)

“I do believe that God gives the gift of a baby” Reading Lifeline (Care Confidential)

“The other thing with abortion is the psychological effect of post abortion trauma.. of... the grieving that you lost, ‘cause you know at the moment for some girls it seems like a very quick option, you know and it’s a half day you go in, you’re out but you are left with the emotional turmoil of what you’ve done” Stillwaters Pregnancy Crisis Centre (Care Confidential)

Regular readers of our blog will know that abortion does not increase the risk of breast cancer, infertility or mental health problems. These ‘risks’ have all been discounted by medical professionals and to propose them as serious factors to consider in the decision making process inhibits someone’s ability to make an informed choice about their pregnancy. It is part of the anti-abortion agenda that seeks to limit choice under the guise of offering women support. 

Centres run by Care Confidential and Life do so under the name of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) which has a strict code of ethical guidelines for counsellors to follow. The directive, biased counselling offered in some CPCs cannot be considered good practice. Prominent psychotherapist Phillip Hodson states:

"Counselling is the opposite of conversion.  According to the ethical frameworks of our profession, no counsellor behaves properly by trying to sell to a client their personal religious or political outlook. Such an offence should trigger a formal complaint and - if this is proved - the offenders should be struck off by the regulating body. It goes without saying that supplying misleading medical information would be grounds for further sanction. It is my understanding that the regulator in such cases has always welcomed properly-founded complaints and their website explains how concerned individuals may proceed. I would hope for a swift response before it is suggested that counselling is not competent or motivated to regulate itself". 

EFC has sent an official complaint to the BACP and is awaiting a response.

More worrying still, Care Confidential is the primary service linked to on the front page of the NHS choices website about abortion. The organisation also claims to provide pregnancy counselling in five women's prisons. When the support Care Confidential offer is as sporadic and unreliable as our investigation has found it to be, it is far from acceptable for the NHS to offer their services to people looking for support.

Have a read of the report and watch this space for further developments.

Feminist group uncovers misleading pregnancy counselling in Cambridgeshire

This weekend Feminist Action Cambridge held a demo in Cambridge city centre to raise awareness of local ‘crisis pregnancy centres’ which they feel are ‘using emotionally manipulative techniques’ and misinformation ‘in order to increase the guilt women might feel at having an abortion.’

They sent mystery shoppers to three counselling centres in Cambridgeshire and found that at each one women were being given some kind of false information about abortion and/or subjected to ‘counselling’ which was biased and often based on personal anecdotes.

Counsellors at all three centres spoke about the possibility of suffering from ‘post-abortion syndrome’ after ending a pregnancy, despite this being an invented medical condition. A mystery shopper in Ely was told that ‘some people will have all sorts of traumas about it and dreams about it and sort of lots of awful stuff goes on’, in Newmarket the counsellor claimed abortion could lead to ‘feeling of distance from existing children, inability to maintain a normal routine...feeling depressed, sleep problems, disturbing dreams .’ Counsellors lacked accurate medical information and misrepresented the possible physical complications of abortion. For example, in Newmarket the counsellor read from inaccurate materials; ‘there’s likely to be a higher risk of miscarriage and preterm labour but they haven’t put any, there’s no stats for that. So treat that with a pinch of salt, for the moment.’

Unfortunately these findings from Cambridgeshire support what we know about many other independent pregnancy counselling centres across the country. Volunteer mystery shoppers have reported back to us on centres giving misinformation, or presenting an extremely biased account of the pregnancy options. For example, in Bedford earlier this year a mystery shopper was told that ‘they tend not to do surgical terminations because there’s an increased risk of damage to the woman’s cervix...it can lead in future pregnancies to, the pregnancies falling through the cervix’. Another counsellor in Halifax recounted her own experience and conflated being sterilised after her abortion with a general risk of infertility following abortion:

‘What can happen, and does happen, but not in everybody is it (abortion) can prevent you from having other children. I don’t know how it happens. Also if you have a baby after having an abortion it can quite often not go to full term. I’m not saying they’re stillborn or anything...I don’t think deformity enters into it, that’s a genetic thing. It can affect your future chances of conceiving. I had to be sterilised after mine, that’s what they did in those days.’

In fact, as the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists makes clear, ‘there are no proven associations between induced abortion and subsequent ectopic pregnancy, placenta praevia or infertility.’

We were glad to see local MP Julian Huppert support the group’s call to action. He said:

'It is crucial that all organisations offering information or advice in relation to unplanned pregnancy choices follow evidence-based guidance from a professional medical organisation. Women who seek help in this matter have a very serious decision to make and they cannot make that decision without medically accurate information. And organisations providing that information have a duty to make it crystal clear if they have a particular religious or anti-abortion stance.'

EFC has been campaigning for evidence-based, impartial support with pregnancy decision making for years and we have found that the majority of  ‘crisis pregnancy centres’ are run by organisations which are either transparently anti-abortion, or which, when you dig deeper, have associations with anti-abortion groups. In practice, a number of these centres are giving false, biased and stigmatising information about abortion to the people who visit them.

We call on local commissioning groups and local authorities to investigate pregnancy advice centres, and to clamp down on groups which are in breach of ethical standards in health provision and counselling and may also be guilty of false advertising. We also ask that education, youth and health workers inform themselves about these centres and do not signpost anyone to them should they have concerns.

The EFC pregnancy decision making Best Practice Toolkit offers guidance for investigating independent advice centres in your area.

Banner from the Feminist Action Cambridge demo on 15th December 2012.

The only incentives in life are financial

The myth that underlies The Dorries/Field amendment on abortion is that abortion providers have a financial incentive to promote abortion and therefore their employees do not and cannot provide independent, non-directive support for women trying to make a decision about whether or not to continue a pregnancy.

I’m not a psychologist, but I’m sure if I had more time I could lay my hands on copious literature which finds that people are motivated and incentivised to act by a range of different factors, only one of which is money. I would take an amateurish stab at things such as shared values within your community or amongst your peers and family, strongly held philosophical or religious belief, and more. 

In my experience, for example, those working for abortion providers in any capacity are very strongly motivated by a profound and deeply held belief in a woman’s right to choose the outcome of her own pregnancy and a horror of the known consequences of witholding safe, legal, free and accessible abortion as a real option for women. 

Surely the biggest incentive people have is their own personal belief, and that’s why it’s hard to fathom that during this whole debate on ‘independent counselling’ not a single organisation that was founded on an anti-abortion principles, and staffed by people who oppose abortion, has felt the need to explain how their deeply held belief that abortion is wrong does not provide them with an incentive to dissuade or obstruct women from accessing abortion.

Even in this materialistic world we all inhabit, I still think that strongly held beliefs trump money for most people. So, once again I ask you... all of you who have a strongly held belief – whether grounded in a faith position or otherwise – that every abortion is intrinsically wrong, sinful, damaging and tragic, how can you NOT want to dissuade women from having an abortion. 

More discussion of this is here and here