Unsafe abortion
Regulation of the social body even beyond time and space
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 15098576 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Nicole Webster (0000-0001-7615-5541), Nicole Jane Webster (University of Canterbury, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2013 |
| Volume | 15 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 358-371 |
| Publication date | 2013-03-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Culture Health & Sexuality (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1369-1058 • E-ISSN: 1464-5351 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/13691058.2012.758313 |
| PMID | 23323931 |
| OpenAlex | W2086671631 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
| References cited | 29 |
This paper offers an analysis of women's performance of unsafe abortion in rural Ghana despite significant cultural sanctions that forbid the practice. Findings demonstrate how women in the study balance sanctions inherent in traditional belief structures against their own immediate physical and social best interests. In rural Ghana, a woman's body is not always her own to do with as she would wish. It is also a social body, which is embedded in multiple sets of relationships and subject to social regulation. Traditional authority over a woman's body belongs not only to the community elders in the immediate physical environment of the village but also extends beyond time and space to immaterial ancestral persons who watch over the actions and behaviours of those on earth. Authority resides also with Mawu, the Ewe God, who is offended by the practice of abortion. Data from this study reveal that the performance of unsafe abortion in this Ewe community is a desperate act in which the women must not only risk their physical lives, but must also step outside the boundaries of ideological cultural conformity to traditional values and carry the risk of their actions even into life after death
Abortion · Balance (ability · Conformity · Criminology · Ideology · Political science · Politics · Pregnancy · Sanctions · Sociology · Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health · Gender Studies · Global Maternal and Child Health · Law · Psychology · Reproductive Health and Contraception · Social Psychology
Theory of fertility decline
Safe abortion
Rethinking Development in Africa – An Oral History Approach from Botoku, Rural Ghana
The Body & Society
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Health transition review
Contextual Influences on the Use of Health Facilities for Childbirth in Africa
The Influence of Spouses over each Other's Contraceptive Attitudes in Ghana
The Influence of Traditional Religion on Fertility Regulation among the Kassena-Nankana of Northern Ghana
Marital Instability in an African Society
To have or not to have another child
Marginal matters
Low Use of Rural Maternity Services in Uganda
Avoiding Shame
Kinship and Marriage Among the Anlo Ewe
Economic models and having children
Homtodzoe
Illegal Abortion in Southern Ghana
The Mindful Body
Perils to Pregnancies
Gender, lineage, and fertility-related outcomes in Ghana
| Citations per year | 0.33 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2014 - 2019 (6) |
| Highly cited | No |