State Funded Antiabortion Counselling

An article in the Los Angeles Times (Stephanie Simon, "States fund antiabortion advice", Sunday, February 11, 2007, A1) reviews the increasing efforts of some states to fund antiabortion counselling. Texas and Minnesota have recently begun to provide grants to groups for such counselling. Abortion rights supporters are alarmed, the reporter states, because they prefer that money be spent on family planning and birth control. (I suppose also that abortion rights groups would be also concerned that antiabortion counselling might weaken support for abortion as a right; but the article does not say this.) In view of the influence of boy friends, parents, and other persons on not-married women to have first-time abortions, it would seem necessary to provide antiabortion counselling for balance. Without balance, it would be difficult, especially for young women, to arrive at decisions that reflected their own interests, rather than the interests of others.