A formative evaluation and critical analysis of an alcohol and pregnancy intervention in the Eastern Cape of South Africa
- Authors: Graham, Nicola Susan Jearey
- Date: 2023-10-13
- Subjects: Fetal alcohol spectrum disorders South Africa Eastern Cape , Foucauldian discourse analysis , Conversation analysis , Women Social conditions South Africa Eastern Cape , Sex role South Africa Eastern Cape , Cultural hegemony
- Language: English
- Type: Academic theses , Doctoral theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/432541 , vital:72879 , DOI 10.21504/10962/432541
- Description: Some communities in South Africa have the highest documented rates of Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASD) in the world. Interventions to reduce alcohol consumption during pregnancy are crucial, but evaluations of such interventions are sparse. Formative evaluations are indicated to assist in the development of interventions. Harmful alcohol consumption during pregnancy is undergirded by a range of social injustices, including those imposed by colonisation and patriarchy; a feminist, decolonial approach to evaluations is, therefore, important. A research project, consisting of three arms, examined alcohol use during pregnancy in an under-resourced urban area of the Eastern Cape, and this research was one of those arms. An intervention was being rolled out in this area and I gathered a range of data from it. I engaged in a formative evaluation of it, and I reflect on the difficulties that I encountered in this endeavour. In the bulk of this thesis, I examine the power apparatuses and technologies that were used during the intervention to discursively position pregnant women. My analysis was guided by Foucauldian and post-Foucauldian theories, using Foucauldian Discourse Analysis and simplified Conversation Analysis (CA). Power apparatuses of coloniality, patriarchy, and pastoral power were used in the intervention to construct positions for pregnant women who drink alcohol as ignorant children, sinners, criminals, or “Mommies”. The foetus was constructed as a precious, vulnerable baby, while the person with FASD was constructed as the defiled Other, responsible for societal dissolution. The intervention used various disciplinary techniques to exhort women to follow their dictates. Women were generally compliant with being positioned as ignorant children, which absolved them from any blame for pre-natal drinking. However, some resistance was evident. I then introduce an ethics of care and justice, and I argue that pregnant/newly parenting women need to be positioned within such an ethics, which acknowledges both the universal resources that they require for reproductive freedoms, as well as their particular care needs. I highlight the few times when women were positioned in this way in the data, and I look at how the common positions could be altered or expanded to promote such an ethics. I conclude by arguing that alcohol use during pregnancy cannot be separated from the larger context of the cultural hegemony of alcohol use in some communities, and the social injustices that potentiate this use. I provide suggestions for country-wide policies and interventions, as well as specific FASD prevention programmes, and I argue that a feminist decolonising approach, within an ethics of care and justice, should guide interventions at all levels. , Thesis (PhD) -- Faculty of Humanities, Psychology, 2023
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2023-10-13
- Authors: Graham, Nicola Susan Jearey
- Date: 2023-10-13
- Subjects: Fetal alcohol spectrum disorders South Africa Eastern Cape , Foucauldian discourse analysis , Conversation analysis , Women Social conditions South Africa Eastern Cape , Sex role South Africa Eastern Cape , Cultural hegemony
- Language: English
- Type: Academic theses , Doctoral theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/432541 , vital:72879 , DOI 10.21504/10962/432541
- Description: Some communities in South Africa have the highest documented rates of Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASD) in the world. Interventions to reduce alcohol consumption during pregnancy are crucial, but evaluations of such interventions are sparse. Formative evaluations are indicated to assist in the development of interventions. Harmful alcohol consumption during pregnancy is undergirded by a range of social injustices, including those imposed by colonisation and patriarchy; a feminist, decolonial approach to evaluations is, therefore, important. A research project, consisting of three arms, examined alcohol use during pregnancy in an under-resourced urban area of the Eastern Cape, and this research was one of those arms. An intervention was being rolled out in this area and I gathered a range of data from it. I engaged in a formative evaluation of it, and I reflect on the difficulties that I encountered in this endeavour. In the bulk of this thesis, I examine the power apparatuses and technologies that were used during the intervention to discursively position pregnant women. My analysis was guided by Foucauldian and post-Foucauldian theories, using Foucauldian Discourse Analysis and simplified Conversation Analysis (CA). Power apparatuses of coloniality, patriarchy, and pastoral power were used in the intervention to construct positions for pregnant women who drink alcohol as ignorant children, sinners, criminals, or “Mommies”. The foetus was constructed as a precious, vulnerable baby, while the person with FASD was constructed as the defiled Other, responsible for societal dissolution. The intervention used various disciplinary techniques to exhort women to follow their dictates. Women