Children by Choice?: Changing Values, Reproduction, and Family Planning in the 20th Century 9783110524499, 9783110522020

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i Gembries, Theuke, Heinemann: Children by Choice? — 2018/3/8 — 14:05 — page 1 — le-tex

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Children by Choice?

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Wertewandel im 20. Jahrhundert Band 3 Herausgegeben von Andreas Rödder

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Ann-Katrin Gembries, Theresia Theuke, Isabel Heinemann (Eds.)

Children by Choice? Changing Values, Reproduction, and Family Planning in the 20th Century

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ISBN 978-3-11-052202-0 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-052449-9 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-052206-8 ISSN 2366-9446 Library of Congress Control Number: 2018934561 Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http://dnb.dnb.de abrufbar. © 2018 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Satz: le-tex publishing services GmbH, Leipzig www.degruyter.com

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Contents Theresia Theuke Introduction: Children by Choice? Changing Values, Reproduction, and Family Planning in the 20th Century . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ann-Katrin Gembries Birth Control as a National Threat? Pronatalist Discourses on Abortion in France and Germany (1920s–1970s) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Claudia Roesch “Children by Choice” – Family Decisions and Value Change in the Campaigns of the American Planned Parenthood Federation (1942–1973) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Eszter Varsa “Respect girls as future mothers”: Sex Education as Family Life Education in State Socialist Hungary (1950s–1980s) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Yuliya Hilevych, Chizu Sato Popular Medical Discourses on Birth Control in the Soviet Union during the Cold War: Shifting Responsibilities and Relational Values Agata Ignaciuk Paradox of the Pill: Oral Contraceptives in Spain and Poland (1960s–1970s) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Fiammetta Balestracci The Influence of American Sexual Studies on the ‘Sexual Revolution’ of Italian Women . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Radka Dudová Discourses on Abortion and their Impact on Institutions in Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic in the Second Half of the 20th Century (1950–2003) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Rona Torenz Narratives about Contraception and Abortion in the GDR (1972–1990) Caught between a Liberal Law, Normative Ways of Living and the Individualization of Family Planning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Isabel Heinemann From “Children by Choice” to “Families by Choice”? 20th -Century Reproductive Decision-Making between Social Change and Normative Transitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Introduction: Children by Choice? Changing Values, Reproduction, and Family Planning in the 20th Century How have attitudes, thought, speech and action changed in the last century with regard to family planning and reproduction? Can these changes be represented as a “change in values”, i.e., a long-term change in standards, values and practices around reproduction – and if so, how? These questions were at the center of an international conference entitled “Making Children? 20th Century Value Changes in Human Reproduction and Family Planning”, held in April 2016 at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, which emerged from the research project “Values and value change in modernity and postmodernity”. The conference participants from Austria, Germany, France, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Poland and Italy examined various negotiation processes in the 20th century regarding techniques and practices of sexuality, reproduction and family planning in the context of value shifts and changing attitudes. It turned out that the process of negotiation and change was very different in the context of the varieties of forms of government, societies and cultures studied, and that narrative and justification patterns for the introduction of contraceptives or the legalization of abortion were not only different, but sometimes even contradictory.

Phenomenology of Family Planning and Reproduction In today’s societies, it is self-evident that children can not only be begotten and planned but also “made”. The medical and technical achievements of the twentieth century, such as the introduction of the latex condom in the 1930s, the admission of the pill as a hormonal contraceptive in the 1960s, or the establishment of in vitro fertilization since the end of the 1970s, not only enabled the prevention but also the exact planning of the next generation. The separation of sexuality and reproduction and the associated decoupling of parents and partnerships, which was made possible by the pill no later than the 1960s, as well as the associated increase in liberties in family planning and life-style, were not without an effect on the actors and social structures involved. In addition, the introduction and spread of chemical and mechanical contraceptives affected and influenced the social forms of the family, population development and genhttps://doi.org/9783110524499-001

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der relations, which were anchored in different cultures1 . The discussions on the legalization of abortion as a subsequent means of birth control and family planning also changed attitudes regarding the value of life, women’s rights, and provoked discussions about the limitations and possibilities of family planning. The changes described here, which took place at different times in cultures and nations with different aims and characteristics, necessitated a change in values and norms which can also be regarded as the result of such a process. The discussions about the introduction of contraceptives and the legalization of abortion reflect the values and value changes of the respective actors. For example, in the debate about the legalization of abortion, there were two mutually exclusive values: on the one hand the position of the absolute right to life for the embryo and, on the other, the focus on the individual right to self-determination of the woman. In the past century, the disputes over the legalization of abortion not only had an unprecedented political and social explosiveness, but also led to a change in values, not just with respect to the enforcement of women’s rights over their bodies and their reproduction, but at the same time over determining the status of the embryo and its rights. Overall, in the development and change processes of family planning and reproduction in the 20th century, reproductive decisions in modern societies were both preventively influenced by the use of contraceptive measures and permissively by the termination of an existing pregnancy. Family planning by means of mechanical, chemical or natural aids was evaluated quite differently, morally, legally and ethically in the private and public spaces of various societies and from the point of view of the couples and women affected by them. It also concerned the assessment of abortion, its legal admissibility, and its social acceptance. The multi-layered controversies surrounding family planning and reproduction, which have sprung up since the second half of the 20th century at the latest, show a strong tendency towards state intervention in a highly private sphere of life. The parliamentary conflicts and the attempt to influence, control and regulate the sexuality, reproduction and family planning of couples and women by means of legal regulations provoked debates, which were carried out depending on the nation under consideration by different social and political actors and groupings. Thus, the state assessments of the legal admissibility of contraceptives and access to abortions were closely linked to the commitment of women’s movements, which claimed their reproductive autonomy in the various states, which included access to preventive means, sterilization and legal 1

More recent studies show that the impact of the pill on population development and its importance for the so-called “sexual revolution” are less striking than generally assumed. For further information, see Lutz Niethammer, Silke Satjukow (eds.), „Wenn die Chemie stimmt“. Geschlechterbeziehungen und Geburtenkontrolle im Zeitalter der “Pille”, Göttingen 2016, p. 9–34.

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abortion according to medical standards and the promotion of sex education and awareness training. The Catholic Church, however, continued to oppose this attitude and demanded a ban on abortions and a more conservative sexual morality. These two weighty counterparts, the Catholic Church and Women’s Movements, reveal the tremendous explosive force of the disputes about changes in family planning and reproduction, which must be considered a central part of the historical development of the negotiation processes for reproduction and family planning from the beginning of the 20th century until the 1970s. Moreover, change processes cannot be viewed as isolated phenomena, but as always taking place in the context of political, social, economic and cultural transformations.

Approaches to Research Literature In the scientific literature of various disciplines, based on a large number of publications, there is a great interest in dealing with the controversies surrounding family planning, sexuality and reproduction. The negotiation processes have been dealt with especially in sociological research and increasingly also in the literature of historical science. In the majority of the scientific approaches to a study of the negotiation processes, these are partial studies which analyze individual aspects on a short-term basis2 . In addition, the largest number of 2

On the history of abortion, see Ulrike Busch, Daphne Hahn (eds.), Abtreibung. Diskurse und Tendenzen, Bielefeld 2014; Gisela Staupe (ed.), Unter anderen Umständen. Zur Geschichte der Abtreibung. Katalog zur gleichnamigen Ausstellung des Deutschen Hygiene-Museums Dresden, Berlin 1993; Donna Harsch, Society, the State, and Abortion in East Germany, 1950–1972, in: American Historical Review 102/1 (1997), p. 53–85; Michael Gante, § 218 in Diskussion. Meinungs- und Willensbildung 1945–1976 (Forschungen und Quellen zur Zeitgeschichte, 21), Düsseldorf 1991; Daphne Hahn, Modernisierung und Biopolitik. Sterilisation und Schwangerschaftsabbruch in Deutschland nach 1945 (Campus Forschung, 804), Frankfurt a. M. 2000. Studies on sexual history include Dagmar Herzog, Sexuality in Europe. A Twentieth Century History, Cambridge, 2011; Peter-Paul Bänziger, Magdalena Beljan, Franz X. Eder et al.(eds.), Sexuelle Revolution? Zur Geschichte der Sexualität im deutschsprachigen Raum seit den 1960er Jahren, Bielefeld 2015. Developments in family planning, reproduction, and birth control were discussed among others by Cornelie Usborne, Frauenkörper – Volkskörper. Geburtenkontrolle und Bevölkerungspolitik in der Weimarer Republik, Münster 1994; Merith Niehuss, Familie, Frau und Gesellschaft. Studien zur Strukturgeschichte der Familie in Westdeutschland, Göttingen 2001; Matthew Connelly, Fatal Misconception. The Struggle to Control World Population, Cambridge 2008. On the history of reproductive medicine and gene technology see, among others, Elisabeth BeckGernsheim, Technik, Markt und Moral. Über Reproduktionsmedizin und Gentechnologie, Frankfurt a. M. 1991; Andreas Bernard, Kinder machen. Neue Reproduktionstechnologien und die Ordnung der Familie. Samenspender, Leihmütter und Künstliche Befruchtung,

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studies chooses a narrow temporal and geographical perspective, although there are isolated studies that take a contrasting comparison of situations in different countries as their starting point3 . Analyses that take into account longer periods of time and thus allow for the presentation of a change remain the exception, such as the collection of essays “Inventing the Modern American Family” edited by Isabel Heinemann, which examines the changes and value shifts of the concept of the family in the US in the 20th century4 . The analysis of the history of abortion, presented by Silvia De Zordo, Joanna Mishtal and Lorena Anton in “A Fragmented Landscape. Abortion Governance and Protest Logics in Europe” also presents an international perspective, although the majority of the authors approach the issues from a sociological and ethnographical perspective rather than a historical one5 . The collection “Reproductive States” edited by Rickie Solinger and Mie Nakachi examines the strategies and mechanisms of the population control of selected states and shows how population control became a global issue6 . In the anthology “Wenn die Chemie stimmt” (“If the Chemistry is Right”), Lutz Niethammer and Silke Satjutkow offer a review of the political and cultural significance of the pill for reconciling family and career, for sexuality and gender relations, as well as the historical and social-structural preconditions provided for the establishment of a chemical contraceptive7 .

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Bonn 2014; Michi Knecht, Maren Klotz, Stefan Beck (eds.), Reproductive Technologies as Global Form. Ethnographies of Knowledge, Practices, and Transnational Encounters (Eigene und fremde Welt, 19), New York 2012; Chikako Takeshita, The Global Biopolitics of the IUD. How Science Constructs Contraceptive Users and Womens’ Bodies, Cambridge Mass. 2012. On the history of the pill in the Federal Republic of Germany see the monograph by Eva-Maria Silies, Liebe, Lust und Last. Die Pille als weibliche Generationserfahrung der Bundesrepublik 1960–1980, Göttingen 2010; For the US perspective see Elaine Tyler May, America and the Pill. A History of Promise, Peril, and Liberation, New York 2010; Bernhard Asbell, The Pill. A Biography of the Drug That Changed the World, New York 1995; Elizabeth Siegel Watkins, On the Pill. A Social History of Oral Contraceptives, 1950–1970, Baltimore, London 1998. For example, see Ann-Katrin Gembries, Von der Fortpflanzungspflicht zum Recht auf Abtreibung. Werte und Wertewandel im Spiegel französischer Parlamentsdebatten über Geburtenkontrolle 1920–1974, in: Bernhard Dietz, Christopher Neumaier, Andreas Rödder (eds.), Gab es den Wertewandel? Neue Forschungen zum gesellschaftlich-kulturellen Wandel seit den 1960er Jahren, München 2014, p. 307–333; Agata Ignaciuk, Teresa Ortiz-Gómez, Anticoncepción, mujeres y género. La “píldora” en España y Polonia (1960–1980), Madrid 2016; Silvia de Zordo, Joanna Mishtal, Lorena Anton (eds.), A Fragmented Landscape. Abortion Governance and Protest Logics in Europe, New York 2016. See Isabel Heinemann (ed.), Inventing the Modern American Family. Family Values and Social Change in 20th Century United States, Frankfurt a. M. 2012. See de Zordo, Mishtal, Anton (eds.), A Fragmented Landscape (as in n. 3). See Rickie Solinger, Mie Nakachi, Reproductive States. Global Perspectives on the Invention and Implementation of Population Policy, New York 2017. See Niethammer, Satjukow (eds.), “Wenn die Chemie stimmt” (as in n. 1).

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As a result, the existing studies show changes in attitudes and assessments with regard to changes in the practical use of the medical and technical possibilities of family planning and reproduction, without explicitly considering the aspect of changes in value settings.

Social Sciences and Historical Value Change Research in Modernity and Postmodernity The interest of the authors of this anthology is concerned with the classification and presentation of value-change processes over the past century. Thus, the contributions not only reflect the historical developments in family planning and reproduction in the course of the 20th century, but also reflect on the changes in values and value decisions in the controversies about the use of medical and technical possibilities for family planning and reproduction by keeping the background of cultural history and social change processes at the center of their respective analyses. They systematically investigate the underlying trends of and basis for changes of values in the field of reproduction and close a gap in the existing field of research. In this way, the anthology contributes to the study of value-change processes in the twentieth century and links both thematically and methodically to the research project entitled “Values and value change in modernity and postmodernity”. Typically, the description of sociocultural change processes is the subject of socio-scientific research which, based on surveys, provides possible justifications for the change of values. The American sociologist Ronald Inglehart gave a first significant explanation in 1977 with his work “The Silent Revolution”, in which he stated: “The values of Western publics have been shifting from an overwhelming emphasis on material well-being and physical security toward greater emphasis on the quality of life.”8 His thesis concerning the shift from material to post-material values first dominated the socio-scientific controversy about the description of value change in postmodern societies, due both to its restriction to the categories of “materialism” and “postmaterialism”, as well as the methodological narrowing in place since the mid-1980s, which have been

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critically reviewed by the German sociologist Helmut Klages9 . In his paper “Changes in Value Orientation” he described changes in values as a transition from “compulsory and accepted values” to “self-development values”10 . He portrayed the change not as linear, as Inglehart had done, or as a “depreciation” as described by Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann, director of the Allensbach Institute, but rather as a pluralization of values11 . The limitation of socio-scientific value-change research to the period after 1960 and the concentration on the evaluation of selectively collected demoscopic data did not make it possible to analyze and describe value changes over longer periods of time. In addition, on the basis of the sociological methodology, no conclusions could be drawn about the causes, mechanisms, patterns of progress underlying changes and long-term developmental tendencies12 . In addition to the question of the suitability of social-scientific methodology for the description of value-change processes, the history of science has recently dealt with the study of changes in values that go beyond the depiction of trends and accent shifts in tightly defined time frames and subject areas13 . 9

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Another well-known critic of Inglehart’s explanatory approach was the German sociologist Helmut Thome, Wertewandel in der Politik? Eine Auseinandersetzung mit Ingleharts Thesen zum Postmaterialismus, Berlin 1985; Id., Wertewandel aus Sicht der empirischen Sozialforschung, in: Hans Joas, Klaus Wiegandt (eds.), Die kulturellen Werte Europas, Frankfurt a. M. 2006, p. 386–443. Cited by: Helmut Klages, Wertorientierungen im Wandel. Rückblick, Gegenwartsanalyse, Prognosen, Frankfurt a. M. 1984, p. 17–18. Cf. Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann, Werden wir alle Proletarier? Wertewandel in unserer Gesellschaft, Zürich 1979; Renate Köcher, Die verletzte Nation. Über den Versuch der Deutschen, ihren Charakter zu ändern, Stuttgart 1988. A critical reflection of the methodology and explanatory approaches of Inglehart and Klages is provided by: Wilhelm Bürkelin, Markus Klein, Achim Ruß, Dimensionen des Wertewandels. Eine empirische Längsschnittanalyse zur Dimensionalität und der Wandlungsdynamik gesellschaftlicher Wertorientierungen, in: Politische Vierteljahreszeitschrift 35 (1994), p. 579–606. Karl-Heinz Hillmann provides an overview of sociological value-change research in: Zur Wertewandelsforschung. Einführung, Überblick und Ausblick, in: Georg W. Oesterdiekhoff, Norbert Jegelka (eds.), Werte und Wertewandel in westlichen Gesellschaften. Resultate und Perspektiven der Sozialwissenschaften, Opladen 2001, p. 15–39; Helmut Thome, Wertewandel in Europa aus der Sicht der empirischen Sozialforschung, in: Hans Joas, Klaus Wiegandt (eds.), Die kulturellen Werte Europas, Frankfurt a. M. (2005), p. 386–443. Cf. Helmut Thome, Wandel gesellschaftlicher Wertvorstellungen aus der Sicht der empirischen Sozialforschung, in: Dietz, Neumaier, Rödder (eds.), Gab es den Wertewandel? (as in n. 3), p. 41–69; Bernhard Dietz, Christopher Neumaier, Vom Nutzen der Sozialwissenschaften für die Zeitgeschichte. Werte und Wertewandel als Gegenstand historischer Forschung, in: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 60 (2012), p. 293–304; Bernhard Dietz, Jörg Neuheiser (eds.), Wertewandel in der Wirtschaft und Arbeitswelt. Arbeit, Leistung und Führung in den 1970er und 1980er Jahren in der Bundesrepublik, Berlin, Boston 2017; Rüdiger Graf, Kim Christian Priemel, Zeitgeschichte in der Welt der Sozialwissenschaften. Legitimität und Originalität einer Disziplin, in: Vierteljahrsheft für Zeitgeschichte 59 (2011), p. 479–508.

