We are fortunate in Australia to not have the violent demonstrations so frequently seen in the United States. No, the ‘Right to Life’ (also known as ‘Pro-Life’) movement in Australia is much more subtle than that. Over the years right to life organisations across Australia have become well practiced in the art of deception, setting up hundreds of pregnancy counselling services around the country and promoting them without even a hint that those running the services are actively involved in the right to life movement.

By exploiting a loop hole in the law, the pro-life movement is able to promote their pregnancy counselling services without disclosing their right to life bias. Often, women and teenage girls enter these counselling services thinking they will receive neutral advice and therefore, will be given the opportunity to discuss all available options. These women and girls soon discover the counsellors actively discourage all options leading to the termination of a pregnancy. We are left to wonder just how far some of these counsellors are prepared to go to discourage a client from exercising the abortion option. But if the images displayed on some of these pro-life websites are any indication (the images on Pro-Life Victoria will make you vomit), the poor female doesn’t stand a chance in such a biased and emotionally charged environment.

The Australian Greens have put together an online guide to pregnancy counselling services. The guide lists both neutral and biased counselling services in Australia. If you were looking through a list of names of these services in a phone book or directory, no-one seeking advice about an unplanned pregnancy could tell the difference between those services which are neutral and those with a pro-life agenda.

Online you can easily spot a pregnancy counselling service which has a strong ‘Right to Life’ bias because most of these websites don’t even mention abortion as an option. The very few who do mention abortion, over-emphasise the physical complications related to the procedure and the negative psychological effects.

At the risk of ticking off the pro-life movement in Australia, I would support any move to remove these deceptive practices from the pro-life arsenal. But to be fair, I will disclose my own bias here and state that no, I have never had an abortion and yes, I am pro-choice. But more importantly, I am against deceptive practices in advertising. So long as the pro-life movement discloses their bias when promoting their pregnancy services, they will hear no opposition from me.

In addition to the Australian Greens, Get Up! Action for Australia a politically neutral organisation, has been campaigning to stop these deceptive advertising practices by the pro-life movement. Get Up! takes no position on the abortion debate, it is the deception of women in advertising the organisation is opposed to.

The ‘Right to Life’ movement will argue that abortion is still technically illegal in Australia. However, in my research I could find no recent cases of a woman, doctor, or abortion clinic being charged with an offense as the result of performing an abortion in Australia. There is an active campaign in Australia to repeal the legislation which would make sense when you consider that the abortion drug RU486 is available on prescription and Medicare covers the cost of abortion procedures.