were generally compliant with being positioned as ignorant children, which absolved them from any blame for pre-natal drinking. However, some resistance was evident. I then introduce an ethics of care and justice, and I argue that pregnant/newly parenting women need to be positioned within such an ethics, which acknowledges both the universal resources that they require for reproductive freedoms, as well as their particular care needs. I highlight the few times when women were positioned in this way in the data, and I look at how the common positions could be altered or expanded to promote such an ethics. I conclude by arguing that alcohol use during pregnancy cannot be separated from the larger context of the cultural hegemony of alcohol use in some communities, and the social injustices that potentiate this use. I provide suggestions for country-wide policies and interventions, as well as specific FASD prevention programmes, and I argue that a feminist decolonising approach, within an ethics of care and justice, should guide interventions at all levels. , Thesis (PhD) -- Faculty of Humanities, Psychology, 2023
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2023-10-13
Implementing a sexual and reproductive citizenship intervention refinement instrument for youth sexuality education: a formative evaluation
- Authors: Mthethwa, Thobile
- Date: 2023-10-13
- Subjects: Sexuality education , Sexual and reproductive health and rights , Reproductive rights , Sexual citizenship , Entitlement
- Language: English
- Type: Academic theses , Master's theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/425008 , vital:72201
- Description: While Out of School sexuality education (SE) programmes in South Africa have attempted to bridge the gap in the number of young people who receive SE, there is still a large number of youth between the age groups of 15 to 24 years who lack adequate sexual knowledge. The manner in which sex education is taught and its accessibility is accompanied by challenges, in particular in relation to empowerment. To better understand the effectiveness of sexual education programmes, evaluations of their content is needed. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate whether and how an Out of school SE programme run by Partners in Sexual Health (PSH) promotes understandings of sexual and reproductive citizenship. A formative evaluation of their sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) facilitator’s manual was conducted (owing to COVID the actual programme was not run in the year data for this thesis were collected). To help perform the formative evaluation, the feminist sexual and reproductive citizenship (SRC) framework as conceptualized by Macleod and Vincent (2014) was used. The SRC framework consists of five key principles that, it is suggested, need to be adopted for SE programmes to be inclusive, namely, citizenship as status and practice, differentiated citizenship, private and public interstice, and politics of recognition, redistribution and reparation. An additional principle of inclusive and process-based educational practices was added into the five key principles. To analyse data, template analysis was used which enabled the researcher to create a priori of themes using the Masizixhobise toolkit which is informed by the SRC framework. Findings from this study reveal the interconnectedness between the different citizenship principles. Moreover, while the PSH SRHR programme promotes principles of the SRC framework, there are aspects of the SRC that are lacking from the programme. Therefore, the SRHR manual needs to take into account a spectrum of issues which include but are not limited to the incorporation of sexually diverse differently-abled individuals' sexual experiences and challenges when it comes to accessing SE. This means for SE programmes to achieve inclusivity and to be empowering, they need to encourage individuals to be agentic beings, engage in informed decision-making and encourage young people to take up their rights. , Thesis (MA) -- Faculty of Humanities, Psychology, 2023
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2023-10-13
- Authors: Mthethwa, Thobile
- Date: 2023-10-13
- Subjects: Sexuality education , Sexual and reproductive health and rights , Reproductive rights , Sexual citizenship , Entitlement
- Language: English
- Type: Academic theses , Master's theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/425008 , vital:72201
- Description: While Out of School sexuality education (SE) programmes in South Africa have attempted to bridge the gap in the number of young people who receive SE, there is still a large number of youth between the age groups of 15 to 24 years who lack adequate sexual knowledge. The manner in which sex education is taught and its accessibility is accompanied by challenges, in particular in relation to empowerment. To better understand the effectiveness of sexual education programmes, evaluations of their content is needed. