SUMMARY

This paper suggests that counselling is a rapidly expanding field in which professional and para-professional workers might combine to produce an effective service, given appropriate selection and training procedures. Initially these are seen as being provided by professionally qualified social workers with relevant experience. The author has used her own social work experience in abortion counselling to exemplify the article and to discuss some of the existing problems for workers and clients alike. The subject of abortion evokes issues of life and death and arouses emotional attitudes and religious and moral fervour. Fierce argument continues to rage between those focusing on the sanctity of life and the preservation of the foetus and those concerned with bringing relief to the woman wishing to terminate an unwanted pregnancy. Indeed, when reading the main protagonists on this highly emotive topic it is clear that a great deal of energy is spent on polarizing the debate rather than on making rational efforts towards finding a basis for discussion. In 1974 The Lane Committee presented its report on the working of the 1967 Abortion Act:1 one of its specific recommendations was that 'appropriate counselling should be available for all patients'. As a social worker with experience of both family planning and termination counselling I should like to discuss some of the issues arising from that recommendation, and to suggest that one way of meeting the demand for the provision of a high standard of counselling would be to employ professionally qualified social workers who seem the most appropriately trained professionals for this role