Original Research - Special Collection: Practical Theology

The use of narrative hermeneutical approach in the counselling of abortion patients within an African context

Elijah M. Baloyi
HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies | Vol 68, No 2 | a1183 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.4102/hts.v68i2.1183 | © 2012 Elijah M. Baloyi | This work is licensed under CC Attribution 4.0
Submitted: 28 September 2011 | Published: 08 August 2012

About the author(s)

Elijah M. Baloyi, Department of Practical Theology, University of South Africa, South Africa

Abstract

Our country has celebrated democracy for more than a decade now, the democracy in which everyone enjoys all the basic human rights, including the right to an abortion. Public and private hospitals and some traditional healers are engaged in this act where some give pre-abortion and post-abortion counselling to their patients whilst others do not. It becomes a serious question of course to ask whether those patients who did not receive counselling, cope with life after the experienced trauma. By the looks of things it seems very clear that the people who commit abortion have a special need for help in order to cope with life thereafter. Another question now is whether the little counselling that they receive in the hospital before and after an abortion is satisfactory to their individual needs. That is why the author’s focus is on the method or approach which the author thinks will better help the patients who find themselves in such a traumatic situation. The concentration is on the narrative-hermeneutical approach as one of the applicable approaches from the author’s point of view.

Keywords

abortion; patients; counselling; narrative-hermeneutical approach

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Crossref Citations

1. Contradictions in womxn’s experiences of pre‐abortion counselling in South Africa: Implications for client‐centred practice
Jabulile Mary‐Jane Jace Mavuso, Catriona Ida Macleod
Nursing Inquiry  vol: 27  issue: 2  year: 2020  
doi: 10.1111/nin.12330