- Title
- Shaking a hornets' nest: pitfalls of abortion counselling in a secular constitutional order–a view from South Africa
- Creator
- Vincent, Louise
- Date
- 2011
- Type
- text
- Type
- article
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/10962/141521
- Identifier
- vital:37982
- Identifier
- DOI: 10.1080/13691058.2011.627469
- Description
- There exists an enormous gulf between the aspirations of South Africa's abortion legislation – among the most liberal in the world – and its implementation. One weakness in the provision of abortion services in South Africa is the absence of comprehensive abortion counselling services. On the face of it, the idea that counselling ought, as a matter of course, to be a significant component of a country's termination of pregnancy service provision, seems both straightforwardly sensible and politically innocent. This paper describes how abortion counselling has historically, in many different contexts, been saturated with questionable assumptions about women and their bodies. Counselling has more often than not been deployed, either as the formal policy of states or through informal mechanisms, as a means of curbing the right to abortion rather than deepening the meaning of that right. Differing approaches to counselling emerge as a reflection of contestations over reproductive and gender politics. Specifying an appropriate model for the provision of state-sponsored abortion counselling in the public health sector of a secular constitutional state provokes more of a hornet's nest of dilemmas than is sometimes supposed.
- Format
- 14 pages, pdf
- Language
- English
- Relation
- Culture, Health and Sexuality, Vincent, L., 2012. Shaking a hornets' nest: pitfalls of abortion counselling in a secular constitutional order–a view from South Africa. Culture, health and sexuality, 14(2), pp.125-138., Culture, Health and Sexuality volume 14 number 2 125 138 November 2011 1464-5351
- Rights
- Publisher
- Rights
- Use of this resource is governed by the terms and conditions of the Taylor and Francis Online Terms and Conditions statement (https://www.tandfonline.com/terms-and-conditions)
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Gender Action Forum (GENACT)
Vincent, Louise (Prof)
RU Department of Political and International Studies
SDG 05. Gender Equality
SDG 10. Reduced Inequalities
SDG 03. Good Health and Well-Being
| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| View Details | SOURCE1 | Shaking a hornets' nest.pdf | 602 KB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details |