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In a historical-diachronic perspective, historical value-change research takes its own methodological approach into the process of value-change and examines it as a cultural-historical and social phenomenon14 . Historical value-change research in this way goes beyond the focus of social science research of the 1960s and 1970s by instead considering phenomena and facets of value change throughout the 20th century. The extension of the temporal reference framework and the consistent historicalization allows the contextualization and embedding of the value change into cultural and social change processes and the analysis of the interactions of different influencing factors. In addition, historical value-change research can make statements about the origin and development of regulatory standards and collective values being considered15 . “Values” are defined in this context in accordance with the definition offered by the American sociologist Clyde Kluckhohn as “[. . . ] general and fundamental normative prescriptions that define ideas, speech and actions at the individual and collective level which can be explicitly articulated or implicitly assumed.”16 Andreas Rödder, Bernhard Dietz and Christoph Neumaier have developed the “value-change triangle” in order to confirm the change in values. This is an analytical starting point for the investigation of value-change processes in a comprehensive overall context, since it focuses on the interrelated social practice, institutional framework and discursively negotiated values17 . The three poles point to the possible discourse levels that must be investigated if value-change processes are to be comprehensively captured from a historical perspective. In addition to expert, policy and broad-based discourse, the individual level is 14 15

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See the article by Andreas Rödder, Wertewandel in historischer Perspektive. Ein Forschungskonzept, in: Dietz, Neumaier, Id. (eds.), Gab es den Wertewandel?, p. 17–39. In this way, historical value-change research is not only a step further than the socioscientific explanatory approaches, but also in the history of mentality, which in particular examines the world images, forms of thought and attitudes of the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Age. See also the keynote contributions of Volker Sellin, Mentalitäten in der Sozialgeschichte, in: Wolfgang Schieder, Volker Sellin (eds.), Sozialgeschichte in Deutschland. Entwicklungen und Perspektiven im internationalen Zusammenhang, Bd. 3, Göttingen 1987, p. 101–121; František Graus (ed.) Mentalitäten im Mittelalter. Methodische und inhaltliche Probleme (Vorträge und Forschungen / Konstanzer Arbeitskreis für Mittelalterliche Geschichte, 35), Sigmaringen 1987; Ulrich Raulff, André Burguière (eds.), Mentalitäten-Geschichte. Zur historischen Rekonstruktion geistiger Prozesse, Berlin 1987 sowie die Überblicksdarstellung von Ute Daniel, Kompendium Kulturgeschichte. Theorie, Praxis, Schlüsselwörter, Frankfurt a. M. 5 2006, p. 221–230. Andreas Rödder, Wertewandel in historischer Perspektive. Ein Forschungskonzept, in: Dietz, Neumaier, Id. (eds.), Gab es den Wertewandel?, p. 29. For Clyde Kluckhohn’s definition see Clyde Kluckhohn, Values and Value-Orientation in the Theory of Action. An Exploration in Definition and Classification, in: Talcott Parsons, Edward Albert Shils, Toward a General Theory of Action, Cambridge, Massachusetts 1967, p. 388–433. See, for example, Dietz, Neumaier, Vom Nutzen der Sozialwissenschaften für die Zeitgeschichte (as in n. 13), p. 293–304.

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subjected to a more detailed analysis. Thus, historical value-change research places social values, social practices and institutional frameworks in relation to one another, and links them to general social, political, cultural and economic transformation processes18 . Such a way of assessing values makes it possible, aside from known explanatory models, to analyze and present changes in values in post-industrial societies. The first works to research the centralized values of Western industrialization as a whole appear or are being undertaken in historical science sub-studies of the fields of employment19 , education20 , family21 and the value of life22 .

About these Proceedings The research assembled here shows that a focus on the changing processes of norms, values and practices as well as the comparative view on values, value changes and socio-cultural transformation processes can gain a lot from an international perspective. This collection addresses this research aim. The studies gathered here discuss how the thought, speech and action with regard to children and family planning 18

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See Andreas Rödder, Wertewandel und Postmoderne. Gesellschaft und Kultur der Bundesrepublik, Stuttgart 2004; Bernhard Dietz, Zur Theorie des „Wertewandels“. Ein Schlüssel für sozialen und mentalen Wandel in der Geschichte?, in: Peter Dinzelbacher, Friedrich Harrer (eds.), Wandlungsprozesse der Mentalitätsgeschichte, Baden-Baden 2015, p. 25–47; Isabel Heinemann, Wertewandel, Version: 1.0, in: Docupedia-Zeitgeschichte, 22.10.2012, URL: http://docupedia.de/zg/Wertewandel?oldid=125455. See the articles in: Dietz, Neuheiser (eds.), Wertewandel in der Wirtschaft und Arbeitswelt (as in n. 13); Bernhard Dietz, Wertewandel in der Wirtschaft? Die leitenden Angestellten und die Konflikte um Mitbestimmung und Führungsstil in den siebziger Jahren, in: Id., Neumaier, Rödder (eds.), Gab es den Wertewandel?, p. 169–197; Jörg Neuheiser, Vom bürgerlichen Arbeitsethos zum postmaterialistischen Arbeiten? Werteforschung, neue Arbeitsmarktsemantik und betriebliche Praxis in den 1970er Jahren, in: Jörn Leonhard, Willibald Steinmetz (eds.), Semantiken von Arbeit. Diachrone und vergleichende Perspektiven (Industrielle Welt, 91), Köln 2016, p. 319–346. Cf. Anna Kranzdorf, Vom Leitbild zum Feindbild? Zum Bedeutungswandel des altsprachlichen Unterrichts in den 1950er/1960er Jahren der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, in: Dietz, Neumaier, Rödder (eds.), Gab es den Wertewandel?, p. 337–362. See Heinemann (ed.), Inventing the Modern American Family (as in n. 4); Claudia Roesch, Macho Men and Modern Women. Mexican Immigration, Social Experts and Changing Family Values in the 20th Century United States, Berlin, Boston 2015; Christopher Neumaier, Von der bürgerlichen Kernfamilie zur Pluralität familialer Lebensformen? Zum Wandel der Familienwerte in Westdeutschland in den 1960er und 1970er Jahren, in: Frank Bösch, Martin Sabrow (eds.), ZeitRäume. Potsdamer Almanach des Zentrums für Zeithistorische Forschung 2012/2013, Göttingen 2013, p. 133–144. See the research projects of Ann-Katrin Gembries and Theresia Theuke.

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changed in the face of new medical-technical possibilities of human reproduction, and whether these changes in Western Europe and the USA, but also in Eastern and Southern Europe, may be described as a change in values in the 20th century23 . The geographically wide-ranging studies lead to a broadened perspective on the value-driven handling of reproduction and family planning and make it possible to identify and express the specifics of national solutions and the interactions between states. In addition, the extended temporal frame of reference of these studies allows for the analysis and representation of breaks, continuities and shifts of value propositions, and at the same time serves to critically review central social science theses such as the assumption of a “change in value”24 between 1965 and 1975 or the description of the value change in the “individualization thesis”25 . Looking at the historical depictions of the treatment processes of family planning and reproduction, the disputes about the legalization of abortion are particularly striking because they were characterized not only by the vehemence with which they were carried out but also by the enormous speed of the process of change caused by them. The practice of abortions worldwide was, until a few decades ago, socially and legally penalized by majorities, and not accepted as a means of subsequent birth-control systems. The tendency to allow women access to abortions not only legally but also financially in the second half of the twentieth century in many European countries and the USA resulted in majority-backed legislation which legalized abortion in general or under defined conditions. The compromise solutions between life protection on the one hand and personal rights claims on the other hand, which have been achieved in violent social and parliamentary disputes, have been and remain controversial. Already just the controversies surrounding the issue of abortion reveal a change in ethical, moral and legal assessments and provoke questions about the contents of a possible value change. For example, it is important to ask which opinions and evaluations in the respective societies were dominant in relation to issues of sexuality, reproduction, pregnancy, embryos and birth, and how they changed. 23 24

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Exceptions are the collections of de Zordo, Mishtal, Anton (eds.), A Fragmented Landscape; Niethammer, Satjukow (eds.), “Wenn die Chemie stimmt”. In this way Helmut Klages characterized the consolidation of value-change processes from the mid-1960s to the end of the 1970s. See Helmut Klages, Traditionsbruch als Herausforderung. Perspektiven der Wertewandelsgesellschaft, Frankfurt a. M. 1994, p. 45. The “individualization thesis” was formulated the first time in 1986 in: Ulrich Beck, Risikogesellschaft. Auf dem Weg in eine andere Moderne, Frankfurt a. M. 1986. It was thus linked to the observation by Helmut Klages, Wertorientierungen im Wandel (as in n. 10), p. 17f. of a shift from “compulsory and acceptance values to self-development values”, thus describing the tendency to dissolve social classes, structures, and institutions such as the family or marriage.

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The assessment of family, parenthood and private life as well as the role of religion, law and medicine must be examined as well as the relationship between the individual and the collective. Furthermore, one can ask whether there was a change in values regarding reproduction and family planning, and, if one is identified, what its pattern was. Was it a linear, continuous development or a back and forth process characterized by shifts and counter-movements? What was the role of social actors such as women’s movements, churches or private educational initiatives within these transformation processes? What interests did they pursue? However, the question must also be asked about the impact of the medical and technical achievements on social practice, the values within society and the institutional framework. In this sense, some contributions examine the influence of scientific and medical expert groups on reproduction decisions (Fiametta Balestracci, Yuliya Hilevych, Chizu Sato). Furthermore, they analyze the state-legal framework of family planning (Agata Ignaciuk, Radka Dudová) and focus on the analysis of public discourses, as expressed in articles and surveys (Fiametta Balestracci, Agata Ignaciuk) and political debates (Radka Dudová, Ann-Katrin Gembries). Other papers focus on the investigation of education and family counselling by private or state-sponsored institutions, such as women’s and patients’ networks, pro-life organizations or medical associations (Eszter Varsa, Claudia Roesch, Agata Ignaciuk). In addition, in some articles the public and political discussions of prevention methods such as the pill, sterilization or condoms are examined in different political systems (Agata Ignaciuk, Ann-Katrin Gembries) or private birth control and family planning (Rona Torenz). Finally, the contribution by Isabel Heinemann undertakes a mapping of the differences and similarities between standard and attitudinal changes as well as reproductive practices in modern societies. The essays contained in this collection cover the complexity of the decisionmaking processes in the area of reproduction and family planning. Against the background of the respective political and social systems and developments in Germany and abroad, the actors’ choices as well as the institutional decision-making are analyzed. The relevance of the individual actors for the further development of negotiating processes proves to be quite different depending on the state concerned. The comparison of Catholic countries, as in the essay by Agata Ignaciuk, which compares the introduction of the pill in Poland and Spain, shows that there were sometimes huge differences between countries which displayed some moral or structural analogies. At the same time, national, ideological and political boundaries reveal clear similarities and differences in the way they deal with family planning, population policy, access to abortion, the moral and economic evaluation of the role of women, the dominant family concepts or the existence of eugenic aspirations.

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In addition to the comparative possibilities resulting from the geographic and ideological differences of the countries under investigation, the long investigation period of just under 100 years makes it possible to present continuities, breaks and shifts in a temporal dimension. The temporal arc of the studies gathered here stretches from the eugenics and world population congresses of the 1920s and 1930s to the legalization of abortion in Eastern bloc states in the 1950s and in societies in the West in the 1970s. It also takes into account discussions on sex education, family planning, contraception, and abortion during the 1980s and 1990s. This long period of time makes it possible to examine the change in value settings in reproduction and family planning well beyond the period of the 1960s and 1970s, which has been identified as a watershed in reproductive decision-making so far.

Composition of the Volume The collected contributions unite behind the research interest in tracing changes in thought, speech and act concerning family planning and reproduction – precisely against the background of different chronological, substantive and national focal points. It is not a question of developing general explanatory models for the transformation of values in the modern age, but rather to show facets of value change. Therefore, it seemed appropriate to present the articles in chronological order. Thus, an essay by Ann-Katrin Gembries opens the anthology. In her contribution she analyzes contrasting changes in standards of argumentation within French and German debates on birth control and abortion from the 1920s until the 1970s. She notes the great importance of pronatalistic arguments at the beginning of the investigation period, which, however, almost completely disappeared over the course of time, despite the fact that the birth rate was declining. To account for this at first surprising result, she provides an explanatory approach based on the assumption of a shift from collective to individual values. Claudia Roesch’s contribution takes a closer look at the negotiation process for introducing and spreading contraceptives in the US. In her analysis she examines the central narrative and argumentative strategies of the US organization Planned Parenthood between 1942 and 1973. She elucidates how the rhetoric of the organization, which oscillated between immaterial and material as well as individual and collective values, mirrored a general value change in the USA. In the next study, Eszter Varsa analyzes the most important contributions of the sexual councils published in socialist Hungary from the mid-1950s to the 1980s. She shows how the rhetoric and argumentation strategies of the literature focused on in the study changed during the investigation period, and which

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goals were pursued by the publishers of these works. She demonstrates that in the sexual councils of the investigation period, pronounced pronatal efforts can be found, for example, reflected in advertising relating to sexuality in marriage, children and the nuclear family. The contribution of Yuliya Hilevych and Chizu Sato analyze expert medical discourse on birth control in the Soviet Union from the 1950s-1980s on both sides of the Iron Curtain, concerning the conflict between “abortion or the pill”. In their analysis of the expenditure on the health magazine “Zdorovie” from 1955 to 1975, the authors work out the motivations and values based on the admissibility or rejection of abortion and contraceptives. Agata Ignaciuk offers a broad comparative study of the factors, actors and conditions that fostered the development, introduction of the pill and the obstacles to its use by describing the differences in the distribution and frequency of use of the pill in the 1960s to 1980s in Spain and Poland. Despite the structural similarity of the two nations analyzed, Iganciuk illustrates by using the case studies that the pill in Poland, contrary to Spain, was accepted and applied at a far slower rate than mechanical contraceptives, for example condoms. Based on the results of the investigation, the author succeeds in analyzing the introduction and use of the pill as a mirror of changes in values and attitudes to sexuality, reproduction and family planning. Fiammetta Balestracci examines the important factors influencing the “sexual revolution” of the Italian women’s movement in the 1970s. In addition to the diminishing influence of the Catholic Church, she emphasizes the relevance of the studies by the American biologist Alfred Kinsey, which was a clear breach of traditional ideas of female pleasure and sexuality. Balestracci shows how the “Sexual Revolution” was characterized on the one hand by medical and technical aspects and on the other by a new feminism that was heavily influenced by sexual research in the US. For her contribution to abortion discourses of the second half of the 20th century in former Czechoslovakia / Czech Republic, Radka Dudová examines political, public and scientific discussions and elaborates the motivations behind the legalization of abortion in 1957 and the negotiation processes that led to it. This analysis shows that, unlike the Western European countries, feminist or bourgeois initiatives were not the driving force behind the relaxation of abortion law. This observation leads Dudová to the assumption that these developments were based not on a change of values but on political and medical discourses, as well as the development of medical techniques. Unlike the previous articles, Rona Torenz uses oral history to analyze the importance and sometimes difficult negotiating processes of individual reproductive decisions by women in the former GDR. The evaluation of their conversations with the interviewees of different generations shows that women in the GDR knew about and took advantage of different forms of contraceptive and preven-

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tive measures and the possibility of abortion, which had existed since the easing of the criminal law in 1972. Isabel Heinemann closes the anthology with a comparative analysis of the individual results which she discusses in a broader historical perspective on social change and value transformations during the 20th century. She argues that discourses and practices of reproductive decision-making in both Western and Eastern European societies do not account for a general transition from materialist to post-materialist values in the realm of reproduction during the 1960s and 1970s. In contrast, the diverging negotiations of family planning and reproductive decision-making reveal multiple (and sometimes contingent) processes of normative and social change and their respective counter-movements, all of which require further historical study. Finally, we would like to offer our heartfelt thanks to all who have contributed to the publication of this volume. Due to the commitment of the participants, the conference papers could be published in English. We thank Ian Copestake for translating and proofing the manuscript and we cordially thank Ronja Kieffer for her valuable cooperation in editing the manuscript. We would also like to thank the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft for its financial support of the conference.

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Ann-Katrin Gembries

Birth Control as a National Threat? Pronatalist Discourses on Abortion in France and Germany (1920s–1970s) When in the first decades of the 20th century birth control started to be publicly discussed and became the object of legislative works in many industrialized countries, pronatalist arguments soon appeared to dominate the discourse. At first glance, this could be explained by the birth rate decline that took place in nearly all Western societies during that time. But only a few decades later, in the 1960s and 1970s, when birth control was more than ever publicly discussed, pronatalist arguments had nearly disappeared from the discourse, while the birth rates were at their lowest. A long term perspective shows us that another explanation of this phenomenon is needed. In my paper, I suggest that underlying value changes in the fields of sexuality, reproduction, gender relations and family conceptions, which can be described as a shifting from collectivistic to individualistic value orientations, are a key to understanding this evolution. Drawing on epistemic devices like discourse analysis and historical comparison, I examine the public discourses on contraception and abortion in France and in Germany between from the 1920s to the 1970s with regards to the ‘destiny’ of pronatalist arguments and underlying value changes. A comparison of these two countries is particularly interesting, because in France, pronatalist arguments were hegemonic until after the Second World War and never completely disappeared, whereas in Germany they had to compete from the beginning with other dominant arguments (eugenics in particular) and they nearly vanished from the public discourse on birth control in the second half of the century. Thus it appears that the different national contexts have to be taken into consideration when we try to restitute an accurate articulation of (1) the ‘hard facts’, i.e. the general birth rate decline, the introduction of modern birth control devices like the pill, the legal situation of birth control; (2) the influence of the historical background, i.e. the two World Wars, women’s emancipation; and (3) value changes in the public discourse on birth control.