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate whether and how an Out of school SE programme run by Partners in Sexual Health (PSH) promotes understandings of sexual and reproductive citizenship. A formative evaluation of their sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) facilitator’s manual was conducted (owing to COVID the actual programme was not run in the year data for this thesis were collected). To help perform the formative evaluation, the feminist sexual and reproductive citizenship (SRC) framework as conceptualized by Macleod and Vincent (2014) was used. The SRC framework consists of five key principles that, it is suggested, need to be adopted for SE programmes to be inclusive, namely, citizenship as status and practice, differentiated citizenship, private and public interstice, and politics of recognition, redistribution and reparation. An additional principle of inclusive and process-based educational practices was added into the five key principles. To analyse data, template analysis was used which enabled the researcher to create a priori of themes using the Masizixhobise toolkit which is informed by the SRC framework. Findings from this study reveal the interconnectedness between the different citizenship principles. Moreover, while the PSH SRHR programme promotes principles of the SRC framework, there are aspects of the SRC that are lacking from the programme. Therefore, the SRHR manual needs to take into account a spectrum of issues which include but are not limited to the incorporation of sexually diverse differently-abled individuals' sexual experiences and challenges when it comes to accessing SE. This means for SE programmes to achieve inclusivity and to be empowering, they need to encourage individuals to be agentic beings, engage in informed decision-making and encourage young people to take up their rights. , Thesis (MA) -- Faculty of Humanities, Psychology, 2023
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2023-10-13
South African women’s experience of the decision, procedure and recovery from “feticide” and late termination of pregnancy due to the presence of severe fetal abnormality: women’s and health service providers’ perspectives
- Authors: Vorster, Angela Carol
- Date: 2023-10-13
- Subjects: Feticide , Abortion , Late-term abortion , Fetus Abnormalities , Psychological trauma , Grief , Pregnancy loss
- Language: English
- Type: Academic theses , Doctoral theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/432359 , vital:72864 , DOI 10.21504/10962/432359
- Description: Routine antenatal care, including sonography and genetic testing, assist healthcare providers in identifying the presence of severe fetal abnormality. In countries where it is legal, the option to abort such a pregnancy may be presented to the pregnant person. When abortion takes place after the thirteenth week of gestation, it is generally referred to as a late termination of pregnancy and may entail the induction of labour or caesarean section. In cases where termination of the pregnancy is decided upon, and the gestation is further than 21 weeks and six days, the feticide procedure is recommended in order to ensure stillbirth. The feticide procedure entails the injection of potassium chloride directly into the fetal heart in order to ensure fetal demise. Existing literature on “feticide” and late termination of pregnancy (LTOP) owing to fetal abnormalities mostly takes a medical or psychological perspective in researching these procedures. Within the South African context, there are very few studies on feticide and LTOP, with none of these studies (to date – 8 January 2023) taking a feminist approach. This paucity of research that takes into account power relations, structural inequality and factors that affect decision-making and choice is one of the reasons that this study was undertaken. The main research question focused on in this study is: What are South African women’s experiences of feticide and late termination of pregnancy due to the presence of severe fetal abnormality, as related by the women themselves and the health service providers who perform the procedure or provide care? The sub-questions that initially drove the study were: How do the women relate their experience of the process of coming to the decision, undergoing and recovering from the procedure, and how do health service providers relate the experiences of these women? The methodological and theoretical framework employed in this research was a Feminist Social Constructionist approach to Grounded Theory. This reflexive, subjectivist, feminist lens encouraged awareness of the influence of gender, race, class and other structural and systemic factors on women’s experiences within the two healthcare systems. Data collection entailed semi-structured interviews conducted with 12 women, who had undergone feticide and LTOP procedures between one and five years prior to the interviews, in either the public or private healthcare system in South Africa. Semi-structured interviews were also conducted with 13 healthcare providers. The providers included medical specialists and participants from the fields of clinical psychology, genetic counselling and nursing and were employed in public or private healthcare in South Africa. Data relevant to public healthcare users and providers were collected from one tertiary (academic) public healthcare hospital and data regarding private healthcare users and providers were collected from across South Africa. Women’s constructions of their experiences of feticide and LTOP included stark contrasts between public and private healthcare users in South Africa, as well as women experiencing “no choice” and their voices being ignored or silenced. Healthcare providers’ constructions were frequently contradictory, referring to women as having freedom of choice and their needs largely prioritised within the healthcare system, while the providers within the public healthcare system relayed their own frustrations and emotional burden due to systemic failures. Findings from women and providers’ constructions were synthesised into a theoretical understanding of women’s experiences of feticide and LTOP in South Africa, which is grounded in, and emergent from, the data. Women’s experiences of feticide and LTOP in South Africa were conceptualised by framing the three phases of these experiences, namely the decision-making phase (I), undergoing the procedures and in-hospital recovery (phase II) and the recovery phase (III). The most prominent themes emerging in these phases included the schism between the public and private healthcare systems in South Africa, the lack of real choice women experience, as well as the silencing of women and providers with regard to feticide and LTOP. Underlying the three phases, and directly influencing the three prominent themes affecting women’s experiences, were the underlying and insidious structural inequality that undermined reproductive justice with regard to women’s decision-making, experiences of and recovery from feticide and LTOP. , Thesis (PhD) -- Faculty of Humanities, Psychology, 2023
