Korean Job Discussion Forums

jaderedux · Joined: 10 Jan 2003 Location: Lurking outside Seoul

Got to go with desultude on this one. went with my sister to a "pregnancy counselling center" before I came to korea. She had one positive result on HPT and one negative so she wanted to get a test done professionally.

The place offered free pregnancy tests and counselling. Uh whatever...the so called balanced counselling consisted of the horrors of abortion along with some strange facts about if you have an abortion you will have a less than 5% chance of conceiving again.

The "objective" counselling came complete with bloody pictures, There were offers to pray with us....have other people pray with us and home visits to have people help us pray at home. They had tracts that told how abortion leads to more prostitution, promiscous behavior, breast cancer, infertility, not to mention eternal damnation. My personal favorite: You may not be able to breast feed any future children if you have an abortion.

My sister went there because the ad in the paper offered free testing and "objective" counselling about all options available. Not about alternative options but the ad stated all options available.

I think the quote was our staff will counsel you with empathy and objectivity to help you make a decision that is best for you.....something close to that....To me they were FREAKS.

I dragged my sis out of there and almost got into physical altercation with the head nutball as she wanted to get some information for her "files". Like my sister's last name, dob, place of employment, phone number etc. Uh anonymous???? hardly.

There were about 4 in our small town. 2 were closed because of the misleading statements and one closed voluntarily. I don't know if the other is still open. ]

I am sorry for such a long rant but these places tick me off to no end. They do have the right to exist and have an opinion and to have QUALIFIED christian counsellors if they want. But the don't have the right to badger and terrorize women with half truths and horror. And get women in there under false pretenses. That is simply wrong.

Jade ranting away

BigBlackEquus · Posted: Thu Oct 27, 2005 10:56 pm Post subject:

People can say what they want, but I find it somewhat interesting when a person damns the killing of innocent Iraqis that they have no association with, yet OK's the killing of an unborn child that was created by two people agreeing to have sex.

Isn't there a conflict of sorts here? Doesn't it seem somewhat hypocritical?

Don't kill anyone unless it's someone I feel I have the right to kill?

desultude · Posted: Thu Oct 27, 2005 11:11 pm Post subject:

Red · Joined: 05 Jul 2004

pollyplummer · Joined: 07 Mar 2005 Location: McMinnvillve, Oregon

The way you state it is that you already have your mind made up about "these kinds" of organizations, so what's the use in talking about what I do where I work? We're not affiliated with Right to Life or anything like that. My degree included a lot of counseling training, but we don't claim to be professional counselors. I don't do ALL of the counseling. I do some and I supervise volunteers to do some of it. I'm supposed to be more of an administrator, but we don't always have volunteers available. What we do is more like peer counseling. All of our services are free. While our main thing is to do the free pregnancy tests and counseling, what we do more of anything is give stuff away... baby clothes, maternity clothes, formula, high chairs, cribs, strollers, car seats, breast pumps, toddler beds, gates, potty chairs, anything women need for their babies. It's all donated. There is no reason for you to believe me at my word when I say that we speak with them objectively about all of their options, including abortion and what it entails. That is a matter of personal integrity, and I understand why you are immediately suspicious, given then deceptive practices of many other christian pregnancy centers in the US. I do not make decisions for any of the women I see. And sometimes it's hard not to... because they'll come in asking, "what should I do?" and they could be very easily swayed in such a time. But my job is not to save babies. My job is to care for the women who come in there and to help them understand all of their options and give them any support that they need. They're the ones who will have to live with the decision for the rest of their lives. Any of those options include personal sacrifice, whether it be parenting, abortion, adoption, foster care, etc. None of them will be easy for the woman making that decision. So when I say that we're pro-life it means that we are care for living people and that we help support moms and babies however we can, or post-abortive women who need someone to talk to about what they've been through, or whoever. And as far as being pro-life goes, you are far more likely to help a woman carry to term if you show her that you care for her, that she is valuable and that her instincts matter. She is then more likely to think that her baby mattters, too. But we dont twist people's arms. We offer free ultrasounds, free info about abortion, adoption, parenting, foster care, whatever else they want to know about. What we do is not a high profile and there are many centers you will never hear about, simply because they go on quietly helping people without doing anything objectionable or deceptive.

desultude · Posted: Fri Oct 28, 2005 4:22 pm Post subject:

If you are being candid, it sounds more low key than most. And, as you said, given some tactics too often used, we have a right to be concerned. As much as your heart appears to be in the right place, though, pregnancy counseling is best left to the well trained professionals. Why aren't you referring people in crisis with pregnancy to well trained professionals?

I cannot imagine that, if you are personally pro-life and anti-abortion, you could objectively counsel a woman on having an abortion. I sure couldn't.

Personally, I am deeply ambivilant about abortion, but I am also strongly opposed to impeding a woman's right to choose what to do with her own body and a fetus that is fully dependent on it. I am also utterly and completely opposed to manipulation and coercion of other people's decisions, and there is way too much of that in the "right to life" movement.

I have no doubt you believe deeply in what you are doing, and, regarding
your position as an objective counselor, that is what concerns me.