Introduction When in the first decades of the 20th century birth control started to be publicly discussed and became the object of legislative works in many industrialized counhttps://doi.org/9783110524499-002

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tries, pronatalist arguments soon appeared to dominate the discourse. At first glance, this could be explained by the birth rate decline that took place in nearly all western societies during that time1 . But a closer look at the particular cases of France and Germany shows that this explanation is not entirely satisfying: While scholars generally agree on the fact that the spectacular birth rate decline in both countries was indeed caused by increasing birth control practices2 , this neither helps us to understand why the birth rate decline (and thus birth control) was actually seen as a threat, nor why the pronatalist discourse was more hegemonic in France than in Germany, while the French birth rates were similar or higher. Most importantly, it does not help our understanding of why pronatalist concerns nearly disappeared from the public debates on birth control in the 1960s and 1970s, while in both countries birth rates were sinking even lower than during the interwar period3 . Indeed, from a long term perspective it becomes clear that another kind of explanation is needed, which may be found by considering this evolution with regards to deeper social transformation processes, and more specifically to value changes as an essential part of the transition from modern to postmodern societies. So far, the existing historiography of pronatalism and birth control in France and Germany has concentrated on the period before 19454 . Here, scholars 1

2 3

4

See for example: John R. Gillis (ed.), The European Experience of Declining Fertility. 1850– 1970, Cambridge 1992; Herwig Birg, Die demographische Zeitenwende, Munich 2005; Jean-Pierre Bardet, Histoire des populations de l’Europe, Paris 1997. See for example: Christiane Dienel, Kinderzahl und Staatsräson. Empfängnisverhütung und Bevölkerungspolitik in Deutschland und Frankreich bis 1918, Münster 1995, p. 29. Lowest birth rate in the interwar period for Germany: 14.7/1000 inhabitants in 1933. Source: Statistisches Bundesamt (ed.), Bevölkerung und Wirtschaft, Wiesbaden 1972, p. 103. Lowest birth rate in the interwar period for France: 14.6/1000 inhabitants in 1938. Source: André Armengaud, La population française au XXe siècle, Paris 1977, p. 87. Birth rates in 1975 for Western Germany: 9.7/1000 inhabitants; for Eastern Germany: 10.8/1000 inhabitants; for France: 14.1/1000 inhabitants. Source: Human Fertility Database, http://www.humanfertility. org (access on Nov. 10, 2017). See for example: Cornelie Usborne, Frauenkörper – Volkskörper. Geburtenkontrolle und Bevölkerungspolitik in der Weimarer Republik, Münster 1994; Gisela Bock, “Zum Wohle des Volkskörpers. . . ”, Abtreibung und Sterilisation im Nationalsozialismus, in: Journal für Geschichte 2, 1980, Heft 6, p. 58–65; Elisa Camiscioli, Reproducing the French Race. Immigration, Intimacy, and Embodiment in the Early Twentieth Century, Durham NC 2009; Cyril Olivier, Du “crime contre la race”. L’avortement dans la France de la Révolution Nationale, in: Christine Bard, Frédéric Chauvaud, Michelle Perrot et al. (ed.), Femmes et justice pénale. XIXe–XXe siècles, Rennes 2002, p. 253–264. Still, for the second half of the 20th century, a few exceptions should be mentioned: Annette Leo, Christian König, “Die Wunschkindpille”. Weibliche Erfahrung und staatliche Geburtenpolitik in der DDR, Göttingen 2015; Donna Harsch, Society, the State, and Abortion in East Germany, 1950– 1972, in: The American Historical Review, Vol. 102, No. 1 (Feb., 1997, p. 53–84); Janine Mossuz-Lavau, Les lois de L’amour. Les politiques de la sexualité en France (1950–2002), Paris, Payot 2002.

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have mostly focused on pronatalist pressure groups and birth policies5 , rather than on discourses and values6 , and their studies are generally limited to one country7 . In this chapter, I suggest broadening the horizon both geographically and chronologically in order to try to understand the success and decline of pronatalist discourse, that is to say a very specific branch within the public debates on abortion and contraception in France and Germany, from the perspective of value changes. In the following, I define values as general and fundamental orientation standards and order conceptions which are accepted as binding for thinking, talking and acting individually and collectively8 . By taking into consideration the “social” and “discursive nature of values”9 , it appears that some elements of discourse theory can help us achieve an analytical grasp of the collective value orientations carried by pronatalist discourses on birth control in French and German midcentury societies. Discourses can be considered as institutionally established 5

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See for example: Vera Neumann, Geburten- und Sexualpolitik in der Weimarer Republik am Beispiel des § 218, in: Jürgen Reulecke et al. (ed.), Stadt und Gesundheit: zum Wandel von “Volksgesundheit” und kommunaler Gesundheitspolitik im 19. und frühen 20. Jahrhundert, Stuttgart 1991, p. 307–324; Gabriele Czarnowski, Hereditary and Racial Welfare (Erb- und Rassenpflege): The Politics of Sexuality and Reproduction in Nazi Germany, in: Social Politics 4. 1997, p. 114–135; Andrés H. Reggiani, Procreating France: The Politics of Demography, 1919–1945, in: French Historical Studies, XIX/3, spring 1996, p. 729; Fabrice Cahen, De l’“efficacité” des politiques publiques: la lutte contre L’avortement “criminel” en France, 1890– 1950, in: Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine 2011/3 (no 58-3), p. 90–117; MarieMonique Huss, Pronatalism in the Inter-war Period in France, in: Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 25, 1990, p. 39–68; Françoise Thébaud, Le mouvement nataliste dans la France de l’entre-deux-guerres: L’Alliance nationale pour L’accroissement de la population française, Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine, vol. 32-2, no. 2, 1985, p. 276–346. The few existing discourse analyses do not primarily focus on pronatalism and birth control: Thorsten Eitz, “Nieder mit dem Abtreibungsparagraphen!” Die Kontroverse um den § 218, in: Thorsten Eitz, Isabelle Engelhardt, Diskursgeschichte der Weimarer Republik, vol. 2, Hildesheim, Zurich, New York 2015, p. 115–164; Verena Steinecke, Menschenökonomie. Der medizinische Diskurs über den Geburtenrückgang von 1911 bis 1931, Pfaffenweiler 1996; Ann-Katrin Gembries, Von der Fortpflanzungspflicht zum Recht auf Abtreibung. Werte und Wertewandel im Spiegel französischer Parlamentsdebatten über Geburtenkontrolle 1920–1974, in: Bernhard Dietz, Christopher Neumaier, Andreas Rödder, (ed.), Gab es den Wertewandel? Neue Forschungen zum gesellschaftlich-kulturellen Wandel seit den 1960er Jahren, Munich 2014, p. 304–334. There is one notable exception, although it does not focus on birth control: Elisabeth Bokelmann, Die demographische Frage nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg, Diskurse und legislative Maßnahmen, in: Ilja Mieck, Pierre Guillen (ed.): Nachkriegsgesellschaften in Deutschland und Frankreich im 20. Jahrhundert, Munich 1998, p. 97–108. This definition is inspired by Clyde Kluckhohn, Values and Value-Orientations in the Theory of Action. An Exploration in Definition and Classification, in: Talcott Parsons/Edward A. Shils (ed.), Toward a General Theory of Action, Cambridge 1962, p. 388–433. Jan W. van Deth, Elinor Scarbrough, The Concept of Values, in: Jan W. van Deth, Elinor Scarbrough (ed.), The Impact of Values, New York 1995, p. 21–47, 34.

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ways of speaking about a given subject10 – in this case about birth control. The rules, categories, order concepts, and value hierarchies underlying and structuring a discourse form the collectively accepted cognitive and normative frame for the thinking, speaking and acting of individuals in society11 . Discourses function as narratives that explain and legitimize social realities and power relations12 . At the same time, the configuration of a society and the individual (but collectively shared) historical experiences determine the social acceptability of a discourse and its success at a given time13 . Starting from these theoretical considerations, I will try to answer the following set of questions: What were the characteristics of pronatalist discourse on birth control in France and Germany from 1920 to 1976? What narratives did it propose, and which collective values were embedded in it? What was its weight within the public debates on contraception and abortion? What other kinds of discourses did it have to compete with? Which social actors used a pronatalist discourse and for which purpose? Why did this particular discourse emerge in this particular historical configuration? Which collective experiences determined its acceptability at this given time? In a second step, I focus on the dimension of long term value changes. The sociologist and philosopher Hans Joas has developed a triangular model of reciprocal causal interactions between discourses, social practices and institutions14 . According to this conception, value changes can be explained by looking closely into the dynamics of how exactly discourses, social practices and institutions are interrelated in a longitudinal perspective. From these considerations, I will add a second set of research questions: What was the impact of pronatalist discourses on birth control legislation and on the social practices of abortion and contraception, and how were pronatalist discourses again influenced by changing institutions and practices? These two sets of research questions will be answered with regards to France and Germany. A comparison of these two countries in particular seems to impose itself most naturally because, as we will see, a main component of the pronatalist discourse on both sides of the Rhine consisted of referring to the demographic situation in the respective neighboring country in the light of an old and permanent national antagonism. But the comparative approach is also useful as a heuristic device15 which helps distinguish how each particular national context influences 10 11 12 13 14 15

See Jürgen Link, Was ist und was bringt Diskurstaktik, in: kultuRRevolution 2 (1983), p. 60–66, 60. See Michel Foucault, Les mots et les choses, Paris 1966. See Peter Berger, Thomas Luckmann, Die gesellschaftliche Konstruktion der Wirklichkeit. Eine Theorie der Wissenssoziologie, Frankfurt a. M. 1980, p. 69. See Siegfried Jäger, Kritische Diskursanalyse. Eine Einführung, Duisburg 1993, p. 155. See Hans Joas, Die Entstehung der Werte, Frankfurt a. M. 1999, p. 252–274. According to the methodology of historical comparisons developed by Heinz-Gerhard Haupt, Jürgen Kocka (ed.), Geschichte und Vergleich. Ansätze und Ergebnisse inter-

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the character and impact of public discourses. Therefore, a third set of research questions will be asked as follows: What were the similarities and differences between France and Germany with regards to the characteristics of pronatalist discourse, its weight within the debates on abortion and contraception and its socio-political impact? How can these similarities and differences be explained in the light of similar but not identical societal evolutions (birth rate decline, spread of birth control, struggle for women’s rights, secularization), historical experiences (two World Wars, alternation of democratic and dictatorial regimes) and their different collective perceptions and interpretations? The sources that were analyzed in order to answer these three sets of research questions are parliamentary debates, draft laws, newspaper and magazine articles, expert literature (doctors, demographers, theologians, jurists etc.), statements from political, religious and social actors and organizations, and birth statistics and opinion polls16 . The public debates referred to in this chapter mostly (but not exclusively) concern penal law reforms about abortion – abortion being widely considered by mid-century pronatalists, as the birth control technique par excellence, as will be demonstrated later. Indeed, the changing views on the question of whether or not abortion and contraception should be considered as equivalent will also help to explain the progressive decline of pronatalist discourse on birth control in the second half of the 20th century. The first (and main) part of this paper focuses on the 1920s–1950s which are being identified as the golden age of pronatalism. French and German pronatalist discourse will be analyzed with regard to its arguments, to its weight within the public debates on abortion and to its institutional and social impact. The second part of this chapter is conceived as an outlook which tries to explain the progressive decline of pronatalist discourse on abortion in both countries in the 1950s–1970s.

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national vergleichender Geschichtsschreibung, Frankfurt a. M. 1996; Hartmut Kaelble, Jürgen Schriewer (ed.), Diskurse und Entwicklungspfade: der Gesellschaftsvergleich in der Geschichtswissenschaft, Frankfurt a. M. 1999. I would ask the reader to be indulgent about the fact that it was sometimes difficult to find equivalent and comparable source material for two countries and over so long a period of time.

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1920s–1950s: The Golden Age of Pronatalism Abortion as a Demographic Issue

Since the beginning of the 20th century, there had been a growing public concern about the birth rate decline in Germany and France, which coincided with and was echoed by the beginning public debates on birth control17 . By the end of the First World War, then, and at least until the 1950s, there was a broad consensus in both societies about the fact that birth control was a demographic issue, abortion being frequently designated as a major factor of birth rate decline18 . Fabrice Cahen has shown how abortion used to be considered in the 19th century as an individual crime of killing a fetus, and then was gradually constructed by experts, through providing abortion statistics, as a population phenomenon and a public concern in the early 20th century19 . With some precaution, a similar change of paradigm can also be extrapolated to Germany. Significantly, in both countries, and throughout the entire studied period (1920s–1970s), the most recurrent abortion figure given by discourse participants was of around 500,000 per annum20 . Moreover, the forwarding of this figure was most of the time associated in both countries with a warning against the growing number of abortions21 and confronted with extensive quotations from birth statistics 17

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An excellent study of the French and German public debates on birth control and birth rate decline from 1871 to 1918 has been written by Christiane Dienel, Kinderzahl und Staatsräson (as in n. 2). In some respects, this chapter can be considered as a continuation of her book. E.g.: Dr. Audebert, in: Comité permanent de la natalité (ed.), IXe Congrès de la natalité, Toulouse, 1926, Paris 1928; Union Nationale des Caisses d’Allocations Familiales (UNCAF) (ed.): La Famille d’aujourd’hui, vol. 4, L’avortement et les moyens anticonceptionnels, Paris 1947, p. 13; G. Winter (gynecologist), Der künstliche Abort. Denkschrift für die praktischen Ärzte, in: Verordnungen aus dem Gebiete der Medizinalverwaltung 9 (1919), p. 148; E. Rösner (criminologist), Die kriminalpolitische und demographische Bedeutung der Abtreibung im Spiegel der Statistik, Sonderbeilage der Kriminalistischen Monatshefte, Berlin-Charlottenburg 1936, p. 1. Fabrice Cahen, Medicine, Statistics, and the Encounter of Abortion and “Depopulation” in France (1870–1920), in: History of the Family 14, 2009, p. 19–35. This figure was first proposed for France by medical professor A. Lacassagne, Précis de médicine légale, Paris 1906, p. 826. It was a wild estimation calculated on the basis of the report of one single midwife. For Germany, the estimates varied between 200,000 and 1,000,000, but the origins of these figures could not be traced. See for instance Usborne, Frauenkörper (as in n. 4), p. 229, 234. E.g.: Communist draft law, Proposition de loi tendant à légaliser L’avortement pour raisons d’ordre social pratiqué par des médecins, Chambre des députés, annexe no 6263 au procèsverbal du 29.1.1932; P. Trillat (doctor), in: Ministère de la Santé publique et de la Population (ed.), L’avortement fléau social, Paris 1951, p. 10; Bayrischer Ärztetag, 12.7.1925, Entschließung, in: Ärztliches Vereinsblatt für Deutschland, 21.8.1925, p. 359; H. Harmsen,

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demonstrating a rapid birth rate decline22 , while in France it was frequently added that these 500,000 abortions were equivalent to the number of “missing births”23 , which illustrates the more rhetoric than factual base of this figure. Having been identified by pronatalist discourses as the main cause of birth rate decline, abortion, as the most emblematic and problematic technique of birth control, was regularly at the heart of a network of crisis narratives.

Existential Crisis and Birth War Paradigm

Pronatalist discourses argued or implicitly assumed that, by provoking birth rate decline, the social practice of abortion led to population decline24 . Thus, the practice was repeatedly qualified as an existential “threat” to the national community25 (which could be identified as “nation”, “people”, or “race”, depending on the political affiliation26 ). In a historical context dominated by two World Wars, demography, and thus abortion, was seen through the prism of a permanent military antagonism between France and Germany. After the fundamental experience of the first modern mass war in 1914–1918, fought by enormous conscription armies and having caused unprecedented mass losses on both sides of the Rhine27 , the

22

23

24

25

26 27

Zur Sozialhygienischen Problematik der Gesetzgebung betreffend Schwangerschaftsunterbrechung und Abtreibung in Mitteldeutschland, Hamburg 1957, p. 6. J.-M. Lavorel (Catholic priest), Pour la Résurrection de la France par la multiplicité des berceaux, Paris 1923, p. 10; P. Haury (education inspector), Le danger de la dépopulation et la conspiration du silence, Paris 1935, p. 2; E. Kahn (economist), Der internationale Geburtenstreik. Umfang, Ursachen, Wirkungen, Gegenmaßnahmen, Frankfurt a. M. 1930, p. 15–23; R. Korherr (economist and statistician), Geburtenrückgang. Mahnruf an das deutsche Volk, Munich 1935, p. 15–16. A. Isaac (moderate rightist), speech at the Fourth National Natality Congress, in: Quatrième Congrès National de la Natalité, Tours, 21.-24.9.1922, Compte Rendu, Tours 1922, p. 24. (All translations are from the author of this chapter). J.-J. Renaud, Il faut rétablir le ‘tour’ de Saint Vincent-de-Paul, in: Le Matin, 23.12.1943; Germania, 30.10.1928; C. Ulitzka (catholic centrist), Plenarprotokoll des Deutschen Reichstags (from now on: RT), 7.5.1926, p. 7063. E. Ignace (center-right), Chambre, 23.7.1920, in: Annales de la Chambre des députés, 111 (1920), p. 2696; P. Renaudin, La Famille dans la Nation, Conférence du 16 juin 1943 à la Sorbonne, Paris 1943, p. 6; Kardinal Bertram (Head of the German Catholic bishop conference), 24.5.1925, Eingabe an den RMdI, Bundesarchiv Berlin (from now on: BA), R/86/5636; P. Mombert (economist), Bevölkerungslehre, Jena 1929, p. 324. For the sake of readability, I chose to use the term “national community” instead. See for example: Michael Salewski, Vom Kabinettskrieg zum totalen Krieg: Der Gestaltwandel des Krieges im 19. Und 20. Jahrhundert, in: Ulrich Lappenküper, Joachim Scholtyseck, Christoph Studt (ed.), Masse und Macht im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert. Studien zu Schlüsselbegriffen unserer Zeit, Munich 2003, p. 51–66.

