‘My work is to help the woman who wants to have a child, not the woman who wants to have an abortion’

Abstract

This paper details the responses of a group of African Primary Health Care Nurses (PHCNs), practising in Soweto clinics, to the issue of abortion. The majority of nurses interviewed — 70 per cent of a sample of 27 — unequivocally and unambiguously rejected abortion. The central concern of this paper is to explore why the responses of this ‘rejecting group’ to women who face the predicament of an unwanted pregnancy were cast in such judgemental terms. I argue that this is best understood by unpacking and exploring their identities as African nurses, mothers and wives. In their discourse, abortion symbolises a denial of women's true calling. To them, when a woman has an abortion she is ending not only her pregnancy but also her opportunity to be a mother and even her womanhood. The issue of abortion also provided the opportunity to explore the complex and contradictory ways in which this group of women understands and responds to patriarchal relationships.