Stigma towards women requesting abortion and association with health facility staff facilitation and obstruction of abortion care in South Africa.

Background: Abortion stigma has been shown to influence provider attitudes around abortion and may decrease provider willingness to participate in abortion care, or lead some to obstruct care. However, this link remains understudied.

Methods: The present study uses baseline data collected through a cluster-randomized controlled trial in 16 public sector health facilities in South Africa in 2020.

Definitions, perspectives, and reasons for conscientious objection among healthcare workers, facility managers, and staff in South Africa: a qualitative study.

Conscientious objection (CO) on the part of healthcare providers is a growing threat to safe abortion access. In South Africa, evidence suggests that this legal clause may be manipulated as a justification for public-sector healthcare providers to exempt themselves from their duties to provide essential reproductive health services as required by national laws and protocols. This qualitative study improves our understanding of the definitions, perspectives, and use of CO among providers, staff, and facility managers in South Africa, and CO's effect on public-sector abortion availability.

Abortion in a progressive legal environment: the need for vigilance in protecting and promoting access to safe abortion services in South Africa.

The importance of South Africa as a model for reproductive self-determination in Africa cannot be underestimated. Abortion has been legal since 1996, and the country has some of the most developed government systems for the provision of abortion care on the continent. Yet in the same way opponents of abortion in the United States have whittled away at access with increased bureaucracy, South Africa faces similar assaults that leave women without safe care and threaten to turn back achievements made during the past 16 years.