Hiding the truth (again)

The Focus – August 29th, 2007 by Sarah

I know I promised I would extend upon my first APEC rant today, but I figure there’s plenty of time for that, and enough people ranting about it already for the time being. Today I’ve decided to focus on an issue that is far less prominent, but about ten thousand times more important and relevant, in my opinion anyway, and that is the issue of the Pregnancy Counselling (Truth in Advertising) Bill 2006.

For those of you who don’t know, and many don’t, this issue relates to women, and our right to be given accurate and honest information about what is available to us when making choices about pregnancy. In particular, it’s referring to services that offer pregnancy counselling having to legally specify in their advertisements what sort of advice on pregnancy they offer, and what they don’t. As it stands right now, pregnancy counselling services do not have to provide us with any of this information. I could look up the phone book and make an appointment with a counsellor, completely unaware of the fact that my chosen counsellor is anti-abortion, or has personal issues with single parent families, and will only provide me with information that fits in with his or her personal agenda. Proper legislation would mean, ideally, I could completely avoid having to deal with such bias. Not that I am pregnant. I’m just trying to set the scene.

The reason why I think it’s important for me to be bringing this issue up is because, well, no one else has bothered! This Bill has just been left stagnant for months now, and when bringing up this issue in general conversation, I am more often than not met with confused looks and comments like “What? I don’t even know what that is.” If I’m honest, that’s actually what I said an embarrassingly short time ago, which is just completely unacceptable. This isn’t just about encouraging service providers to be honest, nor is it about the moral and ethical issues of abortion. It’s about acknowledging the value of the reproductive rights of women, and about our right to make informed decisions on what we want to do with our bodies. To put it bluntly, the crux of the matter is choice, and as legislation stands now, women are hindered immensely in making one of the most significant choices of their lives.

So, I suppose my point is, the issue of truth in advertising needs to be brought to the public’s attention, and people need to kick up a fuss about it. Talk to your friends about it, read up about it on the net. It is unacceptable that an issue as significant as this can just be swept under the carpet, particularly when there are so many prominent groups and people championing women’s rights who have the power to emphasise the importance of passing such legislation. I know we all love to think that Australia is such a forward-thinking nation and the gender gap is rapidly decreasing as we speak, but we can’t truly believe this if a woman’s basic right to unbiased, non-judgemental information about such a life-changing event is being violated.

So get talking guys, and let’s get the Pregnancy Counselling (Truth in Advertising) Bill put back on the government’s agenda.