Crisis pregnancy text service gets proves success

A STAGGERING 10,000 mobile text messages were made to a crisis pregnancy information service in one week last month after a TV campaign was launched to promote it.

The Crisis Pregnancy Agency’s Positive Options text service is proving particularly popular with women aged 15 to 20 since it was first launched at the end of last April with just radio and newspaper exposure. It was receiving an average of around 1,000 requests a month.

The launch of the texting service received much radio and newspaper coverage and received 1,000 requests on the first night it became available.

Text requests sent to 50444 receive a list of six agencies, including Cherish, Cura, Irish Family Planning Association, Life, Pact and Dublin Well Woman.

In many cases the text request is the first step taken by women worried about an unplanned pregnancy.

More information on a selected agency can be received by replying with the first four letters of its name. The reply contains telephone numbers, opening hours and services provided by the agency selected.

Women can also log onto the Positive Options website, which receives almost 23,000 hits a week.

The agency established the Positive Options service because it was concerned that more than one-third of women seeking abortions did not contact any doctor or agency in Ireland for counselling before travelling abroad to terminate their pregnancy.

It is just two years since the agency, the State body established to combat the issue of crisis pregnancy, was established. Last year, almost 3,000 Irish teenagers had babies.

The agency, which is essentially a policy-making body, will next Wednesday launch its first strategy, which will be the State’s response to a decade of debate on crisis pregnancy and the issues of contraception and abortion.

Agency chairwoman Olive Braiden said crisis pregnancy demanded a cultural change that in turn would require education of both men and women in their personal lives.

“Our schools, if they are to totally prepare our children for life, must prepare them for one that fully acknowledges their sexuality,” she said.

Ms Braiden was also glad that the agency had been able to remove the deficit in information for women with unplanned pregnancies.

She stressed, however, that they were not running a crisis helpline. “The service we offer simply gives women information on the organisations that can help them,” she explained. The law allows information on all the options for pregnancy, having a baby, adoption and abortion.

“We are really looking forward to launching the strategy and we will think it will make a major difference in the lives of women with crisis pregnancies.”