Brenda Cummings, executive director of the Women's Health Rights Coalition, which provides abortion referrals, said the HMO did not do enough to ensure its members received objective counseling. But they have a contractual obligation to know that. And they have an obligation to their patients, who trust them for referrals, to know who they're referring to. Plunkett insists that First Resort can provide objective counseling despite her stated goal of decreasing the number of abortions. That's one of the issues we specifically train our counselors on.
Women leave here and they never know our organizational stance.
Our goal in the counseling room is that women received unbiased, compassionate care. Seeing her child helps a woman make one of the most self-sacrificing decisions of her life. First Resort only provides referrals to adoption agencies and offers prenatal care. Seeking The Undecided Kaiser officials insist that women who specifically wanted abortions were not referred to First Resort. But, mainly, we wanted to inform and counsel as many women who are contemplating abortion as possible.