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absolute population size of a country was widely considered as military decisive because it constituted the recruiting basis for a big army28 . Accordingly, demographic interpretations of past and present military events were discussed: For the French, the Germans had started the First World War because they were “multiplying like rabbits”29 , and the Second World War was led “in the name of vital space”30 . The French had won in 1918 because French families sacrificed their sons31 . In 1940, the French Marshal Philippe Pétain attributed a heavy responsibility to low birth rates regarding the French defeat against Germany: “Not enough children, not enough weapons, not enough allies, these are the reasons of our defeat”32 . This became part of the official Vichy narrative about the lost war33 . For the Germans, their country had not really lost the First World War because they still had a higher population than France34 , while the Second World War could only be won if “German couples have more children than before”35 . In this perspective, the importance of high birth rates stretched beyond the periods of actual military conflicts: After both World Wars, it was argued in France that abortion needed to be fought in order to protect the country from a permanently felt military threat by the more densely populated Germany36 . In Germany, where pronatalists wanted the country to regain its status as a great European country, abortion repression was justified more abstractly by the necessity to ensure the “nation’s future”37 in a permanent historical struggle between national communities38 . In both countries, reproduction was said to

28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36

37

38

F. Auburtin (Counsel of State), La Natalité, Paris 1929, p. 45; Population, in: Meyer 7, vol. 2, 1925, col. 289; Kahn, Der internationale Geburtenstreik,1930 (as in n. 22), p. 191f. P. Morucci (socialist), Chambre, 23.7.1920, in: Annales 111 (1920), p. 2702. Similarly: Vitalité Française, Revue de L’alliance contre la dépopulation 431, March 1956. Dr. F. Bonnet-Roy, Dénatalité et avortement, in: Le Monde, 22.1.1946. Isaac, Fourth National Natality Congress, 1922 (as in n. 23) p. 22. P. Pétain, on the 20.6.1940; in: Jean Claude Barbas (ed.), Philippe Pétain, discours aux Français, Paris, Albin Michel, 1989, p. 60. Renaud, Il faut rétablir, 1943 (as in n. 24). This interpretation persisted after the war, e.g.: A. Sauvy (demographer), in: L’Express, 11.5.1956. G. Barth (nationalist), RT, 5.5.1926, p. 7015 (C). J. Haarer (doctor), Die deutsche Mutter und ihr erstes Kind, Berlin 1943, p. 9. G. Clémenceau, speech on the Treaty of Versailles: “The treaty does not stipulate that France undertakes to produce a great number of children, but that should have been its very first article [. . . ]. ”, in: JO Débats parlementaires – Sénat, 13.10.1919; Similarly: president E. Daladier, quoted by C. Bonnet, Cent ans d’Histoire, In: Informations Sociales 6,7 (1978), p. 20. Evangelische Kreissynode Essen, Eingabe an den RT, 5.4.1924, in: BA, R/3001/6232; A. Bluhm, Die Straflosigkeit der Abtreibung im Lichte der Rassenhygiene, in: Vereinsblatt des Bundes Deutscher Ärztinnen (from now on: VBDÄ) 3, (1924), p. 58–62, 58. Sylvanus, Vom Grenz- und Auslanddeutschtum (Verkümmern und Wachsen), in: Deutsche

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be actually more important for the national defense than short lasting military victories39 . By establishing a discursive nexus between demographic and military terms and arguments, a double extension of the German–French antagonism was thus operated: from wartime to peacetime and from the battleground to the family and society. Accordingly, families were to be treated as “war heroes”40 , mothers held “like Jeanne d’Arc, the nation’s peace, future, fortune and honor in their hands”41 , giving birth was qualified as “going to the front of motherhood”42 or as “national service of woman”43 , and should be rewarded by “military decorations”44 . Consequently, women who chose not to have children were qualified as “deserters”45 and abortionists were considered as “traitors” working in favor of foreign powers46 . Low birth rates were “lost battles”47 in what was called the “birth war”48 . Implementing this idea of demography as a permanent battlefield, Germans and French compared continuously each other’s birth rates49 and birth policies50 . But whereas the French pronatalists were mainly expressing their fear of Germany’s population growth (and often admired the National-Socialists’ repression of abortion), France, with its long tradition of birth rate decline, was generally

39

40 41 42 43 44 45 46

47 48 49

50

Rundschau 197 (1923), p. 94; J. Graßl, Wie mag die Zukunft aussehen? Unmoderne Gedanken, in: Hochland 17/2 (1919/20), p. 264. Rapport du Haut-Comité de la Population, 5.11.1939, Archives Nationales (from now on: AN), F60 498; G. Portmann (moderate leftist senator), in: Ouest-Eclair, 31.12.1939; F. Burgdörfer (demographer), Volks- und Wehrkraft, Krieg und Rasse, Berlin 1936, p. 15. C. Chautemps (mayor of Tours), speech at the Fourth National Natality Congress 1922 (as in n. 23), p. 14. M. Mirault, speech at Fourth National Natality Congress 1922 (as in n. 23), p. 16. A. Hitler, speech at the Reichsparteitag in Nürnberg, 1935, quoted in Robert Proctor, Racial Hygiene, Medicine under the Nazis, Cambridge 1988, p. 125. Vice-admiral de Perfentenyo, Manuel du père de famille, Paris 1941, p. 112. A. Mayer (medical professor), Schwangerschaftsunterbrechung aus wirtschaftlicher Not?, Augsburg 1950, p. 13. Korherr, Geburtenrückgang, 1935 (as in n. 22), p. 18. Revue de L’alliance nationale contre la dépopulation 317, Jan. 1939, p. 3; G. Dumolin du Fraisse (jurist), L’avortement en droit pénal depuis le Code de la famille, Paris 1943, p. 4; O. Beyel, Die Kleine Familie und ihre Anpreisung, in: Christliche Volkswacht, Monatszeitschrift der Mitternachtsmission e. V., June/July 1920. Portmann, in: Ouest-Eclair, 31.12.1939; Korherr, Geburtenrückgang (1935), p. 15. P. Danzer, Geburtenkrieg, Berlin 1936. Haut-Comité de la population, 5.11.1939, (as in n. 39); Portmann, in: Ouest-Eclair, 31.12.1939; J. Bell (catholic centrist), Reichsausschuss für Rechtspflege, 2.3.1926; L. Conti, Gesundheitsbilanz des deutschen Volkes, in: Völkischer Beobachter (from now on: VB), 26.4.1940. G. Jeannin, Démographie européenne, in: L’Actualité Sociale 166, Oct. 1941; A. Sauvy, Richesse et population, Paris 1945, p. 297; Die Hypothek des Todes, in: VB, 10.6.1933.

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represented as a negative example in Germany51 , where studies about French demography became a popular literary genre52 . For the Germans, on the other hand, Russia and Poland and their growing populations were identified as the main threat throughout the entire period53 . The recurrent warning against the “growing danger from the over-prolific nations from the East”54 echoed Oswald Spengler’s theory of the “decline of the West”55 and prefigured a popular theme of the German conservative’s Cold War rhetoric about the defense of the “Christian Occident”56 . An openly socialDarwinist and racist version of this narrative could be found on both sides of the Rhine, and not only before 1945, with a shrinking “white race” being threatened in its existence by the quickly growing “yellow or black” races57 . The other peril to which abortion was considered to expose the nation was its qualitative decline. In the socio-economic version of this narrative, sinking birth rates caused an ageing of the population, which would eventually weaken the national economy and provoke a breakdown of the health and pension insurance systems, it was argued in both countries58 . An alternative decline narrative 51

52

53

54

55 56

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J. Werdenfels, “Sinkendes Leben”, in: Die Tat 22 (1930/31), p. 43; A. Grotjahn (doctor), Die Hygiene der menschlichen Fortpflanzung. Versuch einer praktischen Eugenik, Berlin 1926, p. 191. H. Harmsen, Die französische Sozialgesetzgebung im Dienste der Bekämpfung des Geburtenrückganges, Berlin 1925; R. v. Ungern-Sternberg, Frankreich, Lebensraum und Wesen. Eine Einführung, Berlin 1937; H. v. Pofadowsky-Wehner, Das Bevölkerungsproblem in Frankreich, 6. Beiheft zum Archiv für Bevölkerungswissenschaft und Bevölkerungspolitik, Leipzig 1939. L. Scheffen-Döring, Bevölkerungspolitik nach Wert oder Zahl? In: Deutsche Rundschau 222 (1930), p. 20; K. Algermissen (theologian), Das werdende Menschenleben im Schutze der christlichen Ethik. Zur Auseinandersetzung um den § 218, Celle, 3 1948, p. 38. F.-J. Wuermeling (West German Family minister), Das muss geschehen! Die Familie fordert vom Bundestag, In: Kirchen-Zeitung, Köln, 6.12.1953. Similarly: Grotjahn, Die Hygiene der menschlichen Fortpflanzung, 1926 (as in n. 51), p. 107. See: O. Spengler, Der Untergang des Abendlandes. Umrisse einer Morphologie der Weltgeschichte, Munich 1922. H. Wagenführ (economist), Klassifikation der Theorien über die Ursachen des Geburtenrückganges, Rome 1932, p. 429. For further information see for example: Heide Fehrenbach, The Fight for the ‘Christian West’: German Film Control, the Churches, and the Reconstruction of Civil Society in the Early Bonn Republic, in: German Studies Review 14 (1991), p. 39–63. Haury, Le danger de la dépopulation, 1935 (as in n. 22), p. 7; Renaud, Il faut rétablir, 1943; R.P. Riquet, Christianisme et Population, In: Population 4, (1949), p. 615–630, 630; R. Engelsmann, Selbstmord des Volkes durch gewaltsame Geburtenverminderung. Eine Schicksalsfrage an das Deutsche Volk, Dresden 1927, p. 61; T. Johannsen, Geburtenrückgang, Schwangerschaftsunterbrechung, in: Ziel und Weg 3 (1933), p. 379–384, 382. Auburtin, La Natalité, 1929 (as in n. 28), p. 55; Vitalité Française, 1956 (as in n. 28); E. Matz (rightist), RT, 18.12.1925, p. 3939; Mayer, Schwangerschaftsunterbrechung, 1950 (as in n. 44).

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was proposed by German pronatalists: by integrating race hygienist arguments, they drew a picture of a threatening genetic decline within the German “race” or “people”, with a shrinking proportion of eugenically and racially “superior” individuals practicing birth control and a growing proportion of eugenically and racially “inferior” not practicing birth control59 . But the common aspect of these very different narratives was that they were related to the war paradigm described above: qualitative decline would eventually lead the nation to be dominated or supplanted by other, younger and healthier nations. Socio-Economical or Moral Crisis? Abortion Causes and Political Remedies

The discussion of the causes of and remedies against birth rate decline and abortion was an essential part of pronatalist discourse. It provided the speakers with an occasion to criticize the present situation of society and to expose a political program which reflected their ideal vision of the future. Marked by two devastating World Wars and an economic crisis, the French and German society of the 1920s to the 1950s were strongly affected by housing shortages, unemployment and social misery. In this context, most pronatalists agreed on the fact that women often aborted for socio-economic reasons. But while for moderates and leftists, social misery was the main cause of abortion60 , pronatalists who belonged to the political right would consider the weight of socio-economic conditions less important than the “moral” causes of abortion61 . Conservative, nationalist and fascist pronatalists identified changes of mentalities, values and habits in the French and German societies as the main cause of abortion and declining birth rates62 . They deplored the decline of sexual morals63 , characterized by a growing number of extramarital sexual relations, 59 60

61 62

63

V. Ramin (antisemitic nationalist), RT, 7.5.1926, p. 7058. In France, this view was rather rare. See e.g.: A. Carrel (doctor), L’Homme, cet inconnu, Paris 1935, p. 18. A. Pinard (moderate leftist), Chambre, 12.1.1923, in: Annales 134 (1923), p. 44; Communist draft law, Proposition de loi tendant à organiser la protection sociale de la maternité et de l’enfance [. . . ], Chambre des députés, annexe no 1705 au procès-verbal du 31.3.1933; E. Storace, Conseil Supérieur de l’Enfance (High Counsel of Childhood), in: L’Humanité, 8.8.1939. M.-E. Lüders (liberal), RT, 5.5.1926, p. 7020; Richtlinien der KPD zur Frage der Geburtenregelung (1931), in Archiv für Bevölkerungspolitik, Sexualethik und Familienkunde (from now on: ABSF) 1 (1931), p. 57–124. G. Thibout (independent), Chambre, 12.1.1923 (as in n. 60), p. 45; K.-A. Schulte (catholic centrist), RT, 11.3.1925, p. 1008; Haarer, Die deutsche Mutter, 1943 (as in n. 35), p. 8. Pinard, Chambre, 4.7.1922, in: Annales 117 (1922), p. 646; Thibout, Chambre, 12.1.1923, p. 45; F. Burgdörfer, Volks- und Wehrkraft, 1936, (as in n. 39), p. 15; Algermissen, Das werdende Menschenleben, 2 1947 (as in n. 53), p. 15. Isaac, Chambre, 12.01.1923, p. 47; J. A. Doléris (moderate leftist), Chambre, 12.1.1923, p. 43; Kundgebung des Königsberger Kirchentages vom 20.6.1927 über die Heiligkeit der

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the sexual licentiousness of young women, and “sexual perversion and degeneration”64 . Another recurrent complaint was the deterioration of traditional family values65 , of procreation as the central purpose of marriage66 and motherhood as the natural role of women67 . Women were said to abort out of “egoism”68 , because they feared the efforts and inconveniences of bearing and raising children69 or considered them as an obstacle to their “hedonist” quest for “pleasure”70 , “modern comfort” and “luxury”71 . This “moral crisis” was explained with regards to central transformation processes of modernity: secularization of society72 ,

64

65 66

67

68

69

70

71

72

Ehe, in: ABSF 1 (1931), p. 94f.; K. Barth, Das Problem der Fruchtbarkeit, Ziel und Weg 4 (1934), p. 129–131, 130. L. Lafon, La Dépopulation de la France, in: Evangile et Liberté, 24.1.1923; A. Carrel, in: Cahiers de la Fondation française pour l’étude des problèmes humains 2, Oct. 1944, p. 22; Königsberger Kirchentag, 20.6.1927 (as in n. 63); A. Bartussek, Kampf der Abtreibung! Teplitz-Schönau 1937, p. 2; Himmler considered abortion, homosexuality and prostitution as manifestations of a “misdirected sexuality”, see Gisela Bock, Zwangssterilisation im Nationalsozialismus. Studien zur Rassenpolitik und Geschlechterpolitik, Münster 2010, p. 162. Lavorel, Pour la Résurrection de la France (as in n. 22), p. 17–19; R. Engelmann, Das Problem der Kinderreichen, in: Ärztliches Vereinsblatt 29 (1929), p. 661–663, 663. Episcopat Français, La Régénération de la France après la Grande Guerre, in: Documentation Catholique 18, 7.6.1919, p. 579; J. Monges (doctor), La famille devant le devoir de la fécondité. Rapport présenté au Congrès National de la Natalité de Marseille, Paris 1924, p. 4 H. Leimbach, Abtreibung, ihre Motive und Ursachen anhand von tödlich verlaufenen Fällen, Freiburg 1935, p. 28; Algermissen, Das werdende Menschenleben (1947). A. Carrel, L’Homme, cet inconnu, Paris 1941; A. Kupfer, Zum Geburtenrückgang, in: Die Tat 10 (1918/19), p. 938; C. Thomalla (referent at the reich’s propaganda ministry), Warum Bevölkerungspolitik? Stuttgart 1934, p. 6. Episcopat Français, Le terrible danger de la dénatalité, in: Documentation Catholique no 898, 5.6.1939, col. 683–688; Commissariat général à la famille, La vie en fleur, Paris ca. 1940, BDIC GF126/1; Graßl, Wie mag die Zukunft aussehen? 1919/20 (as in n. 38); M. Laros, Revolutionierung der Ehe, in: Hochland 27/2 (1929/30), p. 203. For the French Communists, this was true for middle and upper class women, while most working class women aborted because of economical distress: Communist draft law no 1705, 31.3.1933 (as in n. 60); W. Schumacher, Die Beweggründe zum kriminellen Abort, Berlin 1934, p. 10. Thibout, Chambre, 12.01.1923, p. 45; F. Boverat (president of the Alliance nationale contre la dépopulation), Fécondité ou servitude. Comment relever la natalité française, Paris 1942, p. 8; Riquet, Christianisme et Population, 1949 (as in n. 57); Coburger Zeitung, 30.9.1925; Leimbach, Abtreibung, ihre Motive und Ursachen, 1935 (as in n. 66), p. 4. Lafon, La Dépopulation de la France, (as in n. 64); J. Ritter, Zur Frage der Fruchtabtreibung an Gesunden, in: Ärztliches Vereinsblatt 1319 (1924), p. 290–292, 291; E. SchwörerJalkowski: § 218 und katholische Weltanschauung, in: VBDÄ 4 (1925), p. 103f., 103. Thomalla, Warum Bevölkerungspolitik? 1934, (as in n. 67), p. 6. V. Giraud (intellectual), Le suicide de la France, Paris 1924, p. 34; J. Eysséric, Politique laïque et dépopulation, Paris 1931, p. 133–250; Kahn, Der internationale Geburtenstreik, 1930, p. 74–78; Rösner, Die kriminalpolitische und demographische Bedeutung der Abtreibung, 1936 (as in n. 18).

