Full Text Available

Note: Clicking the button above will open the full text document at the original institutional repository in a new window.

A feminist anthropology of barriers to implementing the Choice on Termination of Pregnancy Act (CTOP)

Includes bibliographical references.

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Cox, Phyllida
Other Authors: Salo, Elaine
Format: Thesis
Language:English
Published: Department of Sociology 2014
Subjects:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1867613221043568640
access_status_str Open Access
author Cox, Phyllida
author2 Salo, Elaine
author_browse Cox, Phyllida
Salo, Elaine
author_facet Salo, Elaine
Cox, Phyllida
author_sort Cox, Phyllida
collection Thesis
description Includes bibliographical references.
format Thesis
id oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/10282
institution University of Cape Town (South Africa)
language eng
last_indexed 2026-06-10T12:32:41.376Z
license_str Not specified — see source repository
provenance_str_mv Harvested via OAI-PMH from UCTD — University of Cape Town Open Access Repository
publishDate 2014
publishDateRange 2014
publishDateSort 2014
publisher Department of Sociology
publisherStr Department of Sociology
record_format dspace
source_str UCTD — University of Cape Town Open Access Repository
spelling oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/10282 A feminist anthropology of barriers to implementing the Choice on Termination of Pregnancy Act (CTOP) Cox, Phyllida Salo, Elaine Sociology Includes bibliographical references. This study aims to assess barriers within communities and at the community healthcare level that impede delivery of reproductive healthcare rights- in particular it focuses on the South African Choice on Termination of Pregnancy Act (CTOP), which came into effect in 1996. In their scoping study of abortion related research in South Africa Varkey and Fonn state that whilst there have been several studies on the barriers to implementing the CTOP Act at the health service level, few have addressed community barriers (2000). I conducted multi-sited fieldwork between two townships in Cape Town, South Africa on the urban periphery of Cape Town, South Africa. The inhabitants of these two communities are black Xhosa speaking South Africans who live in a mix of informal shack, government built as well as self- built housing. The marginal location of these communities in relation the Eurocentric metropolitan centre of Cape Town reflects the legacy of the racialised reordering of the Apartheid era. The socio-economic effects of this legacy are tangibly present in the poverty, criminality and gender based violence that impacts upon the health of these communities. I focused on reproductive health care services for these townships at the community based service delivery level. Although Varkey and Fonn (ibid) distinguish between studies that address health care and studies that address community barriers to healthcare I aim to show how the distinction between the spaces of the community as against the institutional space of public healthcare is somewhat arbitrary. Because this study focuses on the cultural politics of implementing the legislation on abortion, the issues that arise and are analysed encompass seemingly divergent levels and social fields of inter-relationality. These social fields of inter-relationality include in their scope law, policy, rights-based public health care implementation, domestic households and gendered relationships between men and, women;- mothers and daughters, nurses and young women and so on. How such intersecting and interpenetrating levels play out in the lives of individuals can be illustrated most effectively through the anthropological notion of "personhood" as it regulates and informs communal and individual notions of self in the public health care space. For example, as agents in community based health service delivery Nurses embody a personhood in the context of their professional role, which is inseparable from their identity as gendered persons with distinctive ethnic and racial identities within South African communities. These gendered, racial and ethnic identities are embedded in histories of Colonial and Apartheid State planning. A consistent theme in this paper are how these identities influence moral constructions of sexuality and the ambiguities that nurses feel about the women to whom they provide family planning in relation to their own values around appropriate female personhood. 2014-12-27T19:44:17Z 2014-12-27T19:44:17Z 2007 Master Thesis Masters MSocSc http://hdl.handle.net/11427/10282 eng application/pdf Department of Sociology Faculty of Humanities University of Cape Town
spellingShingle Sociology
Cox, Phyllida
A feminist anthropology of barriers to implementing the Choice on Termination of Pregnancy Act (CTOP)
thesis_degree_str Master's
title A feminist anthropology of barriers to implementing the Choice on Termination of Pregnancy Act (CTOP)
title_full A feminist anthropology of barriers to implementing the Choice on Termination of Pregnancy Act (CTOP)
title_fullStr A feminist anthropology of barriers to implementing the Choice on Termination of Pregnancy Act (CTOP)
title_full_unstemmed A feminist anthropology of barriers to implementing the Choice on Termination of Pregnancy Act (CTOP)
title_short A feminist anthropology of barriers to implementing the Choice on Termination of Pregnancy Act (CTOP)
title_sort feminist anthropology of barriers to implementing the choice on termination of pregnancy act ctop
topic Sociology
url http://hdl.handle.net/11427/10282
work_keys_str_mv AT coxphyllida afeministanthropologyofbarrierstoimplementingthechoiceonterminationofpregnancyactctop
AT coxphyllida feministanthropologyofbarrierstoimplementingthechoiceonterminationofpregnancyactctop