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Susanne M. Klausen. Abortion Under Apartheid: Nationalism, Sexuality, and Women’s Reproductive Rights in South Africa

2017; Oxford University Press; Volume: 72; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/jhmas/jrx007

1468-4373

Rachel Sandwell,

African Sexualities and LGBTQ+ Issues

Suzanne Klausen’s prize-winning monograph provides the first book-length history of abortion in South Africa. Klausen’s focus is the shifting legal status and availability of abortion throughout the apartheid period, 1948 to 1994, particularly the social forces that came together to restrict abortion at a time when much of the world was liberalizing access to the practice. Drawing on a compelling range of sources, including novels, popular press stories, oral history interviews, medical journals, and university and hospital records, Klausen argues that white, South African social elites vehemently opposed abortion as part of their wider obsession with the sanctity of the so-called white race. By associating abortion with the loss of social morality, figures in the church and government worked closely to criminalize abortion and prosecute medical professionals who provided such services to white women. Simultaneously, the government was content to let black women suffer and die as the result of backstreet abortions, even as medical professionals demanded legal reform. South African historiography has tended to focus on either white or black South Africans, given that apartheid actively worked to divide these populations. By contrast, Klausen here includes black and white women’s experiences with abortion. In doing so, she demonstrates the entanglements of racism and its effects on white and black life in South Africa.