Counseling

August 12, 2004

Sidewalk counseling is a highly intense verbal interaction between you and a mother who is about to deliver her unborn child over to death. Your goal is to persuade her to keep her baby. You learned about abortion and the circumstances surrounding it in previous study. Now in talking to the individual mother you will add the personal dimensions of her problem to what you already know and make decisions based upon that information.

Keeping the goal in mind which is to save the baby, you constantly probe for more information. When you judge the proper time has come, you try to persuade her to take a step in a life saving direction. This process of accumulating information and influencing behavior in a positive way also occurs within each of the separate steps which make up the process of counseling.

What you want to accomplish step by step

1. Get her attention
2. Get her to stop and talk:

• Get her to like you
• Get her to listen to you
• Get a dialogue going
  

3. Get her away from the abortuary:

• Get her to go with you to the crisis pregnancy center
• Get her to go with you to a coffee shop for quiet conversation
  

4. Find out her problem
5. Indicate a way out of her problem
6. Get her moving on a life saving path
7. Get her name and telephone number for follow up
8. Follow up

In practice you will find that these steps will overlap each other. Also that sometimes you can skip a step and sometimes you have to go back. You should always keep in mind where you are trying to lead her and what you want her to do. Don’t talk aimlessly. Probe for information and try to get her to do something positive. As you find out new things about her modify or even scrap the old plan of action and invent a new one based on the new circumstances.

Getting her to stop and talk

This is most certainly the hardest task. Counseling doesn’t begin until you have a chance to talk. Only if you fail to get her stopped and talking should you offer to give her pro-life literature. “I’m sorry you feel don’t have time to talk. Please take this and read it inside, it’s important for you to know there are alternatives to abortion.” If she accepts the literature try again to start a conversation.

The help you offer

Some of the services your local crisis pregnancy center may offer or that your network may know about are these:

Free testing for pregnancy
Free ultrasounds
Adoption services
Medical and prenatal care
Living quarters and safe houses
Schooling for young girls
Day care

You should incorporate your knowledge of these services into your talk in order to convince her to have the baby.

Dealing with lying

Many of the women you are trying to help will lie to you. Most often the purpose of the lie is to keep you from talking to them. The way you handle liars is to pretend to believe them and introduce the same information as you would had they told you the truth.

Woman: “I’m not going for an abortion, only for a test.”

Counselor: “Oh that’s good, because a lot of women are scheduled for abortions here today and they don’t know how badly abortion can hurt them. We try to explain to them that...” Then you continue with your normal delivery.

Later on you could say, “If all you need is a test why don’t you come to our place? Not only is the test free but a doctor comes in on Thursday to give medical exams and pre- natal care. Do you think you might be pregnant?”

So the way to handle a lie is to follow it to where you want to go. Notice too that the counselor ended her words with a question. She did this in order to elicit information and to engage the mother in conversation. Always do this.

Two kinds of abortion clients:

You should decide immediately which of the two basic approaches you will start with. If one approach isn’t working or if you are getting non verbal clues that you’ve made a mistake then switch to the other.

Abortion will hurt the baby
This type of woman has strong maternal feelings. Talk about fetal development. How the baby’s heart is beating after only 18 days. How the baby will probably look like her. Describe how the abortion is done and the terrible pain the baby will feel when he’s ripped to pieces. How much help there is in the local community for mothers in need. How many mothers you’ve helped and how glad they were that they listened to you.

Abortion will hurt the mother
With another type of woman it’s a waste of time to focus on the baby. She has totally rejected it. She has murder in her heart and the only thing that will stop her from killing it is fear that harm will come to herself. Explain to her the dangers of the abortion procedure. Go into detail about how many women were killed or injured at this abortion mill. If you have any derogatory information about the abortionists who kill there, now is the time to use it. Talk about Post abortion Syndrome, the danger that her uterus may be perforated, how relationships are destroyed and the abortion links with sterility and breast cancer.

By Jerome R. Lackner Sidewalk Counselor's Page Posted: August 12, 2004 1:29 PM