JUDGMENT DAY HAS ARRIVED WITH ABORTION COUNSELLING

THERE have been reports recently that doctors, due to their religious and moral standards, have been refusing to refer women who ask for an abortion.

The last thing a woman who asks for an abortion needs is to be judged by the very people who are supposed to help her when she is in this very vulnerable position.

The Americans are going one step further and have a woman called Rhonda Arias, whose mission is to stop abortion altogether and help women apologise for inflicting death on their foetus.

She is a born-again Christian from Houston, Texas, and specialises in post-abortion counselling in US prisons; her "Oil Of Joy" programme is personally encouraging women to beg forgiveness for their abortions.

I am all for the therapies and rehabilitation in various forms that enable people to heal themselves, but this woman has taken her personal mission too far.

Arias states that the majority of women in prison who have had at least one abortion are there because they developed addictions and depression after the termination. She also claims that women who have a termination end up mentally damaged. This is an unsubstantiated claim and doesn't stand up to any scrutiny.

Brenda Major, a psychology professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, followed 440 women for two years in the 1990s from the day each had her abortion. Just 1 per cent of them met the criteria for post-traumatic stress and attributed that stress to their abortions.

Some medical sources in the US have also balked at the whole idea of Post Abortion Syndrome.

Nada Stotland, a psychiatry professor at Rush Medical College in Chicago and now vice-president of the American Psychiatric Association said: "There is no evidence of an abortion-trauma syndrome."

The women in these prisons taking part in Rhonda Arias's programme could be masking a lot of underlying emotional problems and using the fervent outpouring of grief that Arias encourages. It would be better to service their actual psychological needs instead of leading them to believe that being sorry for a past abortion may stop them going back to drugs.

Arias herself claims that God made her choose this path; but she has had four abortions and this makes me think that either God didn't speak loud enough or she was ignoring the mighty man himself and making her own informed decisions. God forbid!

All I can gather from Aria's estimation is that women are not truly fit to be decision makers about their own fertility.

In Plane State Jail, where Arias runs one of ten, week-long "post abortion counselling" courses, women prisoners are encouraged to talk about the pain their termination caused them.

They are driven to the Chapel of Hope, lay teddy bears at the altar, get up in front of the congregation clutching a dolly to symbolise their lost child and speak in memory of their dead babies. Baby shoes are labelled with messages detailing the pain each woman feels for the unborn child they killed.

This is not therapy; this awful emotional theatrical charade can only strike more guilt into the lonely vulnerable women who look to Arias for solace.

Arias should use her people power to help these women gain better social support, maybe help improve their circumstances and figure out why there are so many unwanted pregnancies instead of trying to ban abortion.

I wonder if the men involved in the conception are rounded up like sorry sperm whales and made to apologise for the insertion of semen that created these lost babies.

I think not. Apologising for fertility and the lack of it has always been a woman's role.

A STAND-UP COMIC ALWAYS GETS A SEAT

THE London Underground is a source of entertainment for me. Millions of people travel daily on the Tube, and yet no-one speaks to each other or even makes eye contact.

The train is so overcrowded that if sheep were transported in this way, there would be a national outcry. Yet they let humans cram in so tight they almost eat each other's hair (and as I'm small, that isn't funny).

I am a chatty Scottish woman, so I talk to anyone within three feet of where I'm standing. Not only does this get me the attention I constantly crave as a comic, but it gives me a giggle at their reaction.

Most of the following statement isn't true, but it makes a good opening line all the same: "Hello, my name is Janey and my cat died in chip-pan fire and once I saw a dead clown in my dreams."

Being the Tube loony has its perks: People jump up, fold away their newspaper, mutter under their breath and scurry to another part of the carriage.

And so I get their seat.

TOOTH FAIRY ENJOYS TASTE OF SUCCESS

IT WAS my daughter Ashley's 21st birthday last week and her father and I both missed it as we were still in London.

Her best mate Victoria threw a surprise party for her and ordered a huge birthday cake.

"Mum, you should see the big pink castle cake I got: it's the one I wanted all my life, but you would never let me have because it's full of sugar," she screamed excitedly on the phone.

When she was growing up, we decided that Ashley would have a limited amount of sweets and virtually no sugar.

Like most Glasgow east-enders, I have really awful teeth, my mouth is half empty and crammed with big black fillings and I didn't want that for my child.

Now she is 21 and has never had a filling or teeth pulled out.

So she can have her cake and eat it.