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women’s emancipation73 , industrialization and urbanization74 . Furthermore, Germans would accuse Marxism75 and liberalism with its “conception of the individual having the right to dispose arbitrarily and freely of himself and of his life”76 , while French pronatalists would regularly insist on the devastating influence of neo-Malthusian propaganda77 . Consequently, the political remedies proposed against abortion and birth rate decline were diverse. A broad majority of pronatalists agreed on the necessity to propose certain incentive measures like motherhood protection, infant care, family and motherhood allowances and fiscal advantages for families78 . French leftist pronatalists would also insist on legal protection for single mothers and illegitimate children, and for better housing conditions and medical care for the lower class79 . For the communists in both countries, this was the occasion to profess their faith in the rise of socialism as the only true remedy to abortion and birth rate decline80 . Nevertheless, conservative, nationalist and fascist pronatalists insisted on the central importance of a moral change through education and propaganda81 , which should “revive the desire to have bigger families”82 by attributing greater value to the family and to motherhood83 and promote the “Christian family 73

74

75 76 77 78 79 80 81

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E. Angot, Féminisme et natalité, Paris 1923; Auburtin, La natalité (1929), p. 99f.; O. Flake, Die erotische Emanzipation, in: Neue Rundschau 38/2 (1927), p. 509; A. Burkhard, Der Geburtenrückgang und seine Bekämpfung, in: VB, 16.–17.4.1933. J. Roy (law professor), L’Avortement, fléau national, Paris 1944, p. 148–149. H. Krauss, Probleme der deutschen Bevölkerungspolitik. Die Geburtenfrage ist die Lebensfrage des deutschen Volkes, in: VB, 13.3.1931. Danzer, Geburtenkrieg, 1936 (as in n. 48), p. 68. A. Bartussek, Kampf der Abtreibung!, (as in n. 64), p. 4. Similarly: T. Johannsen, Geburtenrückgang, 1933 (as in n. 57), p. 381–384. Episcopat Français, La Régénération de la France, 7.6.1919 (as in n. 66); R. Lafarge (centrist), Chambre, 23.7.1920 (as in n. 29), p. 2697. A. Berthon (socialist), Chambre, 23.7.1920, p. 2700; Bonnet-Roy, Dénatalité et avortement, 1946 (as in n. 30); Schulte, RT, 11.3.1925, p. 1008; Lüders, RT, 5.5.1926, p. 7020. Morucci, Chambre, 23.7.1920 (as in n. 29), p. 2701. M. Thorez, Lettre au camarade Derogy, in: L’Humanité, 2.5.1956; Richtlinien der KPD, 1931 (as in n. 60), p. 57–124. Voeux du Haut-Comité de la Population au Président du Conseil et au Ministre de la Défense Nationale, 27.12.1939, AN, F60 601; Bulletin et Mémoires de la Société de Médecine de Paris 4, April 1946, p. 62; Völkische Notwendigkeiten und Pflichten, in: Ziel und Weg 1,3 (1931), p. 1–9, 5; F. Burgdörfer, Volks- und Wehrkraft (1936), p. 15. Lafon, La Dépopulation de la France (1923); UNCAF, La Famille d’aujourd’hui, 1947 (as in n. 18), p. 29; Scheffen-Döring, Bevölkerungspolitik nach Wert oder Zahl? 1930 (as in n. 53), p. 24–25. Rapport du Président du Conseil et du gouvernement français au Président de la République française sur le décret-loi relatif à la famille et à la natalité françaises, 29.07.1939, in: JO lois et décrets, 30.7.1939, p. 9607; S. Vollmann, Die Fruchtabtreibung als Volkskrankheit, Leipzig 1925, p. 5; Dr. med. Fischer, Vortrag auf Tagung der Evangelischen Mütterhilfe, 20.1.1958:

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ideals”84 . The “willingness to have children”85 should be instigated by associating reproduction with values like “honor”, “heroism”, “sacrifice” and “duty” of the individual towards his national community86 . However, all (but the communists) considered that socio-economic measures and moral change would have only long term effects. Thus, because of the urgency and the existential danger of the demographic problem, repressive measures against abortion needed to be maintained or intensified, as they were considered as the most efficient way to act on the birth rates87 . At the same time, by promoting the principle according to which the interest of the individual should be subordinated under the collective interest, pronatalism justified and legitimized the state’s incursion into the private sphere of sexuality and reproduction.

Pronatalist Values: Individuals, Families, and the National Community

From what we have seen in the previous sections, a specific set of norms and values concerning individuals, families and the national community can be identified from the pronatalist discourse on abortion. At the top of the value hierarchy and in the center of pronatalist’s preoccupations stood the national community: its existence and welfare seemed at stake through abortion. In the discourse, this assumption was exemplified not only through the above described arguments, but also through rhetorical means. Indeed, the national community was thus constituted as the central subject disposing of rights, for France the “right to live in independency and honor”88 or for Germany the “right to exist on this earth”89 , and of a “destiny”90 which

84 85 86

87 88 89 90

“Die physischen und psychischen Auswirkungen der unerlaubten Schwangerschaftsunterbrechung”, p. 3, Stiftung Archiv der Deutschen Frauenbewegung Kassel, NL-K-16, H-483. Episcopat Français, Le terrible danger de la dénatalité (1939); Berliner Lokalanzeiger, 29.10.1924; H. Leimbach, Abtreibung, ihre Motive und Ursachen (1935), p. 4. Haarer, Die deutsche Mutter (1943), p. 8. Monges, La famille devant le devoir de la fécondité, 1924 (as in n. 66), p. 6; Dumolin du Fraisse, L’avortement en droit pénal, 1943 (as in n. 46); Bulletin et Mémoires de la Société de Médecine de Paris 4, April 1946, p. 62; Grotjahn, Die Hygiene der menschlichen Fortpflanzung (1926), p. 299; Königsberger Kirchentag, 20.6.1927; Haarer, Die deutsche Mutter (1943), p. 8. Lafarge, Chambre, 12.1.1923, p. 47; Sauvy, Richesse et population, 1945 (as in n. 50); Matz, RT, 18.12.1925, p. 3939; Germania, 30.10.1928. Ignace, Chambre, 23.7.1920 (as in n. 25), p. 2696. Ramin, RT, 7.5.1926, p. 7058. Lafarge, Chambre, 23.7.1920, p. 2697; P. Strauss (French minister of social affairs), Chambre, 12.1.1923, p. 48; Scheffen-Döring, Bevölkerungspolitik nach Wert oder Zahl? (1930), p. 20; Danzer, Geburtenkrieg (1936), p. 7.

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depended on the increase of its birth rates. In addition, the national community was constructed as a biological entity through a network of medical metaphors. In particular, this was done through the omnipresent leitmotiv of abortion as a dangerous “illness”91 or “plague”92 that threatened the “health”93 of the national community directly by killing “unborn generations”94 , or, in the French communist version, indirectly by sterilizing and killing potential mothers95 . Vice versa, the birth rate was declared to be an indicator for the health of a nation: Healthy nations had high birth rates while “ill, putrid and rotten nations” had declining birth rates96 . From the National Socialist race hygienist perspective, the “illness” of the German people could be understood as the result of differential fertility rates with the eugenically “superior” individuals having practiced birth control, while the eugenically “inferior” individuals proliferated and thus “contaminated” the “national body”97 . Represented as a living organism, the nation was also at risk of “ageing” and would “die”98 if the excess of deaths over births became too important. Moreover, birth control being an intentional behavior, this “dying” of the nation was frequently qualified as “suicide”99 . Individuals, on the other hand, were more or less absent from pronatalist discourse on abortion. When they were mentioned, they were represented as having a “reproductive duty” or “obligation” towards the national community100 (especially women, whose “natural role” was exclusively conceived of as being the mothers of numerous children)101 , and as needing to be educated and punished 91

92 93 94

95 96 97 98

99 100 101

Pinard, Chambre, 4.7.1922, p. 647; F. Boverat, Comment nous vaincrons la dénatalité, Paris 1939, p. 1; Barth, RT, 5.5.1926, p. 7015 (C); Vollmann, Die Fruchtabtreibung als Volkskrankheit, 1925 (as in n. 83). Storace, in: L’Humanité, 8.8.1939; Roy, L’Avortement, 1944 (as in n. 74); Coburger Zeitung, 30.9.1925; M. Stämmler, Rassenhygiene im Dritten Reich, in: Ziel und Weg 2 (1932), p. 9. J. Moses (social democrat), RT, 7.5.1926, p. 7059; Mörder der Volksgesundheit. Todesstrafe für gewerbsmäßigen Abtreiber, in: VB, 13.7.1944. Doléris, Chambre, 12.1.1923, p. 42f.; Roy, L’Avortement (1944); Schumacher, Beweggründe (1934), p. 8; H. Doerfler (head of the bavarian doctor’s organization), Wie kann die Bayrische Ärzteschaft und was der einzelne Arzt zur Bekämpfung der Abtreibungsseuche beitragen? In: Münchner Medizinische Wochenschrift 17, 24.4.1953, p. 509. French Communist draft law no 1705, 31.3.1933; Storace, in: L’Humanité, 8.8.1939. Thomalla, Warum Bevölkerungspolitik? (1934), p. 6. Danzer, Geburtenkrieg (1936), p. 15. Episcopat Français, La Régénération de la France, p. 579; Trillat, L’Avortement fléau social, 1951 (as in n. 21), p. 1; VB, 7.–8.9.1928; H. W. Siemens, Vererbungslehre, Rassenhygiene und Bevölkerungspolitik, Berlin 1937, p. 157. M. Bonnichon, Fourth National Natality Congress, 1922 (as in n. 23), p. 38; Ulitzka, RT, 7.5.1926, p. 7063; R. Engelsmann, Selbstmord des Volkes, 1927 (as in n. 57). See n. 86. Angot, Féminisme et natalité, Paris 1923; Commissariat général à la famille, La vie en fleur, ca. 1940 (as in n. 78); M. Marcuse, Der Präventivverkehr in der medizinischen Lehre und ärztlichen Praxis, Stuttgart 1931, p. 18; VB, 19.1.1926.

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if they failed to fulfill their reproductive duty because they were giving in to the corrupting temptations of modernity. They were expected to sacrifice their personal interests and welfare (which could sometimes require the practice of abortion) to those of the national community (which was defined as depending on high birth rates)102 . According to this conception, a woman’s body was “not her private affair”103 . In 1933, G.A. Wagner, head of the gynecologist service at the Charité Hospital in Berlin, even wrote that woman’s reproductive organs should even be declared “a national resource and the property of the German state”104 . Similarly, the born or unborn child was primarily “the highest good of the nation” and “the most important part of the national heritage”105 . Finally, in the pronatalist value hierarchy, family held an intermediate position between the individual and the national community. On the one hand, family stood above the individual, who was said to be nothing without his or her family106 . Families, not individuals, were considered to be the basic unit within the national community: “The nation is not a group of individuals, but a group of families. Family being “the social cell”, the state has to legislate for the family and not for the individual.”107 The family ideals that were praised in pronatalist discourse were those of a traditional patriarchal family model: a heterosexual married couple with many children, where the mother stayed at home and remained, like the children, under the authority and protection of an imposing pater familias108 . Nevertheless, family was not valuable for its own sake: it was valued by pronatalists “because through the family, it is the fatherland that is valued”109 : by promoting families with many children, pronatalists considered themselves as working in the demographic interest of the national community110 . 102

103

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105 106 107

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109 110

M. Bonnichon, Fourth National Natality Congress (1922), p. 38; Roy, L’avortement (1944), p. 142. K. Reifferscheid (gynecologist), Zum Kampfe gegen die Fruchtabtreibung, in: Zentralblatt für Gynäkologie, 1/2 (1924), 518. G. Radbruch (social democrat, Reichsminister of Justice), Die Abtreibung der Leibesfrucht vom Standpunkt des Strafrechts, in: A. Grotjahn, G. Radbruch, Die Abtreibung der Leibesfrucht, Berlin 1921, p. 23–32, 28. G.A. Wagner, Die Funktionen und Funktionsstörungen des Ovariums und ihre Bedeutung für die Volksgesundheit, in: Archiv für soziale Hygiene und Demographie, March 1933/34, p. 394–403, 394. Rapport du Président du Conseil, 29.7.1939 (as in n. 83); Ulitzka, RT, 7.5.1926, p. 7063. See: M. Bonnichon, Fourth National Natality Congress (1922), p. 38. G. Pernot (centrist senator), Note sur la politique familiale, 29.7.1940, BDIC, Z2; Renaudin, La Famille dans la Nation, 1943 (as in n. 25); Korherr, Geburtenrückgang (1935), p. 23; Wuermeling, in: Kirchen-Zeitung Köln, 6.12.1953 (as in n. 54). Angot, Féminisme et natalité, Paris 1923, p. 36; Pernot, Note sur la politique familiale, 29.7.1940, (as in n. 107); Vossische Zeitung, 9.4.1932; Wuermeling, in: Kirchen-Zeitung Köln, 6.12.1953. Jeannin, Démographie européenne (as in n. 50). Renaudin, La Famille dans la Nation (1943), p. 20; Episcopat Français, Note sur le divorce

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A Different Discursive Weight with a Varying Institutional Impact

As one can understand from the diversity of sources quoted in the previous paragraphs, elements of pronatalist discourses were commonly used by a wide range of political and social actors in both countries from the 1920s to the 1950s. But while in Germany, pronatalism was one among several ways to publicly discuss abortion, pronatalist discourse was hegemonic in the French abortion debates of the time. Several reasons can be given in order to explain the different weight of pronatalist arguments in the French and German mid-century societies’ abortion debates and their different institutional impact. First of all, the common historical frame of sinking birth rates and the experience of modern mass warfare, which can explain the success of pronatalist arguments, affected France more deeply than Germany. Indeed, in France, birth rate decline had begun 150 years ago, and the French population had regularly been on the edge of shrinking since the beginning of the 20th century. During this time, France had lost its status as the biggest European country, being surpassed by Germany in particular111 . Germany being the aggressor against France in the two World Wars, the interconnection of a military and demographic threat seemed clearly established in French public opinion. Additionally, the similar demographic impact of the First World War on both countries112 was perceived more violently in France, and contributed to a strong feeling of a quantitatively defined national crisis. In contrast, while the birth rate decline was slightly more dramatic in the 1920s–1950s in Germany than in France113 , it was a more recent phenomenon in Germany which had not yet produced palpable impact on everyday life, especially as the country was experiencing a tremendous population growth114 . Also, as Germany had lost the First World War against France

111

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et L’avortement, Paris 1950; Ausstellung ‘Die Familie’ eröffnet, in: VB, 23.5.1937; Mayer, Schwangerschaftsunterbrechung (1950), p. 13. France had a population of 27.5 million in 1789, 40 million in 1914, and 41 million in 1939. Germany had a population of around 20 million in 1790, 68 million in 1914, and around 80 million in 1939. See: Michel Hubert, Démographie, femmes et famille entre spécificité et similitudes, in: Rainer Hudelmann, Hélène Miard-Delacroix (ed.), Wandel und Integration. Deutsch-französische Annäherungen der fünfziger Jahre, Munich 2004, p. 361–378, 364. While the number of victims was similar in France and Germany (around 1.4 million), Germany lost one inhabitant out of 35, whereas France lost one in 30 (10% of its active male population). See: Bokelmann, Die demographische Frage, (as in n. 7), p. 98. In Germany, birth rates sank from around 26/1000 inhabitants in 1920 to around 16/1000 inhabitants in 1955. Source: Statistisches Bundesamt, p. 102–103. In France, birth rates sank from around 21.4/1000 inhabitants in 1920 to 18.5/1000 inhabitants in 1955. Source: Armengaud, La population française, p. 87, 89. In Germany, birth rates started declining only at the end of the 19th century, while the country experienced its strongest population growth between 1900 and 1914. But the

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despite having a much bigger population, the connection between military and demographic power seemed less automatic to interwar Germans115 . And while the human losses of the two World Wars were considerable for Germany116 , they also came along with important territorial losses, so that after both wars, large groups of repatriated Germans had to be integrated into the remaining territory, which rather encouraged a feeling of overpopulation117 . Although the perception of being in a national crisis was as strong as in France, its nature was considered to be qualitative rather than quantitative. Further reasons for the different weight and institutional impact of pronatalist arguments can be found in the different socio-historical premises that conditioned the French and German mid-century abortion debates. In Germany, under the Weimar Republic, the public discussions on abortion law reform were not initially motivated by pronatalist preoccupations. They dealt with the question whether or not to diminish abortion repression and were initiated by the political left who demanded a massive liberalization of the abortion law118 . The fact that German women had obtained the right to vote and to serve in public office in 1919 played an important role in this. Newly elected women deputies were the initiators of the draft laws which had the declared aim of easing the hardships of working class women119 . They managed to convince their male colleagues of the importance of the abortion question and promoting it helped them gain political visibility. Also, without calling into question the genuine interest the political left took in the situation of working

115 116

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population continued to grow until 1970. See John E. Knodel, The Decline of Fertility in Germany, 1871–1939, Princeton 1974, p. 87; Hubert, Démographie (as in n. 111), p. 366, 372. See for instance R. Lewinsohn, Die Stellung der deutschen Sozialdemokratie zur Bevölkerungsfrage, in: Schmollers Jahrbuch, 46. 3–4 (1922), p. 191–237, 232. Germany lost around 1.4 million lives in the First World War. In the Second World War, it lost around 6 million lives. Sources: Bokelmann, Die demographische Frage, p. 98; Hubert, Démographie, p. 369. After the First World War, Germany lost 1/5 of its territory and had to integrate around 1 million German migrants; after the Second World War, Germany lost 1/3 of its territory and had to integrate 13 million German migrants. See Benz, Wolfgang (ed.): Die Vertreibung der Deutschen aus dem Osten. Ursachen, Ereignisse, Folgen. Frankfurt a. M. 1985. While according to § 218 of the German penal code of 1871, women who had aborted were sentenced to between six months and five years of penal servitude. The USPD and Communist draft laws proposed a total legalization of abortion (e.g. Antrag Aderhold und Genossen RT, 2.7.1920, 1. Wahlperiode, 1920, Drucksache Nr. 90), while the SPD draft laws proposed to legalize abortion only if it was undertaken during the three first months of pregnancy and by medical staff (e.g. Antrag Schuch, Radbruch und Genossen, 31.7.1920, RT, 1. Wahlperiode, 1920, Drucksache Nr. 318). For an exhaustive inventory of all 19 leftist abortion draft laws in the Weimar Republic see: Usborne, Frauenkörper, p. 275–277. See: Usborne, Frauenkörper, 207–209.

