Decision Assessment and Counseling in Abortion Care: Philosophy and Practice

231 Pages·2012·1.19 MB·English

by  Alissa C. Perrucci

Decision Assessment and
Counseling in Abortion
Care: Philosophy and
Practice
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Decision Assessment and
Counseling in Abortion
Care: Philosophy and
Practice
Alissa C. Perrucci
ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC.
Lanham (cid:129) Boulder (cid:129) New York (cid:129) Toronto (cid:129) Plymouth, UK
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Published in the United States of America
by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706
www.rowmanlittlefield.com
Estover Road
Plymouth PL6 7PY
United Kingdom
Copyright © 2012 by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Perrucci, Alissa C., 1970-
Decision assessment and counseling in abortion care : philosophy and practice / Alissa
C. Perrucci.
p. ; cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4422-1456-9 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-4422-1458-3 (electronic)
I. Title.
[DNLM: 1. Abortion, Induced—psychology. 2. Abortion Applicants—psychology. 3.
Counseling. 4. Decision Making. 5. Family Planning Services. WQ 440]

618.29—dc23
2011051123
™
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American
National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library
Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.
Printed in the United States of America
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To the Counselors
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Contents
Foreword ix
Preface xiii
Acknowledgments xvii
Introduction: Transforming the Way We Think about Ourselves
and Our Work xxi
1 What Is Abortion Counseling? 1
2 The Decision Assessment 19
3 Decision Counseling for Emotional Conflict 27
4 Decision Counseling for Spiritual Conflict 59
5 Decision Counseling for Moral Conflict 87
6 Decision Counseling for Ambivalence 117
7 Understanding Informed Consent 153
8 Decision Counseling for Positive Pregnancy Test Results 173
Bibliography 195
Index 201
About the Author 205
vii
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Foreword
Alissa Perrucci and I first met in the year 2001 at the twenty-fourth National
Abortion Federation annual conference. At this time the second edition of
my book Abortion & Options Counseling: A Comprehensive Reference was
six years old, which is about the same age as Alissa was when I first became
an abortion counselor. When we met, she told me how much she valued and
used my book. It always gratifies me to know it is serving its purpose: to
help others give compassionate care to women seeking an abortion without
as much trial-and-error as I had gone through when starting out in 1976 at the
Hope Clinic for Women.
Neither Alissa nor I knew at our first meeting that ten years later she’d be
asking me whether I would read a chapter of the book she was writing on
abortion counseling and whether I would give her my opinion—was it worth
continuing? I had only to read a few pages and shot back my reply: “Hell,
yes!” (or something to that effect). I feel like an old pioneer woman when I
say, “Back then, we didn’t have a book on abortion counseling.” We’d do it,
learn from each other and from the women we were serving. What we knew
for sure was that we were committed to “being there” for women when they
needed an abortion. As the years went by, we found out more and more what
“being there” meant. For one thing, it meant being “patient centered.”
The importance of being patient centered is central in this book. Alissa
teaches the reader about patient-centered counseling through her philosophy
of abortion counseling and her elegant framework that puts this approach
into practice. She introduces her three-step framework early in the book and
demonstrates how to use it throughout. She emphasizes active listening, not
assuming you and the patient share the same definition of the words she uses,
and asking the kinds of questions that will help to understand her meaning
and elicit the patient’s own answers to her dilemmas.
ix
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