Susanne M. Klausen. Abortion under Apartheid

Susanne M. Klausen should be commended for writing a book that is compelling, timely, and highly original. Abortion under Apartheid: Nationalism, Sexuality, and Women’s Reproductive Rights in South Africa is the first scholarly history of abortion politics in South Africa (or in Africa, for that matter). More specifically, it is a book about clandestine abortion and the harmful legacies of reproductive injustice. It is also a book about white female (hetero)sexuality and the politics of respectability (i.e., who should, or should not, have sex with whom). And finally, it is a book about gender and the state—how gendered ideas about women and femininity figured prominently in government policy and practice. In this elegantly written narrative, Klausen explains that gender and sexuality were just as important as race or class to the construction and maintenance of the apartheid system. Klausen’s study is based on extensive archival research using a wide variety of primary sources culled from government publications, court proceedings, medical records, organizational records from activist groups, and newspaper reports. To access the more subjective aspects of abortion, she utilized memoirs and novels. She also conducted interviews with various historical players. Perhaps the most interesting were her interviews with Dr. Derk Crichton, a doctor who was put on trial twice for procuring illegal abortions, and James Watts, a self-taught abortionist who stood trial with Crichton in 1972. The richness of these interviews cannot be overstated.

Abortion · Biology · Human sexuality · Nationalism · Political science · Politics · Pregnancy · Reproductive rights · Sociology · Gender Studies · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes · Law · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies