'Too few' pregnant women in crisis seek help

About 70 per cent of women with crisis pregnancies are not seeking counselling or help from any support services, the Crisis Pregnancy Agency (CPA) said yesterday.

Katharine Bulbulia, the agency's new chairwoman, said the number of women seeking such support from the various agencies had increased in recent years to 30 per cent but was still too low. "One would want it to be 100 per cent but we continue to work on that," she said.

Dr Stephanie O'Keeffe, the agency's research and policy manager, said there was an "unmet need" from women experiencing crisis pregnancies.

"Some women will say they have support from a partner or family and they don't feel the need for counselling in that context other than maybe [ for] more information. But in the context where women don't have that, there is definitely an unmet need there in that respect and it's about promoting the services," she said.

The CPA has also expressed concern about the small number of women seeking support after having abortions.

Caroline Spillane, CPA chief executive, said that between 5 and 10 per cent of women who had had abortions availed of medical and counselling services afterwards. "In the UK, looking at a comparative figure, it would be 10 per cent and over so we really need to get to a situation where we would be at least 10 per cent, if not over."

She was speaking at the launch of the agency's annual report by Minister for Health Mary Harney. Ms Harney welcomed the reported reduction in abortions and in teenage births but said there was still a long way to go to reach vulnerable people with unplanned pregnancies.

Last year, 5,042 women gave Irish addresses at British abortion clinics, a reduction of 1,631 on 2001 figures. The number of Irish women under 20 attending British clinics fell by 292 between 2001 and 2006. Births to women under 20 here also fell during this time from 3,087 to 2,427.

"Either [ teenagers] are not engaging in sexual intercourse or they are not engaging in risky sexual intercourse and they are using contraception. All of these things are combining to make a better picture," Ms Spillane said.

Ms Bulbulia said the "vast majority" of women were still having abortions in the UK, primarily for cost reasons. "A smaller proportion have begun to travel to the Netherlands, with very few women going to countries other than the Netherlands and the UK," she said.

The CPA's Positive Options campaign promotes 13 agencies offering State-funded crisis pregnancy counselling services.

Two of these agencies, Cura and Life, have been involved in controversy over their objection to the distribution of the Positive Options leaflet which contains details of agencies which supply abortion information.

As part of the service level agreement, agencies are expected to make the Positive Options leaflet available and there were suggestions that Cura would lose its funding if it did not agree to distribute the leaflet.

Cura, run by the Irish Bishops' Conference, received €674,399 funding from the CPA last year, more than any other service.

Yesterday, the CPA said it had just presented new three-year contracts to Cura and all the other crisis pregnancy services it worked with. The last contract ended on June 30th but no deadline has been set for signing up to the new agreement.

Asked what would happen if Cura continued to refuse to distribute the leaflet, Ms Bulbulia said: "I'm not going to pre-empt anything about what Cura may or may not do. They have an offer from us of a contract for three years. It's in negotiation and really it would be inappropriate to comment further during the negotiation phase."

A spokeswoman for Cura said the negotiations were at an advanced stage but she could not comment any further.