Smith Stephanie S
Afr J Reprod Health. 2013 Dec;17(4):26-34.
The complications of unsafe, illegal abortions are a significant cause of maternal mortality in Botswana. The stigma attached to abortion leads some women to seek clandestine procedures, or alternatively, to carry the fetus to term and abandon the infant at birth. I conducted research into perceptions of abortion in urban Botswana in order to understand the social and cultural obstacles to women's reproductive autonomy, focusing particularly on attitudes to terminating a pregnancy. I carried out 21 interviews with female and male urban adult Batswana. This article constitutes a review of the abortion issue in Botswana based on my research. Restrictive laws must eventually be abolished to allow women access to safe, timely abortions. My findings however, suggest that socio-cultural factors, not punitive laws, present the greatest barriers to women seeking to terminate an unwanted pregnancy. These factors must be addressed so that effective local solutions to unsafe abortion can be generated.
不安全、非法堕胎引发的并发症是博茨瓦纳孕产妇死亡的一个重要原因。堕胎所带来的污名使得一些女性寻求秘密堕胎，或者选择将胎儿怀至足月并在婴儿出生时将其遗弃。我对博茨瓦纳城市地区人们对堕胎的看法进行了研究，以了解影响女性生殖自主权的社会和文化障碍，尤其关注对终止妊娠的态度。我对21名博茨瓦纳城市成年男女进行了访谈。本文基于我的研究对博茨瓦纳的堕胎问题进行了综述。必须最终废除限制性法律，以使女性能够获得安全、及时的堕胎服务。然而，我的研究结果表明，社会文化因素而非惩罚性法律才是寻求终止意外怀孕的女性面临的最大障碍。必须解决这些因素，以便找到有效的本地解决不安全堕胎问题的办法。