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class women, it is true that the abortion debate worked as a powerful means for the communists and the socio-democrats to win female votes and members120 . Meanwhile, German feminists, who no longer needed to fight for women’s civil rights, could now concentrate on fighting for women’s reproductive rights. It is at least partly due to their intervention that abortion was also discussed as a women’s issue, as a woman’s right to decide over her own body121 . In addition, Germany had a very strong movement for birth control and sexual reform whose activists did not join in the framing of abortion as a demographic issue, but focused on the rationalization and modernization of sexuality for the sake of personal fulfillment122 . Together with the communists, they initiated a popular movement for abortion legalization in the early 1930s. If these leftist efforts for a legalization of abortion didn’t succeed123 , it was because of strong opposition from the political right. But although pronatalist preoccupations were widely shared among the right-wing elites, the important role of religion in German political culture might explain why Christian conservatives preferred to defend the abortion ban by insisting on the sanctity of the unborn life (which, by the way, could be combined perfectly with pronatalist arguments) or to criticize abortion as a threat to traditional sexual morals. Also, the moderate weight of German pronatalist discourse can be explained by the growing importance of eugenicist discourse which proposed an alternative demographic view on abortion, considering it (alongside contraception and sterilization) a means to increase the genetic quality of a human population by preventing the reproduction of individuals whose genetic material was qualified as undesirable. During the Weimar Republic, this idea became more and more attractive to liberals and leftists (in its moderate, progressive form, as “social hygiene”) as well as to the anti-democratic right (in its totalitarian, racist 120

121 122

123

M. Juchacz at the social democratic women’s conference in 1924 in Berlin, Protokolle der Verhandlungen des Parteitags der SPD, Berlin 1924, p. 227; USPD women’s conference 1922 in Leipzig, Protokolle der Verhandlungen des Parteitags der USPD 4, Berlin 1923, p. 228; KPD-Parteitag 1923, Protokolle, p. 85; KPD-Parteitag 1925, Protokolle p. 746; SPD-Parteitag 1924, Protokolle, p. 132; Die Stellung der KPD zu den Paragraphen 218 und 219 des Strafgesetzbuches, in: Die Internationale, IV, 20, 1922, p. 462. See for instance: Atina Grossmann, Reforming Sex. The German Movement for Birth Control and Abortion Reform, 1920–1950, Oxford 1995, 87–92. They were mostly doctors, liberal businessmen, radical feminists (like the Bund für Mutterschutz, created in 1905 by Helene Stöcker) and socialists. By the end of the Weimar Republic, they had at least 150 000 members, according to the review Proletarische Sozialpolitik. Organ der Arbeitsgemeinschaft sozialpolitischer Organisationen 5,8 (1932), p. 353. For further information see Grossmann, Reforming Sex (as in n. 121). The only success that could be obtained was the 1926 abortion law reform, in virtue of which abortion was to be punished with imprisonment instead of penal servitude, see: Gesetz zur Abänderung des Strafgesetzbuches vom 18.5.1926, in: Reichsgesetzblatt, Teil 1, 25.5.1926, p. 239.

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form, as “racial hygiene”)124 . Therefore, and in spite of the growing influence of private and public pronatalist organizations125 , no pronatalist law reform on abortion was publicly discussed, let alone voted on or decreed during the Weimar Republic126 . In contrast, pronatalism was an organized political ideology in interwar France which attracted supporters from the whole spectrum of political opinion and from all sections of society and had a clear impact on the institutions of the Third Republic. Extremely powerful pronatalist pressure groups like the Alliance nationale contre la depopulation (national alliance against population decline) enjoyed a close relationship with the political elites and influenced public opinion through a permanent propaganda campaign for birth control repression and family welfare measures. Among its most prominent members were the highest representatives of Catholicism, Protestantism and Judaism in France127 . In the French parliament, the Groupe parlementaire pour la protection de la natalité et de la famille (parliamentary group for the protection of the birth rate and the family) gathered together a large majority of deputies of all political colors 124

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Social hygienists wanted to improve the genetic quality of humanity by encouraging individuals touched by hereditary diseases to practice voluntary birth control, while racial hygienists wanted to improve the genetic quality of the German “Volk” or the “Aryan race” by forcing individuals carrying a hereditary disease or belonging to an “inferior race” to abort or to be sterilized. See: Paul Weindling, Health, Race and German Politics between National Unification and Nazism, 1870–1945, Cambridge 1989; Peter Weingart, Jürgen Kroll, Kurt Bayertz, Rasse, Blut und Gene: Geschichte der Eugenik und Rassenhygiene in Deutschland, Berlin 1992. During the Weimar Republic, pronatalist organizations like the “Reichsbund der Kinderreichen Deutschlands zum Schutze der Familie” (which had around 300,000 members) and the “Gesellschaft für Bevölkerungspolitik” tried to influence German politics, but mostly in vain. See: Weingart, Kroll, Bayertz, Rasse, Blut und Gene (as in n. 124), p. 234. In 1930, an expert National Committee for Population Questions (Reichsausschuss für Bevölkerungsfragen) was created by the government, with the task of combating the birth rate decline. But because of the political and economic crisis, there was no tangible outcome. See: Reichsausschuss für Bevölkerungsfragen, in BA, R86/2369(2). In fact, deputies from the extreme right political parties did submit three pronatalist draft laws proposing to increase repression of abortion, but they were never discussed in parliament. But the political parties agreed in 1927 on introducing maternity protection that included pregnancy and birth allowances, the creation of a network of information centers and better medical care for mother and child. See: Usborne, Volkskörper, p. 66–77, 278. Another important pronatalist organization was the Fédération nationale des associations des familles nombreuses (national federation of families with many children) which had around 600,000 members and organized the annual Congrès national de la natalité (national natality congress). The prestigious Conseil Supérieur de la natalité (higher natality council) was created by parliament in 1920 and played an important role as think tank and pressure group. See: Huss, Pronatalism (as in n. 5), and Thébaud, Le mouvement nataliste (as in n. 5).

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and used its influence to enact explicitly pronatalist anti-abortion legislation both in 1920 and 1923128 . Indeed, in contrast to Germany, many radicals and socialists were actually among the most passionate defenders of pronatalism129 and participated in the preparation of the pronatalist Code de la Famille under which abortion repression was reinforced in 1939 by the centrist government coalition lead by President Edouard Daladier130 . Meanwhile, critical voices and alternative discourses were inaudible in interwar France. Unlike their German colleagues, French radical feminists expressed no particular interest in the abortion question, as their attention was still focused on their struggle for the women’s right to vote131 , while moderate middleclass feminist groups actually joined the pronatalist mainstream132 . French organizations historically fighting for abortion legalization, like the Ligue de la régénération humaine (league for human regeneration), founded by Paul Robin in 1896, were considered political outcasts (radical anarchists, pacifists, tradeunionists, libertarians and a few socialists) who were declaredly neo-Malthusian. Indeed, they shared the established frame of a demographic view on birth control and abortion, but with an inverse – antinatalist – claim: according to neoMalthusianism, uncontrolled human reproduction led to poverty, misery, and war (too many potential workers and soldiers around) whereas voluntary birth control would bring economic and social progress for the lower classes, as well as peace between nations133 . While their participation in the public debates on 128

129 130

131 132

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The 1920 law prohibited the selling and propagating of abortive and contraceptive devices as well as any kind of public or private “anticonceptional and antinatalist propaganda”, which included relaying information about birth control. See: Loi tendant à réprimer la provocation à L’avortement et la propagande anticonceptionnelle, 31.7.1920, in: JO 1.8.1920, p. 10934. The 1923 law downgraded abortion from crime to offence with the declared aim to obtain more efficient repression of abortion. See: Loi sur la correctionnalisation de L’avortement, 27.3.1923, in: JO 28.3.1923, p. 1526. Including politicians who held the highest governmental functions in the 1930s like Edouard Daladier, Jean-Paul Reynaud, and Adolphe Landry. Alongside a broad program of incentive measures (e.g. tax advantages for families, progressive child allowances) the Code de la famille introduced higher sanctions for abortionists and aborting women, created special abortion police brigades, instructed physicians to inform the police about abortion cases, introduced therapeutic abortion (although extremely narrowly defined and controlled) and a close state control of midwives and birth houses. See: Décret relatif à la famille et à la natalité française, 29.7.1939, in: JO 3.7.1939, p. 9606–9626. See for example: Anne Cova, Féminismes et néo-malthusianismes sous la IIIe République. ‘La liberté de la maternité’, Paris 2011. For example, Cécile Brunschvicg, the leader of the Union Française pour le suffrage des femmes, argued that higher family allowances would increase the birth rate. See e.g.: La répression de L’avortement, in: La Française, 8.4.1922. See for example the neo-Malthusian best-seller Jean Marestan, L’éducation sexuelle, Paris 1910, p. 215.

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birth rate decline and abortion had been quite successful before the First World War, they were reduced to silence by the police and the courts as the law of 1920 made criticizing contraception and abortion repression on antinatalist grounds a penal offense134 . In this context of discursive censorship and pronatalist conformism, criticism of abortion repression could only be formulated within the limits of the unquestionable presupposition which stated that abortion, being a major cause of birth rate decline, had to be eradicated. This is what a few socialist and communist deputies did by criticizing the anti-abortion laws on the grounds of being ineffective (The 1920 and 1923 laws “do not give France one more child”. Illegal abortion “kills, maims and sterilizes ten millions of women. The laws thus led to the organizing of French sterility.”135 ), calling instead for “positive” welfare measures to fight abortion and thus make the birth rates grow again136 . The French communists in particular were eager to demonstratively keep their distance from neo-Malthusianism, qualifying it as a “reactionary petit-bourgeois ideology” and as a “class domination instrument”. In a draft law presented to the French parliament in 1933 they associated the legalization of abortion and contraception with the introduction of extensive mother-and-child protection measures137 . But from 1935 on, the French communists joined the anti-abortion stance of the pronatalist mainstream138 , which could be interpreted as an attempt to demonstrate their patriotism and political respectability in the eyes of the French public in order to legitimize their participation in the Front Populaire government. However, the French communist party officially maintained this pronatalist anti-abortion stance until 1965139 .

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This is what happened to the very few remaining neo-Malthusian activists around Eugène and Jeanne Humbert, who repeatedly had to face penal persecution and prison sentences. See: Roger Henri Guerrand and Francis Ronsin, Jeanne Humbert et la lutte pour le contrôle des naissances, Paris 2001. P. Vaillant-Couturier, Réprimer c’est dépeupler, in: Humanité, 31.12.1935. Morucci and Berthon, Chambre, 23.7.1920, p. 2700f.; Pinard, Chambre, 12.1.1923, p. 45. See: Communist draft law no 1705, 31.3.1933. L’Humanité, 31.10.1935, 19.12.1935, 1.1.1936 and 2.1.1936. In a draft law of the communist group in the Assemblée Nationale (from now on: AN), annexe No 1945 au procès-verbal de la séance du 25.5.1956, in: JO documents parlementaires – Assemblée (1956), it was stated: “Birth control in France is contrary to the most evident and least questionable national requirements”. In 1965, the communists supported the presidential candidature of Francois Mitterrand and needed to align with the pro-birth control position of the moderate left. They submitted a draft law which would authorize abortion for social or medical reasons (only for mothers of three children and for unmarried women): Proposition de loi relative à L’abrogation des lois reprimant L’avortement et la propaganda anticonceptionnelle, AN, annexe no 1710 du procès-verbal de la séance du 27.11.1965.

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The different weight of pronatalist arguments against abortion persisted after the German and French democracies had been replaced by the dictatorial regimes of Hitler in 1933 and Pétain in 1940, while their institutional impact increased: Under National Socialism, with its totalitarian grip on public discourse and society, abortion became an issue to be publicly considered exclusively from a demographic point of view. National Socialist population discourse and policy was two-faced: its qualitative aspect, racial hygiene, led to the introduction in 1933 and 1935 of forced sterilization and “voluntary” abortion for women whose reproduction was eugenically and racially undesirable140 , while its quantitative aspect, selective pronatalism, led to an increase of abortion repression in 1933 and to the prohibition of contraception in 1941141 . It culminated in the 1943 decree on the protection of marriage, family and motherhood which declared the voluntary abortion of eugenically and racially desirable pregnancies as state treason and introduced death sentences for professional abortionists “who repeatedly prejudiced the vital strength of the German people”142 . But while this specific mix of qualitative and quantitative repressive birth policy elements was at the heart of National Socialist ideology, it were rather the “positive” aspects of pronatalism, with its glorification of motherhood and the introduction of a marriage loan, that were perceived to be “typically National Socialist”143 . In France, the discursive hegemony of the pronatalist dogma continued under the Vichy regime (1940–1944), but was now more closely linked to a glorification of the “traditional family”. Pronatalism and “familialism” became central elements of the Vichy state ideology with its official motto “travail, famille, patrie” (work, family, fatherland), and the fact that pronatalism had been consensual before Vichy contributed in conferring on this non-democratic regime some 140

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This included persons who suffered from a list of alleged genetic disorders (many of which were not in fact genetic), social outcasts, Jews, Roma and, during the war, also forced laborers from Poland and Russia. See: Gesetz zur Verhütung erbkranken Nachwuchses, enacted on the 14.7.1933, Reichsgesetzblatt I, 86, 25.7.1933, p. 529–531, and: Gesetz zur Änderung des GVeN, Reichsgesetzblatt I, 65, 27.6.1935, p. 773. By an amendment of the penal code, advertisements for abortion services and abortifaciens were banned: Gesetz zur Abänderung einiger Strafvorschriften, in: Reichsgesetzblatt I, 56, 26.5.1933, p. 296. In 1941, Heinrich Himmler, minister of the interior, enacted a decree which prohibited the import, advertising, selling, diffusing and using of contraceptive and abortive procedures, means and devices. See: Polizeiverordnung über Verfahren, Mittel und Gegenstände zur Unterbrechung und Verhütung und Schwangerschaften (police decree concerning) in: Reichsgesetzblatt I, 3.2.1941, p. 63f. Verordnung zum Schutz von Ehe, Familie und Mutterschaft, in: Reisgesetzblatt I, 9.3.1943, p. 140f. Since 1933, this loan (Ehestandsdarlehen) was given to newlywed couples in the form of vouchers for furniture and equipment for their household, under the condition that the woman gave up working outside the house. With every birth, part of the loan was exempted. See the excellent chapter on pronatalism in: Bock, Zwangssterilisation, (as in n. 64), p. 142–177.

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legitimacy144 . Consequently, the Code de la Famille was approved and implemented with only minor modifications, while abortion repression was further increased in 1942 by a decree by virtue of which professional abortionists were to be treated as enemies of the French State and could face the death penalty145 . After the Second World War, the most extreme parts of Vichy and National Socialist birth control legislation were revoked, but the abortion ban was maintained in both countries and legitimized by a pronatalist discourse which continued with the more or less same features as before until well into the 1950s. In France, a broad coalition of left and right decided the nationalization and increase of motherhood and (progressive) child allowances in 1946146 . In the Western part of the divided Germany (Federal Republic of Germany), while experts and other social actors perpetuated a pronatalist anti-abortion discourse which was barely discarded from the most visible elements of National Socialist ideology, there was the wish to make a clean break from Hitler’s pronatalist family policy among many German politicians147 . Nevertheless, in 1952, a law reinforcing motherhood protection was repeatedly justified by various politicians and commentators with regards to elements of pronatalist discourse148 , and the federal family minister Franz-Josef Wuermeling (1953–1962) was never 144

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The French State (1940–1944) was conceived as a corporatist system with the “normal” family (i.e. a married Catholic couple with at least three healthy children, the mother being a housewife and remaining under the absolute authority of the father) as its basic biological, social, legal and political unit and as a model for the hierarchical state organization in which Pétain was presented as “father of the Nation”. Incentive and repressive pronatalism were guiding principles in the reorganization of society, and pronatalist state propaganda was organized by a specially created body, the Commissariat Général à la Famille. See: Michèle Bordeaux, La victoire de la Famille dans la France défaite. Vichy 1940–1944, Paris 2002; Eric T. Jennings, Discours corporatiste, propagande nataliste et contrôle social sous Vichy, in: Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine 49,4 (2002), p. 101–131. See: Loi no 300 relative à la répression de l’avortement, in: JO, 7.3.1942, p. 938. By virtue of this law, professional abortionists were to be judged by a special court which dealt with “actions disturbing inner peace, international relations, public order or, more generally, harming the French nation.” The sentences ranged from five years of imprisonment to lifelong forced labor, deportation, or the death penalty. See for example: Antoine Prost, L’évolution de la politique familiale en France de 1938 à 1981, in: Le Mouvement Social 129 (1984), p. 7–28; Michel Messu, Les politiques familiales. Du natalisme à la solidarité, Paris 1992. See for example: Hubert, Démographie, p. 369; Robert G. Moeller, Protecting Motherhood. Women and the Family in the Politics of Postwar West Germany, Berkeley, Los Angeles 1993, p. 5. Gesetz zum Schutze der erwerbstätigen Mutter, 24.1.1952, in: Bundesgesetzblatt I,5 (1952), p. 69–75. Examples of pronatalist justifications of the law: L. Schroeder, Ein neues Mutterschutzgesetz, in: Sozialer Fortschritt 1 (1952), p. 18f.; G.-A. Bulla, Mutterschutzgesetz und Frauenarbeitsrecht, Munich, Berlin 1954, p. 40f.; E. Theuerkauf, T. Harmuth, Mutterschutzgesetz: Gesetz zum Schutze der erwerbstätigen Mutter vom 24.1.1952, Frankfurt a. M. 1952, p. 20.

