CPA seeks meeting over abortion leaflet

THE Crisis Pregnancy Agency (CPA) is meeting Cura management next week to ask how they intend fulfilling their contract with the State body after Catholic bishops told the service to stop issuing abortion clinic contacts.

Cura receives €600,000 a year from the State body on the basis that women still wanting an abortion at the end of a counselling session would be given the CPA's Positive Options leaflet that lists nine agencies and the services they provide.

The bishops said seven of the nine agencies listed on the leaflet state they would give contact details for abortion clinics if requested during a pregnancy counselling session.

CPA chairperson Olive Braiden has warned that State funding for voluntary pregnancy counselling service could be in doubt.

Ms Braiden, who was not surprised by the bishops' decision, said they wanted to know how it would impact on Cura's services and how they would fulfil their contract with the CPA.

Cura's contract with the CPA is not due to expire until December 2006.

The national executive committee of Cura had asked the bishops for guidance on what was described in the bishops' statement as "this complex moral issue."

The bishops, who discussed the matter during their three-day meeting in Maynooth this week, decided that some aspects of the Positive Options leaflet would need to be changed to be acceptable.

They said they recognised the concern of those who opposed giving the leaflet arose from their commitment to respecting and protecting the life of the unborn child. They feared that offering the leaflet might facilitate an abortion.

But they dismissed as "unfounded" the suggestion that Cura volunteers would give the leaflet to deliberately facilitate an abortion.

Ms Braiden said the CPA would not know whether Cura's contract could be renegotiated until it heard the voluntary organisation's plans for the future.

Meanwhile, Ann Farren, one of four volunteers from Cura's Letterkenny branch dismissed earlier this year for going public to express their reservations about the leaflet was delighted with the bishops' statement.

Ann Farren's husband Séamus, speaking on behalf of his wife on RTÉ yesterday, said he expected all four volunteers to be reinstated.