100,000 women use crisis pregnancy text service

AROUND 100,000 women concerned about a crisis pregnancy in the past three years have used a State-funded mobile phone text service to get help, it was revealed yesterday.

The Crisis Pregnancy Agency’s Positive Options text service, mainly used by women aged 15 to 20, received a total of 373,000 text messages since it was launched in April 2003.

The agency’s programmes and communications manager Orla McGowan explained that the figure of 100,000 crisis calls was arrived at after account was taken of repeat texts for additional information and of hoax callers.