Abortion counselling support anniversary

Image, an organisation that provides a Christian response to abortion and helps resource the church in this area, reached its 30th year of service in 2020.

A spokesperson for Image said that in their experience the church has largely seen abortion as a peripheral issue, too sensitive to mention, and so has remained silent and inactive, while many in congregations across the UK (some say as many as one in three women) will have travelled that route.

So how is the silence broken? Image approaches this sensitive area of abortion with ‘grace and truth’, as their values statement captures. ‘We are called “image” because this reflects our core belief that every person is made in the image of God and so has a life of value, whether old, young, only just conceived, disabled or dying.’ Image ‘values people from beginning to end’. This core belief also underpins their practice, since they aim to extend the love of God to all service users, whatever their background or beliefs, by providing unconditional acceptance, agreed time and space, and appropriate support.