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2023-10-13
- Authors: Vorster, Angela Carol
- Date: 2023-10-13
- Subjects: Feticide , Abortion , Late-term abortion , Fetus Abnormalities , Psychological trauma , Grief , Pregnancy loss
- Language: English
- Type: Academic theses , Doctoral theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/432359 , vital:72864 , DOI 10.21504/10962/432359
- Description: Routine antenatal care, including sonography and genetic testing, assist healthcare providers in identifying the presence of severe fetal abnormality. In countries where it is legal, the option to abort such a pregnancy may be presented to the pregnant person. When abortion takes place after the thirteenth week of gestation, it is generally referred to as a late termination of pregnancy and may entail the induction of labour or caesarean section. In cases where termination of the pregnancy is decided upon, and the gestation is further than 21 weeks and six days, the feticide procedure is recommended in order to ensure stillbirth. The feticide procedure entails the injection of potassium chloride directly into the fetal heart in order to ensure fetal demise. Existing literature on “feticide” and late termination of pregnancy (LTOP) owing to fetal abnormalities mostly takes a medical or psychological perspective in researching these procedures. Within the South African context, there are very few studies on feticide and LTOP, with none of these studies (to date – 8 January 2023) taking a feminist approach. This paucity of research that takes into account power relations, structural inequality and factors that affect decision-making and choice is one of the reasons that this study was undertaken. The main research question focused on in this study is: What are South African women’s experiences of feticide and late termination of pregnancy due to the presence of severe fetal abnormality, as related by the women themselves and the health service providers who perform the procedure or provide care? The sub-questions that initially drove the study were: How do the women relate their experience of the process of coming to the decision, undergoing and recovering from the procedure, and how do health service providers relate the experiences of these women? The methodological and theoretical framework employed in this research was a Feminist Social Constructionist approach to Grounded Theory. This reflexive, subjectivist, feminist lens encouraged awareness of the influence of gender, race, class and other structural and systemic factors on women’s experiences within the two healthcare systems. Data collection entailed semi-structured interviews conducted with 12 women, who had undergone feticide and LTOP procedures between one and five years prior to the interviews, in either the public or private healthcare system in South Africa. Semi-structured interviews were also conducted with 13 healthcare providers. The providers included medical specialists and participants from the fields of clinical psychology, genetic counselling and nursing and were employed in public or private healthcare in South Africa. Data relevant to public healthcare users and providers were collected from one tertiary (academic) public healthcare hospital and data regarding private healthcare users and providers were collected from across South Africa. Women’s constructions of their experiences of feticide and LTOP included stark contrasts between public and private healthcare users in South Africa, as well as women experiencing “no choice” and their voices being ignored or silenced. Healthcare providers’ constructions were frequently contradictory, referring to women as having freedom of choice and their needs largely prioritised within the healthcare system, while the providers within the public healthcare system relayed their own frustrations and emotional burden due to systemic failures. Findings from women and providers’ constructions were synthesised into a theoretical understanding of women’s experiences of feticide and LTOP in South Africa, which is grounded in, and emergent from, the data. Women’s experiences of feticide and LTOP in South Africa were conceptualised by framing the three phases of these experiences, namely the decision-making phase (I), undergoing the procedures and in-hospital recovery (phase II) and the recovery phase (III). The most prominent themes emerging in these phases included the schism between the public and private healthcare systems in South Africa, the lack of real choice women experience, as well as the silencing of women and providers with regard to feticide and LTOP. Underlying the three phases, and directly influencing the three prominent themes affecting women’s experiences, were the underlying and insidious structural inequality that undermined reproductive justice with regard to women’s decision-making, experiences of and recovery from feticide and LTOP. , Thesis (PhD) -- Faculty of Humanities, Psychology, 2023
