The Catholic Church will for the first time directly establish a counselling and support service for women contemplating abortion as the church mobilises to lower abortion rates and rekindle public debate.
Six weeks after the Prime Minister ruled out any Federal Government-sponsored change to abortion laws, the Archbishop of Sydney, George Pell, will tonight announce, at a Mass in St Mary's Cathedral, the creation of the Centacare Pregnancy Support Program.
And a non-denominational women's organisation, with a stated "pro-life and pro-woman" position, has also been formed to ignite a "groundswell of concerned women who want better choices than abortion".
Cardinal Pell has asked Centacare, the church's welfare arm, to develop a program to provide emotional and practical support to pregnant women, and their partners and families, in an attempt to persuade them to carry to full term.
"Women need real alternatives to abortion, and while the Catholic Church provides many family services, this new Pregnancy Support Program is targeted to meet the specific needs of women contemplating abortion," he said. "We want to respond to the needs of women facing an unexpected or difficult pregnancy by providing them with life-affirming options.
"This will be a professional counselling and support service to women and their partners and families, as well as a referral service for accommodation and appropriate ongoing support services. Obviously spiritual help will be offered if it is requested."
Centacare's program will provide a counsellor, accepting referrals from other Catholic agencies. It will be available to women and their families in Sydney. Similar church-based programs exist in New Zealand and Scotland but not in Sydney.
Last month 43 Australian Catholic bishops announced the formation of a taskforce to review counselling procedures and adoption strategies in the event of unwanted pregnancies, including ways to increase the popularity of adoption.
The Victorian Labor senator Jacinta Collins, who opposes abortion, has backed the new lobby group, as yet unnamed, saying community opposition to changes to abortion laws is not clear cut and the NSW Government's recent attempt to offer greater legal protection to the foetus along with advances in medical science would further muddy public sentiment.
The group's organiser, Rachael Patterson, a Deakin University law lecturer, said the non-partisan, non-denominational women's organisation would deal with social, economic and health issues affecting women, including abortion.
"Although we are certainly not limited to the abortion issue, something we will be trying to change is the way this debate has been structured," she said.
"The labels that are typically used in this debate are not particularly useful. Instead of two sides hurling abuse at one another in a rather sterile debate, we would like to see a more sophisticated debate on how women might be provided with real alternatives. Pretending that 100,000 or so abortions is fine doesn't do women any favours. Nor does asserting that abortion doesn't have any negative repercussions for women.
"On the other hand, however, we are not about criminalising women. If we want to see a reduction in the number of abortions we need to look at why women are having them and look to addressing or removing these causative factors."
Policy options the organisation wants to research include a simple government-backed paid maternity scheme, the waiver of university fees for mothers and subsidised or free child care places for mothers on campuses.