‘Teens Talking to Teens’ About Abortion

‘Teens Talking to Teens’
About Abortion

By Amy Contrada
January 2001

The kids were sweating-out their pregnancy test. Luckily for them, it was negative. Their counselor at the pregnancy center encouraged them to discuss what this scare meant for their future behavior before they ran out the door.

The stage director interrupted the teenage actors. She wanted to see more sweat, more relief — more urge to run away and not deal with it anymore.

Fortunately, these kids were only acting. They are volunteers working with director and author, Cathy Sneidman, former actress and currently head of First Concern Pregnancy Resource Center in Clinton.

Sneidman left her acting career when her daughter was born, given the impossibility of rehearsing all day and performing at night with a little one at home. She now pours her thespian energies into coaching drama at the Imago School in Maynard. And in the past year she has written and produced a dramatic role-play presentation on abstinence for teenage audiences. She hopes to reach teens either before they become sexually active or pregnant.

Her creation, “Teens Talking to Teens,” is a 45-minute role-play. Her team gave five presentations at public schools last year and is now rehearsing for upcoming dates. Two 16-year-olds play a pregnant girl and her boyfriend talking to a counselor, played by an 18-year-old.

Active Since 1993
Sneidman has been at First Concern since 1993. Formerly called Kairos House (kairos meaning “opportunity” in Greek), First Concern is a counseling center serving girls and women struggling with unplanned pregnancies. Strikingly, about 75% of its clientele are teenagers.

In recent years, some crisis pregnancy centers have made changes in order to reach more people. Overtly pro-life or Christian names have been dropped. But the underlying belief of pro-life pregnancy counselors is that many women and girls will choose life if given honest information on their choices.

They have learned from older clients suffering from post-abortion syndrome that many were not fully informed about their options when pregnant. The clients need to be listened to and encouraged to take their time. They need to know that they will be helped and supported throughout the pregnancy as well as after the baby is born.

Sneidman thus presents her clients with the range of choices, including details of their babies’ development and abortion techniques, without saying, “Don’t choose abortion, because it’s killing your baby.” While this sentiment may be in her heart, no one responds positively when confronted with what they see as someone judging them or ignoring their plight while focusing on the baby.

Drama is another non-threatening approach. This is right up Sneidman’s alley, and seems to work particularly well with teens.

Sneidman finds that students relate enthusiastically to performers their own age, and will open up with questions they would hesitate to ask her. Topics in the presentation include fetal development (using life-size models), abortion techniques, post-abortion depression, adoption, single parenting, abstinence, “secondary virginity” and sexually transmitted diseases.

She says it is curious that some public schools hesitate to invite her group, but they have no problem teaching “comprehensive” sex ed (emphasizing contraception and homosexual issues). Sneidman’s group discusses the likely outcomes of teen sex – pregnancy, STDs, psychological problems – while encouraging abstinence. But reality checks and the encouragement of abstinence are not “PC.”

The federal government set aside money specifically for abstinence education (in Title V of the Welfare Reform Act of 1996), but little has come of it. However, independent groups like Sneidman’s have just gone ahead, without any government support.