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2023-10-13
“How do you feel about the abortion?”: pre-termination of pregnancy counselling in the public health sector in the Eastern Cape
- Authors: Du Toit, Ryan Rudolph
- Date: 2023-10-13
- Subjects: Abortion counseling South Africa Eastern Cape , Conversation analysis , Discursive psychology , Public health South Africa , Reproductive justice , Abortion Psychological aspects
- Language: English
- Type: Academic theses , Doctoral theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/437238 , vital:73355 , DOI 10.21504/10962/437239
- Description: Pre-abortion counselling, as an aspect of abortion provision, has received growing research interest in various contexts. Much of the research has primarily focused on whether abortion counselling takes place, the experiences of women and/or counsellors (usually through retrospective interviews and surveys), and the content discussed during the counselling session (often policy regulated). Such research has proven vital to addressing the various reproductive issues facing women seeking an abortion worldwide. However, little research has focused on how pre-abortion counselling as an everyday institutional practice is conducted at a conversational level in the medical setting. By drawing on both conversation analysis and discursive psychology, this study explored how pre-abortion counselling was conducted in the public health sector in South Africa. The study involved recording the conversation during pre-abortion counselling and analysing it in terms of its content, in particular, the discourses drawn on by all parties involved, and its structure and delivery. The data were collected from three public hospitals in the Eastern Cape of South Africa and involved the audio recording of pre-abortion counselling sessions as part of abortion services. In total, 28 counselling sessions were recorded: 21 were individual sessions, and 7 were group counselling sessions. At two of the sites, counselling was conducted by registered midwives who worked at the hospital. At one site, an external Christian organisation volunteered trained counsellors to counsel women at the hospital free of charge. Using conversation analysis, counselling sessions were analysed in terms of the main projects. Seven key projects were identified: (1) Context setting, (2) History taking, (3) Establishing reason for abortion, (4) Presenting options, (5) Providing procedural information, (6) Obtaining verbal informed consent, and (7) Discussion of family planning. Each project is explored in terms of what discourses and subject positions featured when speakers were orienting to a specific project. This process highlighted how the conversational projects and their respective goals enable the deployment of certain problematic discourses and interactive/reflexive positionings. Discourse analysis revealed a clustering of discourses around two central themes. In the first clustering, the discourses were primarily used to discuss the (1) medically related issues underpinning the abortion procedure [medical discourse, responsibilization discourse, risk discourse, and discourse of support]. Talk using these discourses positioned women as patients needing medical intervention, responsibilised women for conceiving, playing an active role in their termination, and navigating all the psychological and physical risks “associated” with abortion. The discourse of support illustrates how support was spoken about in the interaction whereby patients were constructed as subjects who required support and nurses/counsellors as the ones who offered the support. In the second clustering, the discourses (2) focused on women and the foetus. These discourses [reproductive choice, religious, pronatalist, and foetal personhood discourses] positioned women as being responsible for making a choice regarding their pregnancy and the consequences that may result. In addition, a religious discourse coupled with a pronatalist discourse was used to construct the pregnancy and motherhood as desirable and part of “God’s plan”, whereas the foetus was spoken about as a “gift from God”. The foetal personhood discourse was used to construct the foetus as a living and functional human. This research provides evidence of how abortion counselling is problematic at various levels. At a practical level, there is a lack of standardisation in the delivery of abortion counselling (e.g., variation in key projects, where the counselling is mandated, time taken, nurse/counsellor training, content and format – group vs. individual counselling). At a discursive level, the use of certain discourses works to render the counselling directive through : (1) awfulizing abortion by providing misinformation about the abortion procedure, foetus and post-abortion psychological distress, (2) chastising and responsibilising women for conceiving, (3) constructing abortion as immoral, the ending of life and not in line with God’s plan, (4) constructing parenthood as the preferred choice, (5) delegitimising abortion as a resolution for pregnancy when compared to the other options (e.g., parenting or adoption), and finally (6) providing counselling that does not take into account the broader socio-political contexts. Recommendations for future research are put forward, and a call to move to a reparative justice framework is made by highlighting how it can be used to identify and understand reproductive injustices as they occur along four intersecting dimensions: (1) Individual material, (2) Collective material, (3) Individual symbolic, and (4) Collective symbolic. , Thesis (PhD) -- Faculty of Humanities, Psychology, 2023