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tired of reiterating his pronatalist convictions149 , but apart from introducing train fare reductions for children from families with more than two children, he did not succeed in enacting pronatalist policies. In this context, the abortion ban was restored to its milder 1926 version, but not called into question as such. In the Eastern part of Germany (German Democratic Republic), abortion was considered a demographic issue by the communist elite, and thus repressive measures were reintroduced in 1950150 , after the abortion ban had been more or less suspended since the end of the war in order to help the numerous victims of rapes by Soviet soldiers151 . Given the fact that many German communists had passionately fought for abortion legalization in the 1920s–30s, it was a difficult but in the end successful propaganda task to silence critical voices from rank and file party members, who would ask for instance: “Why do they want so many children? – that would be like under Hitler.”152 In response to this challenge, it was repeated that unlike Hitler’s militarist pronatalism, the communists’ promotion of population growth was for economic prosperity and peace. Furthermore, it was argued that abortions were always dangerous to women’s health, and finally, the broad mother-and-child welfare measures introduced simultaneously would eliminate the need for abortions.153 Impact on Individual Opinions and Social Practices

While, as we have seen throughout the previous paragraphs, pronatalist discourse on abortion had a manifest impact on French and German institutional change during the 1920s–1950s, its success in influencing social practices and individual 149

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F.-J. Wuermeling, Familienpolitik, in: Deutsche Zeitung, 12.11.1953; F.-J. Wuermeling, in: Verhandlungen des Deutschen Bundestages, 2. Deutscher Bundestag, 15.Sitzung, 12.2.1954, p. 488–493; F.-J. Wuermeling, in: Verhandlungen des Deutschen Bundestages, 2. Deutscher Bundestag, 206. Sitzung, 3.5.1957, p. 11776. § 11 of the Gesetz über den Mutter- und Kinderschutz und die Rechte der Frau, 27.9.1950, in: Kirsten Thietz, Ende der Selbstverständlichkeit? Die Abschaffung des § 218 in der DDR, Berlin 1992, p. 70–75. By virtue of this law, only medically and eugenically indicated abortions remained legal. See: Kirsten Poutrus, Von den Massenvergewaltigungen zum Mutterschutzgesetz. Abtreibungspolitik und Abtreibungspraxis in Ostdeutschland, 1945–1950, in: Richard Bessel, Ralph Jessen (ed.), Die Grenzen der Diktatur. Staat und Gesellschaft in der DDR, Göttingen 1996, p. 170–198. SED Landesverband Brandenburg report on factory meetings to the ZK, Frauenabteilung, Potsdam, 18.10.1950, in: BA, Stiftung Archiv der Parteien und Massenorganisationen der DDR, IV2/17/30, p. 128. See the speech by Minister President Otto Grotewohl at the Volkskammer reproduced in: Neues Deutschland, 28.9.1950, p. 3, or the article by Käte Kern, Gleichberechtigung wird verwirklicht. Zum Gesetz über den Mutter– und Kinderschutz und die Rechte der Frau, in: Neues Deutschland, 27.9.1950, p. 2.

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opinions was rather meager. By declaring the repression of abortion a central tool in the “battle” against sinking birth rates, pronatalist discourse actually missed its goal in several ways: First of all, pronatalist discourse had no palpable impact on abortion jurisdiction: throughout the entire period, there were few abortion cases that were submitted to court, and even fewer abortion trials that ended with a criminal conviction. Interestingly, during the 1920s, the number of convictions was considerably lower in pronatalist France than in pluralist Germany, whereas under both fascist regimes the number of convictions did not significantly increase (although there were fewer acquittals, the sentences could be tougher and the reasons given for the judgment were more often pronatalist154 ) compared to the previous and subsequent democratic periods155 . Secondly, in the pronatalist discourse against birth control, abortion had become the main object of concern because it seemed better quantifiable and therefore easier to act upon than the untraceable and uncontrollable intimate behavior of withdrawal (coitus interruptus), which was the most common contraceptive technique at the time156 . But although there are no reliable statistics about the practice of birth control for the 1920s–1950s, nowadays scholars agree that the most important reason for declining birth rates in France and Germany

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In Vichy France, there were two death sentences in 1943 and a few life and forced labor sentences. See: Marc Boninchi, Vichy et l’ordre moral, Paris 2005, p. 271–297. Twenty death sentences were reported for National Socialist Germany by Czarnowski, Hereditary and Racial Welfare (as in n. 5), p. 130. In France, during the interwar period the number of criminal convictions for abortion amounted to an average of around 400 per year. From 1939 to 1955, it was around 4000 per year, with a peak in 1946. Source: Bruno Aubusson de Cavarlay, Marie-Sylvie Huré, MarieLys Pottier, La justice pénale en France. Résultats statistiques (1934–1954), Paris 1992, p. 139. In Germany, with a population twice as big, the number of criminal convictions for abortion amounted to around 4000 per year during the Weimar Republic, with a peak of 7000 in 1925. Under Hitler, there were around 3000 convictions per year, with a peak in 1937/38 of around 6500, when the Gestapo investigated abortion cases. Source: Statistisches Jahrbuch für das Deutsche Reich 41–59, ed. by Statistisches Reichsamt, Berlin 1920–1943. In the 1950s, there were around 5000 criminal convictions yearly in the GFR. See Statistisches Jahrbuch für die Bundesrepublik Deutschland, ed. by Statistisches Bundesamt Wiesbaden, Stuttgart, Köln 1952–1960. For the GDR, there are no official data about clandestine abortion, as this was considered to be, like the suicide statistics, highly confidential information. See: Kirsten Thietz, Ende der Selbstverständlichkeit? Die Abschaffung des § 218 in der DDR, Berlin 1992, p. 83f. See: Cahen, Medecine, Statistics, Abortion, and Depopulation (as in n. 19), p. 34; James Woycke, Birth control in Germany 1871–1933, London, New York, 1988, p. 11; EvaMaria Silies, Liebe, Lust und Last. Die Pille als weibliche Generationserfahrung in der Bundesrepublik, 1960–1980, Göttingen 2010, p. 57–59; Anne-Marie Sohn, Chrysalides. Femmes dans la vie privée (XIXe–XXe siècles), vol. 2, Paris 1996, p. 821–823.

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lay in contraception157 , while the part abortion played in this process is far less certain158 . Finally, and consequently, pronatalist anti-abortion discourse and policies did not succeed in stimulating the French and German birth rates in the 1920s– 1950s, which fluctuated over time, but remained lower than they had ever been in both countries159 . As for the influence of pronatalist discourse on the individual opinions of the French and German populations, no representative and comparable survey data are available. For France, at least, there is some fragmentary evidence which leads to the supposition that the population did indeed adopt some kind of pronatalist convictions: During the inter-war period, a large number of postcards with pictures representing children, the future of the nation and the reproductive duty of the French people was produced, bought and sent160 . In a survey conducted in 1942, about 70% of those interviewed agreed that it was a patriotic duty to have children161 , while in 1947 a similar percentage wanted an increase of the French population162 . But on the other hand, scholars have shown for both countries over the entire period that women’s decisions to abort or not to abort were generally not made with regards to pronatalist motives, or in response to the birth rates and the sake of the national community, but as a consequence of personal considerations concerning their individual life circumstances (involving material, social, familial, medical and religious aspects and arguments)163 . Thus 157 158

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See for example Hervé Le Bras, Histoire secrète de la fécondité, in: Le Débat 8,1 (1980), p. 77–101; Woycke, Birth Control in Germany (as in n. 156). Abortion being illegal, it is difficult to make reliable estimations about its frequency. As we have seen in n. 58, the abortion figures given in the historical debates had no scientific basis, but they are often uncritically reproduced in historiography. However, Anne–Marie Sohn has shown in her empirical study of abortion trial records that because of its medical, penal and social risks, abortion was not practiced as a first choice birth control technique but as an emergency solution in cases when contraception had failed. See: Sohn, Chrysalides (as in n. 156), p. 887, 907. In 1900, there were 22 births per 1000 inhabitants in France and 35 births per 1000 inhabitants in Germany. During the 1920s–1950s, the highest birth rates reached were in 1920, with 21.4/1000 for France and 25.9/1000 for Germany, while they gravitated mostly around 18/1000. See: Statistisches Bundesamt, and Armengaud, La population française (both as in n. 3). See: Huss, Pronatalism p. 46–48. See: Fondation Française pour l’Etude des Problèmes Humains. Équipe Sondages et Statistiques, Rapport sur l’enquête natalité, Nov. 1942, Institut National des Etudes Démographiques, cartons Depoid. Of course, the results of this survey should not be taken too seriously, as it was performed under a regime where the freedom of speech was nonexistent and where pronatalism was part of the state ideology. See: Alain Girard and Louis Roussel, Fécondité et conjoncture, in: Population 3 (1979), p. 567–588. This appears clearly through the analyses of trial records and other testimonials of abortion experiences. See: Cornelie Usborne, Cultures of Abortion in Weimar Germany, New York,

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it appears that there was a discrepancy between the publicly uttered opinions and the private reproductive behavior of a vast majority, which was characterized accurately by the French doctor Bonnet-Roy in 1946: “Abortion is considered as complementary to voluntary birth restriction by an individualistic population which does not want, as a whole, to multiply its number of children.”164 And of course, the obstinately low birth rates are a good indicator of the fact that pronatalist discourse did not convince the population to give up a habit they had started to appreciate a long time ago: the practice of birth control. From this perspective, pronatalist discourse on birth control appears as a powerful but ineffective political backlash against the modernization of sexual and reproductive practices in French and German societies.

1950s–1970s: The Progressive Decline of Pronatalist Discourse on Abortion During a period stretching from the 1950s to the 1970s, a decline of pronatalist discourse on abortion took place in France and Germany. The following section will focus on the question of how and why this process occurred. Progressive Deconstruction of Abortion as a Demographic Issue in the 1950s and 1960s

While in the 1950s, the classical pronatalist anti-abortion discourse remained strong, a progressive dissolution of the discursive nexus between abortion and birth control on the one hand and birth control and birth rates on the other hand occurred throughout the 1950s and 1960s. In France, this process began by a redefinition of pronatalism “from the inside”. In 1956, a birth control movement (Mouvement Français pour le Planning Familial) was initiated by doctors, jurists and journalists165 , which owed its growing success to the fact that they found a way to promote birth control while staying within the frame of pronatalist basic assumptions. Supported by the moderate political left since 1956 and by the communists since 1965, their discourse also convinced parts of the political right, and as a consequence in 1967

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Oxford 2010, p. 127–163; Bock, Zwangssterilisation, p. 154–169, Sohn, Chrysalides, p. 803– 908; Marie-Andrée Lagroua Weill-Hallé, La Grand’peur d’aimer, Paris 1960. Dr. F. Bonnet-Roy, Dénatalité et avortement, in: Le Monde, 22.1.1946. See e.g.: Christine Bard (ed.), Le Planning familial. Histoire et mémoire (1956–2006), Rennes 2007, Bibia Pavard, Si je veux, quand je veux. Histoire de la contraception et de L’avortement en France (1956–1979), Rennes 2012.

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the legalization of contraception was enacted by a large majority of deputies in the French parliament166 . According to the reformists’ argumentation, abortion was indeed a demographic problem because it had the side effect of sterilizing many women167 . But if they had access to modern contraceptive devices, French women would no longer need to abort. Therefore, legalizing contraception was the best way to reduce the number of abortions168 . Eager to demonstrate that the legalization of contraception would not be a threat to French birth rates169 , the reformists insisted on their conception of birth control as family planning, which distinguished between (bad) abortion as a means of preventing children from being born and (good) contraception which gave young couples the possibility to decide when to have children and how many children to have170 . This, it was argued, would create healthier and happier families171 , and caring for the wellbeing of French families was considered to be the best way to stimulate strong birth rates172 . With this argumentation, the reformists presented themselves as being the better (i.e., more humane and more efficient) pronatalists who combined individual and the collective interests173 through the call for free access to contraception and generous material help from the welfare state174 . By declaring family policy as the best birth policy, this discourse built on a strong social consensus by virtue of which the generalization of birth, motherhood and 166 167

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See: Loi no 67-1176 relative à la régulation des naissances, 28.12.1967, in: JO 29.12.1967, p. 12861. C. Sénéquel, 600,000 avortements valent-t-ils mieux que le contrôle des naissances?, in: France-Observateur, 10.11.1955; D. Benoist (socialist), AN, 1.7.1967, in: JO 60 (1967), p. 2563; L. Neuwirth (author of the draft law; gaullist), Ibid., p. 2557. Proposition de loi tendant à prévenir la multiplication des avortements criminels par la prophylaxie anticonceptionnelle, AN, annexe no 715 au procès-verbal du 23.2.1956; AN, annexe no 1252 au procès-verbal du 16.4.1956; L. Messaud (socialist), Sénat 5.12.1967, in: JO 58 (1967), p. 2030; G. Portmann (independent), Ibid.p. 2040; J. Hebert (gaullist), AN, 1.7.1967 (as in n. 167), p. 2564. F. Giroud, Le contrôle des naissances est-il dangereux?, in: L’Express, 11.5.1956; G. Vinson (socialist), AN, 1.7.1967, p. 2562. M.-A. Lagroua Weill-Hallé, Considérations sur la ‘maternité volontaire’, discours à L’académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques, in: Revue des Travaux de L’académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques, Comptes rendus des séances, 5.3.1955, p. 85–90; 88. L. Neuwirth (gaullist), AN, 1.7.1967, p. 2557; G. Millet (communist), Ibid., p. 2573. L’épouvantail malthusien et la maternité volontaire, in: Libération, 3.5.1956; P. Lacavé, (communist), AN, 14.12.1967, in: JO 114 (1967), p. 5889; M. Habib-Deloncle (gaullist), AN, 1.7.1967, p. 2580; P. Mainguy (gaullist), AN, 14.12.1967, p. 5894. Raisons d’être de notre association, in: Maternité Heureuse 1, Nov. 1956, p. 10f.; J. ThomePatenôtre (socialist), AN, 1.7.1967, p. 2560; H. Viron (communist), Sénat 5.12.1967, (as in n. 168), p. 2031; J. Gravier (centrist), Ibid., p. 2038f. M.-A. Lagroua Weill-Hallé, Pour une maternité volontaire, in: France-Observateur, 15.12.1955; J. Fontanet (centrist), AN, 1.7.1967, p. 2562. R. Menu (centrist), Sénat 5.12.1967, p. 2026; J. Prin (communist), AN, 1.7.1967, p. 5888; J. Moulin (centrist), AN, 14.12.1967, (as in n. 171), p. 5888f.

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family allowances in 1939 and 1946 was considered to be the main cause of a sudden recovery of French birth rates after the Second World War175 . And as the reformists successfully occupied the pronatalist ground, conservative reform opponents based their criticism of contraception rather on medical, moral and religious arguments, the latter being broadly discussed outside the political arena176 . Meanwhile, in Western Germany, pronatalist discourses and policies started to be strongly associated with National Socialism in the public opinion and were therefore felt to be politically unacceptable177 . In this context, the Western German family planning organization Pro Familia (created in 1952) developed, like its French counterpart, a conception of birth control as family planning, considered contraception as abortion prevention, and centered its discourse around the healthy and happy family, but without drawing any explicit demographic conclusions178 . The only remaining form of demographic discourse on birth control flourished around the theme of global population growth, which was qualified as “world problem number one”179 , as a “birth avalanche” or a “population bomb”180 . With implicit or explicit reference to neo-Malthusian arguments181 , birth control (including contraception, abortion and sterilization) was called for in order to fight against the socio-economic consequences of overpopulation in Asia182 , and the legalization of contraception and abortion in Japan was often cited as 175

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Mouvement Français pour le Planning Familial, Vous qui êtes en faveur d’une saine politique démographique, repensez le problème, leaflet attached to: Bulletin du MFPF 22, (1962); J. Thome-Patenôtre, AN, 1.7.1967, p. 2560. Exceptions voicing pronatalist criticism: C. Peyret (gaullist), AN, 1.7.1967, p. 2578; J.M. Jeanneney (minister for social affairs, gaullist), AN, 1.7.1967, p. 2577. For medical and moral arguments against contraception in the French parliament, see: Gembries, Fortpflanzungspflicht (as in n. 6), p. 327–331. For religious criticism of contraception, see: Martine Sévegrand, L’Affaire Humanae vitae. L’Eglise catholique et la contraception, Paris 2008. See for example: Silies, Liebe, Lust und Last (as in n. 156), p. 64; Hubert, Démographie, p. 369. H. Harmsen (ed.), Die Gesunde Familie in ethischer, sexualwissenschaftlicher und psychologischer Sicht. Vorträge, gehalten auf dem Internationalen Kongress der IPPF in Berlin 1957. Unter Mitwirkung der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Ehe und Familie, Stuttgart 1958; Pro Familia Mitteilungen (May 1965); On the history of Pro Familia see for example: Anne-Marie Durand-Wever, Geschichte und Verbreitung der Familienplanung, in: Familienplanung, Frankfurt a. M. 1968, p. 14f. K. Herrmann, Kongress der IPPF in Den Haag, in: Neue Familie, July 1960, p. 2. T. Löbsack, Schwarzer Freitag im Jahre 2026, in: Die Zeit, 16.12.1960. T. Bruck, Geburtenregelung, Empfängnisverhütung. Problem und Praxis, Flensburg 1961, p. 23–31. Fraga, Die Tragödie um den § 218. Für und Wider die Schwangerschaftsunterbrechung. Verlag für Sexualliteratur, Regensburg, Vienna 1951, p. 21; W. Baranowsky: “Circulus Vitiosus”, in: Neue Familie, July 1957; Anti-Baby-Pille: Alpdruck oder Befreiung? In: Für

