The gospel of shame and
Are faith-based NGOs breaking the law when they refuse to give women information on where to terminate their pregnancies?
Lerato Molefe stares blankly at the sign erected in the yard in front of her. Her eyes are fixed on the blue silhouette drawing of two women with bulging bellies. “FREE pregnancy test” ... “Information on OPTIONS”, the sign reads.
She’s parked in front of the Amato Pregnancy Counselling Centre in Arcadia, Pretoria.
A short, elderly woman exits the house in the yard. Her name is Mariska Verster*. She is a counsellor and helps to manage the centre.
Molefe gets out of her car and slowly approaches the gate. This will be the first time she and Verster meet in person. They’ve only spoken on the phone.
Molefe (26) stretches her hand out to greet the old woman. Instead, Verster welcomes her with a hug.
“God wants you to be here,” Verster reassures her. “Nobody comes here unless it was divinely appointed by God.”
Molefe is about two months pregnant. She came to Verster for counselling before deciding whether to terminate the pregnancy or carry full term. But she is leaning towards abortion.
The pair make their way inside the house. They sit on chairs placed across from each other in what looks like a study room turned into an office.
“What is happening in your heart when you think about this pregnancy?”
“I’m not sure if I want to be a mother. I don’t know if I’ll have a job next year and I’m just also worried about the finances,” Molefe says.
Verster picks up a pregnancy wheel — a small calendar that uses your last menstrual period to help determine your due date — from the table next to her. “Nine weeks pregnant ... which means this baby should come around the 25th of March [next year],” she explains.
But Lerato Molefe is not real. Lerato Molefe is me.
Aquiet murmur passes through the University of Pretoria’s (UP) main campus in Hatfield. Small groups of students are scattered around the university grounds as many have retreated into libraries to study for their midyear exams. The white walls of the female toilets in the Huis-en-Haard Building are plastered with a poster: “Pregnant, alone and confused? It’s good to know there’s someone to talk to.”
A female student says: “These posters are everywhere — even in the campus clinic.” They belong to Verster’s organisation, Amato, which, in the organisation’s own words, “counsels vulnerable women that find themselves in a pregnancy crisis” around Pretoria.
The nongovernmental organisation (NGO) has been operating since 2011, says Verster. According to its website, Amato has helped almost 400 clients in the past year.
Amato also has a counselling room on UP’s main campus. Verster explains: “We are open thrice a week on main campus — on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Wednesdays, we’re at the Mamelodi and Groenkloof campuses and on Thursdays at the medical school campus. If Onderstepoort needs us, we’ll go there.”
A UP staff member and a student, who spoke to Bhekisisa anonymously, say the campus clinic health workers refer pregnant students considering terminating their pregnancies to Amato’s on-campus offices. The NGO has a counselling room in the Roosmaryn Building, opposite the university’s health facility.
“The [university] clinic is not equipped to perform terminations, so pregnant students are referred to Amato when they are confused or want an abortion,” the staff member says. “We’ve asked university management why an organisation that’s clearly against abortion is allowed to operate [as the main provider of abortion counselling] on campus, but we’ve not gotten any answers.”
UP confirmed to Bhekisisa that Amato “provides support to students” at the university. “Amato’s services are not compulsory; students have a choice and are referred to Amato and/or the student counselling unit for counselling if they’re not yet sure how to respond to an unplanned pregnancy and would like to talk through the options that are available to them,” says UP’s director of university relations, Rikus Delport.
When asked about the concerns raised by students and staff members about Amato’s counselling, Delport says the university “will continue to make every effort to ensure that students receive meaningful and quality services when they need them”.
The NGO is also involved at Tshwane University of Technology (TUT) and at Boston College’s Arcadia campus, says Verster. TUT’s media liaison officer did not respond to Bhekisisa’s repeated requests for comment. Boston College distanced itself from having any formal relationship with the centre. “We don’t make use of the Amato pregnancy centre’s services as Boston employs a full-time qualified counsellor to assist with student-related issues. We [have] previously invited them — along with many other organisations — to attend our awareness campaign on site,” says Taryn Steenkamp, branch manager of Boston’s Arcadia campus.
Verster says Amato is sometimes invited to speak to learners in public schools around Pretoria. It operates independently but falls under an umbrella organisation called Africa Cares for Life — a network of over 70 crisis pregnancy centres in Southern Africa, according to an Amato information booklet.
A 2016 study by the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada defines crisis pregnancy centres as “antichoice agencies that present themselves as unbiased medical clinics or counselling centres” mostly run by Christian organisations that generally refuse to refer clients to abortion services or contraception, and “promote misinformation”.
Most of the centres in the United States belong to one of two national evangelical organisations, according to a 2014 study published in the Social Science & Medicine journal. Information about the funding models for such centres in South Africa is scarce, although some experts believe right-wing Christian organisations in the US play a role.
Idecided to go undercover in order to experience Amato’s counselling first hand. During the session, as Lerato, I also told Verster that I had an abortion when I was 17, and requested post-abortion counselling from Amato, in addition to asking advice about my current pregnancy.
“God has put something in here,” says Verster as she presses on her chest with the palm of her hands. “It’s called a mommy heart, and it says: ‘I need to love. I need to care. I need to nourish.’”
The hormones that are “induced during pregnancy create an emotional bond between the pregnant woman and her baby”, she tells me. And having an abortion “pushes this mommy feeling down”.
Verster adjusts her spectacles and touches her pearl necklace. She asks: “Did you have any emotional effects [after your abortion]?”
I respond: “I felt guilty about keeping the secret from my parents and sometimes I wonder what life would have been like had I had the baby.”
Having an abortion causes a lot of negative emotions and often leads to relationship problems, Verster continues. She explains: “Post-abortion counselling helps a woman get to a place where she can say: ‘I’ve lost my baby. I know this was a baby and that the baby is with God, and I need to recognise what was my responsibility.’”
Experts reviewed almost two decades of research into abortions and mental health as part of a 2009 Harvard Review of Psychiatry study. They found no convincing evidence that terminating a pregnancy was associated with any mental health risk. They also said very few studies looked at what else in a woman’s life could influence her feelings after a termination.
To try to answer this, a 2016 study in the British Medical Journal interviewed almost 900 women over four years who had sought out or obtained an abortion. They found that more than a third had at least one symptom of the mental health condition known as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) before they got pregnant. People who experience horrific events can develop flashbacks, nightmares and anxiety as part of PTSD. For most women in the sample, their PTSD was linked to sexual, physical or emotional abuse.
Only 2% of women who eventually terminated their pregnancies during the study said they had PTSD symptoms tied to the abortion — twice as many women attributed their PTSD to intimate partner violence even after seeking out abortions. One in five said their stress was caused by relationship problems that didn’t involve violence.
Verster warns that termination will also affect my studies. Last year,