Abortion in South Africa

Abortion in South Africa is legal by request (no reason needs to be provided) when the pregnancy is under 13 weeks. It is also legal to terminate a pregnancy between weeks 13 and 20 if the continued pregnancy would significantly affect the woman's social or economic circumstances, poses a risk of injury to the woman's physical or mental health, there is a substantial risk that the foetus would have a severe physical or mental problems, or the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest. If the pregnancy is more than 20 weeks, a termination is legal if the foetus' life is in danger, or there is a likelihood of serious birth defects.

Abortion is provided for free at some government hospitals and clinics. A request for this service must be made at a primary healthcare clinic and a referral letter will be provided to a facility that offers abortion care. Abortion is provided for a fee at private clinics. Marie Stopes South Africa and Abortion Support South Africa provide abortion pills for home-use (self-managed abortion) across the country.

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.