Voluntary Termination of Pregnancy: Moral Concerns and Emotional Experiences among Black South African Adolescents

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to describe black adolescent women's moral concerns and emotional reactions to the voluntary termination of their pregnancies. Personal, semi-structured interviews were conducted with seven women (between the ages 16 and 19 years) who had legal, induced abortions, between one day and three months prior to the interview. A qualitative analysis of the results revealed that moral concerns were based on social, ecclesiastic and cultural values, as well as a sense of accountability towards the self. The women's emotional reactions predominantly involved the negative emotions of shame and embarrassment, as well as guilt and sadness linked to a sense of loss.

Women and abortion: the past reaches into the present

“…The recurring nature of thoughts about abortion experiences was reported in other investigations (Brown et al. 1993, Speckhard & Rue 1993, Angelo 1994, Mojapelo‐Batka & Schoeman 2003). Speckhard and Mufel (2003) found that 76% of the 50 Russian women in their sample reported flashback episodes and scored high on an instrument subscale measuring intrusive thoughts.…”

Conceptualising abortion stigma

“…Young people in many contexts face the dual challenge of avoiding both the discrediting stigmas of birth out of wedlock and abortion (Bleek 1981, Webb 2000, Mojapelo-Batka and Schoeman 2003. Varga (2002) showed that young women in South Africa felt that they needed to keep their abortions secret.…”

“…However, the penetration of abortion stigma into the psyche of individual women and men is common and perhaps the most destructive locus of abortion stigma. Shame and guilt are the two most common manifestations of internalised abortion stigma (Bleek 1981, Mojapelo-Batka and Schoeman 2003, Lithur 2004. Women themselves may regard their own decisions as rendering them somehow 'unnatural' (Scharwächter 2008).…”

Articulating reproductive justice through reparative justice: case studies of abortion in Great Britain and South Africa

“…Studies on experiences of abortion in relation to public attitudes and discourses have mostly concentrated on young women, with findings showing that young women struggle to trust anybody in relation to abortion, feel that their decision was judged, indicate that attitudes to abortion enforce secrecy (de Lange and Geldenhuys 2001), and experience shame, embarrassment, guilt and sadness (Mojapelo-Batka and Schoeman 2003). The interpellation of pro-life religious framing deciding upon and undergoing an abortion in South Africa is highlighted in Harries et al (2007), where women reported knowing that abortion is a legal right in South Africa, but questioned eligious grounds.…”