Background Research on abortion counselling generally uses retrospective interviewing regarding providers’ and users’ experiences. In this article we explore how requests for abortion are made and received in real time in (officially non-mandatory) pre-abortion counselling conducted by nurses and counsellors in South African public abortion clinics.

Methods To capture turn-by-turn interactions, we recorded, using consecutive sampling, 28 sessions at three abortion clinics in 2017/2018. No researcher was present. Conversation analysis, based on an ethnomethodological paradigm, was used to understand the conversational projects of the sessions and to outline how the provider and user oriented to the request for an abortion as a conversational task.

Results Establishing reasons for the abortion featured in most individual counselling sessions. Through posing directive questions, providers required users to justify their request to access abortion. Users complied by providing multiple reasons. These reasons were often followed by a provider question demanding accountability in relation to contraceptive (non)use, thus establishing poor usage as the real reason.

Conclusions As abortion is legal on request in the first trimester in South Africa, no reason for presenting for an abortion is needed. The demand for users to perform ‘doctorability’ – that is, to present their situation as worthy of a health professional’s (in this case abortion provider’s) time – served as a precursor to discipline the abortion seeker for assumed poor contraceptive usage. Providers should be trained in user-centred care that supports pregnant people’s autonomy in accessing legally induced abortion. A limitation of this study is its restriction to three abortion clinics in one region of South Africa.