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2023-10-13
- Authors: Du Toit, Ryan Rudolph
- Date: 2023-10-13
- Subjects: Abortion counseling South Africa Eastern Cape , Conversation analysis , Discursive psychology , Public health South Africa , Reproductive justice , Abortion Psychological aspects
- Language: English
- Type: Academic theses , Doctoral theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/437238 , vital:73355 , DOI 10.21504/10962/437239
- Description: Pre-abortion counselling, as an aspect of abortion provision, has received growing research interest in various contexts. Much of the research has primarily focused on whether abortion counselling takes place, the experiences of women and/or counsellors (usually through retrospective interviews and surveys), and the content discussed during the counselling session (often policy regulated). Such research has proven vital to addressing the various reproductive issues facing women seeking an abortion worldwide. However, little research has focused on how pre-abortion counselling as an everyday institutional practice is conducted at a conversational level in the medical setting. By drawing on both conversation analysis and discursive psychology, this study explored how pre-abortion counselling was conducted in the public health sector in South Africa. The study involved recording the conversation during pre-abortion counselling and analysing it in terms of its content, in particular, the discourses drawn on by all parties involved, and its structure and delivery. The data were collected from three public hospitals in the Eastern Cape of South Africa and involved the audio recording of pre-abortion counselling sessions as part of abortion services. In total, 28 counselling sessions were recorded: 21 were individual sessions, and 7 were group counselling sessions. At two of the sites, counselling was conducted by registered midwives who worked at the hospital. At one site, an external Christian organisation volunteered trained counsellors to counsel women at the hospital free of charge. Using conversation analysis, counselling sessions were analysed in terms of the main projects. Seven key projects were identified: (1) Context setting, (2) History taking, (3) Establishing reason for abortion, (4) Presenting options, (5) Providing procedural information, (6) Obtaining verbal informed consent, and (7) Discussion of family planning. Each project is explored in terms of what discourses and subject positions featured when speakers were orienting to a specific project. This process highlighted how the conversational projects and their respective goals enable the deployment of certain problematic discourses and interactive/reflexive positionings. Discourse analysis revealed a clustering of discourses around two central themes. In the first clustering, the discourses were primarily used to discuss the (1) medically related issues underpinning the abortion procedure [medical discourse, responsibilization discourse, risk discourse, and discourse of support]. Talk using these discourses positioned women as patients needing medical intervention, responsibilised women for conceiving, playing an active role in their termination, and navigating all the psychological and physical risks “associated” with abortion. The discourse of support illustrates how support was spoken about in the interaction whereby patients were constructed as subjects who required support and nurses/counsellors as the ones who offered the support. In the second clustering, the discourses (2) focused on women and the foetus. These discourses [reproductive choice, religious, pronatalist, and foetal personhood discourses] positioned women as being responsible for making a choice regarding their pregnancy and the consequences that may result. In addition, a religious discourse coupled with a pronatalist discourse was used to construct the pregnancy and motherhood as desirable and part of “God’s plan”, whereas the foetus was spoken about as a “gift from God”. The foetal personhood discourse was used to construct the foetus as a living and functional human. This research provides evidence of how abortion counselling is problematic at various levels. At a practical level, there is a lack of standardisation in the delivery of abortion counselling (e.g., variation in key projects, where the counselling is mandated, time taken, nurse/counsellor training, content and format – group vs. individual counselling). At a discursive level, the use of certain discourses works to render the counselling directive through : (1) awfulizing abortion by providing misinformation about the abortion procedure, foetus and post-abortion psychological distress, (2) chastising and responsibilising women for conceiving, (3) constructing abortion as immoral, the ending of life and not in line with God’s plan, (4) constructing parenthood as the preferred choice, (5) delegitimising abortion as a resolution for pregnancy when compared to the other options (e.g., parenting or adoption), and finally (6) providing counselling that does not take into account the broader socio-political contexts. Recommendations for future research are put forward, and a call to move to a reparative justice framework is made by highlighting how it can be used to identify and understand reproductive injustices as they occur along four intersecting dimensions: (1) Individual material, (2) Collective material, (3) Individual symbolic, and (4) Collective symbolic. , Thesis (PhD) -- Faculty of Humanities, Psychology, 2023
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2023-10-13
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