You miss your period. Go to the fastest pregnancy testing service and 10 minutes after arriving at their office, the counsellor tells you that you are pregnant. You cry. Like many women, you might not know how you feel about it.

The counsellor sits with you and after a while asks if you know why you are crying. You don't. A wanted pregnancy as much as a dreaded pregnancy can play differently than all one's previous imaginings. You sit for a bit longer and then leave. The counsellor says you could ring to discuss things when or if you want.

Pressure from a charity that offers an abortion service as well? I don't think so.

Our target- and profit-driven culture has deeply misunderstood two things which come to bear on Nadine Dorries's amendment to the health and social care bill.

Firstly, there is the nature of counselling, which is somehow portrayed as exhortation to do something. To speak to a counsellor is not to be guided into a behaviour. Quite the opposite. It is to explore the feelings, the meanings, the options, the conflicts that arise in relation to a discovered pregnancy. It is a space for reflection rather than an invitation to act. If counsellors told you what to do, it wouldn't be counselling. More importantly, it would be disrespectful of the woman and the necessary process she needs to go through in coming to her decision. Pregnancy isn't trivial. Neither is termination.

Equally shockingly ignorant is the assumption that the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS) and Marie Stopes measure their success by the number of abortions they provide. They aren't selling soap powder or shoes. They are not compelled by a need to grow market share and induce people to have abortions they don't need. They are charities who provide dignified services to women, an outcome of their founding principles that women's reproductive and psychological health are crucial.

We don't in this culture impose one-child policies or openly attempt to control women's fecundity. Women fought for the right to take purposeful decisions around their fertility – a stance in contrast to the ethos of our time where "sell, sell, sell" or "slash, slash, slash" is the mantra applied not just to business but to the privatisation of public services.

The recent global SlutWalks with their exuberant and clever slogans such as "a dress is not a yes" and "sex is something you do together, not to someone else", refocused attention on women's sexuality and the need to highlight the continuing assaults around women's bodies. So too did the international summits held by Endangered Species which is fighting against the market-led and highly profitable machinations of the beauty, style, celebrity, diet and cosmetic surgery industries.

The Dorries amendment attempts to situate women's sexuality in the marketplace. To make it about numbers and vested interests. The only interest we should have is to secure sexual equality, and we are still too far away from that.

Oh, and let's not ignore the recent research in epigenetics. Maternal wellbeing is of critical importance to the development of a baby in the womb and to her or his health chances. And to that of the next generation, as the eggs formed in the female foetus will be as old as the woman who goes on to give birth. Creating the optimum conditions for unconflicted pregnancies is another aspect of respect for the woman and her family.

As a young therapist who once counselled pregnant women, I know the poignancy and delicacy of this time spent with a woman – young or approaching menopause – who finds herself pregnant. The demand on the counsellor to be available to follow the women's concerns is paramount and what makes the process so very useful.

The reframing of this issue to be about neutrality of services is a red herring. We require services that are on the side of the individual woman as she struggles to come to terms with this most important decision.

Susie Orbach is a psychoanalyst, convenor of any-body.org and author of Bodies (Profile)