Guttmacher Institute, New York, USA.
J Biosoc Sci. 2011 Jan;43(1):31-45. doi: 10.1017/S0021932010000507. Epub 2010 Sep 17.
Abortion is illegal in Uganda except to save the life of the woman. Nevertheless, the practice is quite common: about 300,000 induced abortions occur annually among Ugandan women aged 15-49 (Singh et al., 2005) and a large proportion of these women require treatment for post-abortion complications. In the male-dominant culture of Uganda, where men control most of the financial resources, men play a critical part in determining whether women receive a safe abortion, or appropriate treatment if they experience abortion complications. This study examines men's roles in determining women's access to a safer abortion and post-abortion care. It draws on in-depth interviews carried out in 2003 with 61 women aged 18-60 and 21 men aged 20-50 from Kampala and Mbarara, Uganda. Respondents' descriptions of men's involvement in women's abortion care agreed that men's stated attitudes about abortion often prevented women from involving them in either the abortion or post-abortion care. Most men believe that if a woman is having an abortion, it must be because she is pregnant with another man's child, although this does not correspond with women's reasons for having an abortion--a critical disjuncture revealed by the data between men's perceptions of, and women's realities regarding, reasons for seeking an abortion. If the woman does experience post-abortion complications, the prevailing attitude among men in the sample was that they cannot support a woman in such a situation seeking care because if it had been his child, she would not have had a covert abortion. Since money is critical to accessing appropriate care, without men's support, women seeking an abortion may not be able to access safer abortion options and if they experience complications, they may delay care-seeking or may not obtain care at all. Barriers to involving men in abortion decision-making endanger women's health and possibly their lives.
在乌干达，除了挽救妇女的生命，堕胎是非法的。然而，这种做法相当普遍：每年约有 30 万 15-49 岁的乌干达妇女进行人工流产（Singh 等人，2005 年），其中很大一部分妇女需要治疗流产后并发症。在乌干达男性主导的文化中，男性控制着大部分财政资源，男性在决定妇女是否获得安全堕胎或在经历堕胎并发症时获得适当治疗方面起着至关重要的作用。本研究考察了男性在决定妇女获得更安全堕胎和堕胎后护理方面的作用。它借鉴了 2003 年在坎帕拉和姆巴拉拉对 61 名 18-60 岁妇女和 21 名 20-50 岁男子进行的深入访谈。受访者对男性参与妇女堕胎护理的描述表明，男性对堕胎的态度往往阻止妇女让他们参与堕胎或堕胎后护理。大多数男性认为，如果一个女人堕胎，那一定是因为她怀了另一个男人的孩子，尽管这与女性堕胎的原因不符——这是数据揭示的一个关键分歧，表明男性对堕胎原因的看法与女性的实际情况之间存在差距。如果妇女确实经历了流产后并发症，样本中的大多数男性持有的态度是，他们不能支持这样的妇女在这种情况下寻求护理，因为如果是他的孩子，她就不会进行秘密堕胎。由于金钱对获得适当护理至关重要，如果没有男性的支持，寻求堕胎的妇女可能无法获得更安全的堕胎选择，如果她们经历并发症，她们可能会延迟寻求护理，或者根本无法获得护理。让男性参与堕胎决策的障碍危及妇女的健康，甚至可能危及她们的生命。