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a positive example for India and China183 . With caution it can be said that in the discourse on birth control, pronatalism for Germany (and other Western countries as well) thus mutated into a new antinatalism directed towards the “developing countries”. This is at least what is suggested by the results of an opinion poll in 1963, in which a large majority was in favor of introducing the contraceptive pill in India in order to limit population growth, while a small majority was against its authorization in Germany184 . At the same time, in Eastern Germany, owing to the pressure from a growing number of complaint letters from the population and after thorough consultation with a panel of leading gynecologists who were concerned about the high number of maternal deaths caused by illegal abortions185 , a first step towards the liberalization of abortion law was discretely taken in 1965186 . Indeed, the authorities feared a negative effect on the birth rates and therefore tried by all means possible to prevent a public debate on the legalization of abortion187 . However, this reform only happened after the Berlin wall was erected in 1961, which put an end to the population drain towards Western Germany, and just before the home-produced contraceptive pill Ovosiston was made available for the population of the German Democratic Republic188 . In spite of these national differences, the deconstruction of abortion as a demographic issue was favored by a common historical context characterized by a “baby boom” in all three states which lasted until the mid-1960s189 , an era

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Sie, Nov. 1964; Millionenfache Angst. Dr. Axel Dorn über Abtreibung, Verhütung und Operationen, in: Schleswig-Holsteinische Volkszeitung Kiel, 13.11.1965. Mehret euch nicht! In: Der Spiegel, 11.4.1962; Wettfahrt zu den Feldern, in: Die Zeit, 9.10.1964. See: Elisabeth Noelle, Erich Peter Neumann (ed.), Jahrbuch der öffentlichen Meinung 1965–67, Allensbach, Bonn 1967, p. 50. See: Harsch, Society, the State, and Abortion (as in n. 4), p. 62, 71–78. Instruktion des Ministeriums für Gesundheitswesen zur Anwendung des § 11 des Gesetzes über den Mutter- und Kinderschutz und die Rechte der Frau vom 27.9.1950, 15.3.1965, BA SAPMO, DY30/IVA2/19/22. According to this directive from the health ministry, abortions could be allowed not only on medical and eugenic, but also on certain social and familial criteria or if the pregnancy was the consequence of a rape. SED Hausmitteilung von W. Hering, Abt. Gesundheitspolitik, an K. Hager vom 24.8.1963, BA SAPMO, DY30/IVA2/2.024/7, p. 1f.; Notizen während der Beratung mit führenden Gynäkologen, BA SAPMO, DY30/IVA2/19/22. To compensate the expected negative demographic effect of the instruction, a broad program of incentive measures (e.g. an increase of pregnancy and child allowances, child care facilities etc.) and pronatalist propaganda was scheduled and implemented during the following years. See: Vorschläge zur Förderung der Geburtenentwicklung und Erweiterung der geltenden Bestimmungen zur Schwangerschaftsunterbrechung in der DDR, Berlin, 27.5.1964, BA SAPMO DY30/JIV2/2A/1036, p. 102–145. See: Leo, König, Wunschkindpille (as in n. 4), p. 87. From 1946 to 1965, French birth rates ranged approximately between 20/1000 and 18/1000

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of economic growth and unprecedented prosperity (or, for the GDR, at least an amelioration of the supply situation)190 , and, as a consequence of the nuclear age, an international situation in which birth rates were no longer seen as a military factor. Finally, the democratization of hormonal contraception, which as a mass phenomenon was anticipated by public discourse in the 1960s but only affected social practices in the 1970s191 , contributed in all three states to the fact that abortion was considered less a birth control method among other options, and less a demographic factor, but rather a problem at the level of the individual. Abortion as an Ethical Conflict between Individuals in the 1970s

Therefore, when in the early 1970s public debates on the legalization of abortion arose in German and French societies, while at the same time birth rates were sinking to a level never reached before192 , abortion was (very intensely and controversially) discussed as an individual rights conflict: as a question of whether the embryo’s right to live should be given more weight than the pregnant woman’s right to decide over her own body, and which of the two the legislator should primarily protect193 . In Germany, pronatalist discourse was completely absent from the public abortion debates. But while in Eastern Germany, abortion was legalized in 1972

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and Western and Eastern Germany birth rates ranged between approximately 18/1000 and 16/1000. Sources: Statistisches Bundesamt and Human Fertility Data Base. See for example: Dominique Lejeune, La France des Trente Glorieuses: 1945–1974, Paris 2015; Hans-Ulrich Wehler, Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte, Vol. 5., BRD und DDR (1949–1990), Munich 2008, p. 48–107. In Eastern Germany, until the late 1960s, only 3% of women of child-bearing age took the contraceptive pill. During the 1970s, this percentage increased rapidly and reached around 40% in 1980. See: Harsch, Society, the State, and Abortion, p. 64; Leo, König, Wunschkindpille, p. 178. In Western Germany, 6% of women of child-bearing age used the contraceptive pill in 1966. From 1972 until 1980, the figure was around 30%. See: Silies, Liebe, Lust und Last, p. 103. In France, 4% of women of child-bearing age used the contraceptive pill in 1968, while in 1980 the figure was around 23%. See: Henri Léridon, La Seconde Révolution contraceptive. La régulation des naissances en France de 1950 à 1985, Paris 1987, p. 72. Birth rates in 1974 for Western Germany: 10.1/1000 inhabitants; for Eastern Germany: 10.6/1000 inhabitants; for France: 15.3/1000 inhabitants. Source: Human Fertility Database. See for example: Gembries, Fortpflanzungspflicht, p. 230–236; Mossuz-Lavau, Les Lois de L’amour (as in n. 4), p. 87–162; Gerhard Kraiker, § 218. Zwei Schritte vorwärts, einen Schritt zurück, Frankfurt a. M. 1983, Herrmann Tallen, Die Auseinandersetzung über § 218 StGB. Zu einem Konflikt zwischen der SPD und der Katholischen Kirche, Munich, Paderborn, Vienna 1977.

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with the help of feminist arguments194 , only a liberalization of the abortion ban could be obtained in Western Germany in 1976, because legalization was considered to be contrary to the basic constitutional law which stated: “Every person shall have the right to life and physical integrity”195 . Meanwhile, in the late 1970s, a causal connection between the contraceptive pill and the ongoing birth rate decline was established in Western German public opinion, and qualified by the untranslatable neologism “Pillenknick”196 ; but the demographic concerns did not give way to the call for birth control repression. In the French parliamentary debates on the legalization of abortion, pronatalist concerns were broadly discussed, even if ethical, social, feminist or medical arguments took more space and were finally decisive for the outcome197 . However, the considerable political weight of pronatalist discourse can be measured by the extraordinary fact that the legalization of abortion was voted for in 1975198 , but the law included a clause that made it provisional. It had to be confirmed by parliament after a period of five years if its impact on the birth rate was deemed to be acceptable (which eventually was the case)199 . In contrast, pronatalist 194

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The new law allowed abortions to be practiced on demand of the woman by medical staff during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. See: Gesetz über die Unterbrechung der Schwangerschaft vom 9.3.1972, in: Gesetzblatt I,5, 15.3.1972, p. 89f. For the feminist arguments justifying the law see: Volkskammer der DDR, 6. Wahlperiode, 4. Tagung, 9.3.1973, p. 77–81; G. Fleischmann, D. Hannes, Recht und Würde der Frau vollauf garantiert, in: Neues Deutschland, 10.3.1972. Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany, 23.5.1949, Article 2.2. The Federal Constitutional Court rejected the legalization of abortion with regards to this argument. See: Entscheidung des BVG, in: Bundesgesetzblatt I, 28.2.1975, p. 625. Therefore, the new law allowed abortions only for medical, eugenic and social reasons and if the pregnancy was the consequence of a rape. See: Fünfzehntes Strafrechtsänderungsgesetz, 18.5.1976, in: Bundesgesetzblatt I, 21.5.1976, p. 1213–1215. See: Baby-Baisse: Staat im Schlafzimmer, in: Der Spiegel, 21.3.1977, p. 68–78; Die Lage der Familien in der BRD – Dritter Familienbericht. Bericht der Sachverständigenkommission der Bundesregierung und Stellungnahme der Bundesregierung, Bonn 1979, p. 112. As the birth rate started declining again in the mid-1960s, at a time when the contraceptive pill was used by a very small percentage of Western German women, this explanation can be qualified as a “myth”. See: Christiane Streubel, Dokumentation der zentralen Debatten, In: Matthias Frese, Julia Paulus, Karl Teppe, (ed.): Demokratisierung und gesellschaftlicher Aufbruch. Die sechziger Jahre als Wendezeit der Bundesrepublik. Paderborn 2003, p. 801– 830, 802. For examples of pronatalist arguments against the legalization of abortion in parliament see: J. Foyer (gaullist), AN, 26.11.1974, in: JO 92 (1974), p. 7012; R. Feit (independent rightist), ibid., p. 7030; M. Debré (gaullist), AN, 27.11.1974, in: JO 93 (1974), p. 7106. Loi no 75-17 relative à l’interruption volontaire de grossesse, 17.1.1975, in: JO 18.1.1975, p. 739. By virtue of this law, abortion could be practiced on demand of the woman by medical staff during the first 10 weeks of pregnancy. See the French parliamentary debates in November and December 1979 and the outcome: Loi no 79-1204 relative à l’interruption volontaire de la grossesse, 31.12.1979, in: JO 1.1.1980, p. 3f.

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discourse nearly disappeared from civil society (except from some extreme right newspapers which frequently associated pro-life and pronatalist arguments200 ). These persistent differences between France and Germany can be understood as a consequence of historically different pronatalist traditions which perpetuate themselves through time. However, they can also be explained with regards to differences in political culture between the two countries. In France, as a secularized state, pronatalist arguments could be used by Catholic deputies as a politically correct way to express their religiously motivated opposition against the legalization of abortion. In less secularized Western Germany, religious prolife arguments against abortion could be voiced in parliament and overlapped with and reinforced constitutional pro-life arguments. Their decisive impact on the legislation process can be understood as a political consequence of the traumatic experience of National Socialist population policies which distinguished between “worthy” and “unworthy” human lives201 . As to the question whether pro-life arguments could be a politically correct way to defend pronatalist concerns which were strongly identified as constitutive to National Socialism and therefore were felt to be unacceptable – the answer lies within the realm of pure speculation. However, despite these national differences, the decline of pronatalist discourses on birth control (and abortion in particular) was a common evolution in French and German societies. The central role of women’s emancipation in redefining abortion as a women’s right issue has been already emphasized by many scholars: owing to the public campaigns of second-wave feminists the question of abortion was put on the agenda in France and Western Germany, and the legalization of abortion in Eastern Germany was (at least partly) the result of internal efforts from female communist cadres202 . More generally, the decline of pronatalist anti-abortion discourse can be explained by looking at the value hierarchies underlying the discursive change. Indeed, in the field of sexuality and reproduction, priorities shifted from the national community’s (1920s–1950s) to the individual’s (1970s) well-being, with the family’s well-being (1950s–1960s) functioning as an inclusive vehicle for the transition between the 200

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M. Signac, Hippocrate et les hypocrites, in Rivarol, 14.12.1972; E. Petit, Tuez-les tous, in: Aspects de la France, 30.4.1973; M. Fromentoux, Pour le respect de la vie, in: Aspects de la France, 5.7.1973; M.-F. Tarder: Vers un génocide à retardement? in: Aspects de la France, 3.10.1974. This was also used explicitly as an argument against legalization in the parliamentary debates, e.g.: C.-D. Spranger (Christian democrat), Deutscher Bundestag, 7. Wahlperiode, 95. Sitzung, 25.4.1974, p. 6387, P. Mikat (christian democrat), Deutscher Bundestag, 7. Wahlperiode, 96. Sitzung, 26.4.1974, p. 6487. See for example: Dorothy McBride Stetson, Abortion Politics, Women’s Movements, and the Democratic State: A Comparative Study of State Feminism, Oxford 2001; Harsch, Society, the State, and Abortion.

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former and the latter. As a result, in the 1970s, it was no longer the procreative duty of individuals towards their national community that was discussed, but the obligation of state and society to protect an individual’s fundamental rights. Thus, for a large majority, demographic concerns were no longer seen as a legitimate reason for repressive intervention in the sexual privacy of individuals. Finally, the decline of pronatalist discourse on birth control can also be understood as an adjustment to the long lasting social practices of contraception and abortion and to a change of the population’s opinions which anticipated this discursive evolution: according to the few available opinion polls, a small majority of Western Germans were in favor of liberalizing the abortion law from at least 1949203 , and an overwhelming majority confirmed this in 1974204 , in spite of the fact that they were said to be worried about the sinking birth rates in 1973205 . In France, a small majority supported a liberal abortion law in 1966206 , and a large majority favored legalizing it in 1974207 , while at least from 1956 onwards the French were mostly satisfied with their birth rates and their population size208 .

Conclusion This chapter focused on pronatalist discourses in mid-century French and German public debates on birth control and more specifically on abortion. In the 1920s–1950s, a period which was identified as the golden age of pronatalism, common characteristics of pronatalist arguments against birth control were the discursive construction of abortion as a demographic issue and the strong nexus between demographic and military arguments. In a context of sinking birth rates and two World Wars, abortion appeared to be at the heart of several existential crisis narratives which drew the picture of a national community threatened from the outside by powerful neighboring countries and from the inside by an ageing or degenerating population, while having to face socio-economic distress 203 204 205 206 207 208

According to an opinion poll conducted in 1949. See: Ludwig von Friedeburg, die Umfrage in der Intimsphäre, Stuttgart 1953, p. 84. Noelle, Neumann, Jahrbuch der öffentlichen Meinung 1974–76, Allensbach, Bonn 1976, p. 89. Noelle, Neumann, Jahrbuch der öffentlichen Meinung 1968–73, Allensbach, Bonn 1973, p. 96. Alain Girard, Elisabeth Zucker, Une Enquête auprès du public sur la structure familiale et la prévention des naissances, in: Population 3 (1976), p. 401–454, 443. Henri Bastide, Alain Girard, Attitudes et opinions des Français à l’égard de la fécondité et de la famille, in: Population 4–5 (1975), p. 693–750, 722. Alain Girard, Raul Samuel, Enquête sur publique à l’égard de la limitation des naissances (1955) in: Population 7–9 (1956), p. 481–506, 489; Bastide, Girard, Attitudes (as in n. 207), p. 722, 737.

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and moral decline. But despite a similar phenomenology of what can be qualified as an anti-modernization discourse, its weight within the abortion debates was more important in France than in Germany. This can mainly be explained by the unique demographic situation of France on the one hand, and by the virulent concurrence of another demographic doctrine on abortion, eugenics, in Germany on the other hand. While the institutional impact of pronatalist anti-abortion discourse was most important under the fascist regimes of National Socialism in Germany and Vichy in France, both of which integrated it (although in different ways) as a constitutive element into their respective ideologies and repressive policies, its impact on the jurisdictional practices and on the individual reproductive behaviors in both countries was rather meager throughout the entire period. For the 1950s–1960s then, a progressive decline of pronatalist discourse on birth control was identified, which led in the 1970s to its complete disappearance in Germany, while in France it persisted as one influential discourse among others at the level of politic decision-making. These differences were explained with regards to the weight of different historical traditions and political cultures. However, the underlying common evolution certainly benefitted from a favorable historical context of unprecedented socio-economic prosperity and, as a consequence, a provisional recovery of birth rates in both countries. At the same time, the newly introduced contraceptive pill replaced abortion as the most emblematic birth control device, first in the public eye, and later in social practice, which made it possible to consider abortion independently from demographic concerns. Therefore, when public debates about the legalization of abortion arouse in both countries in the 1970s, abortion was mainly discussed as an ethical and a feminist issue, as the conflict between the embryo’s right to live and the woman’s right to decide over her own body. The success and decline of pronatalist anti-abortion discourse in French and German societies could be explained by focusing on a change of values underlying the public debates on birth control. Indeed, priorities shifted from the national community to the individual, the individuals being attributed reproductive rights instead of reproductive duties, while the state’s interest no longer justified the repression of broadly established birth control practices. Thus, the decline of pronatalist discourse on birth control and its underlying value change can be understood as a mental adjustment to the modernization of reproduction in the 20th century.

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Claudia Roesch

“Children by Choice” – Family Decisions and Value Change in the Campaigns of the American Planned Parenthood Federation (1942–1973)

This paper examines changes in the values underlying narratives about decisions for family planning in Planned Parenthood campaigns from 1942 until 1973. It distinguishes between material and immaterial, individual and collective values as a way of refining historical value change theory. In the first campaign of 1942, immaterial collective values stood in the center as the freedoms to choose family planning and decide when to have a child were considered central to American liberalism. In the 1950s, material and individual values entered the campaigns presenting family planning as a preventive health measure and a means to rise into the middle classes and partake in consumerism. When in the 1960s campaigns began to target African Americans and Puerto Ricans, values shifted back to collectivism but remained material, arguing that too many children were a taxpayers’ burden. While social experts saw the size of white middle-class families as a danger regarding global population growth, the militant faction of the African American civil rights movement decried campaigns for minorities as “race genocide”. In order to counter those attacks, Planned Parenthood assembled a “Negro Physician” advisory council in 1968, which recommended emphasizing freedom of choice and dropping references to welfare payments and population control. In the end, the African American civil rights movement brought immaterial, individual values into the campaigns. This shows that, while the ideal family in the campaigns remained a nuclear family with two to three children, narratives of decision-making and included values continuously changed due to an interconnection of Planned Parenthood with internal and foreign policies, social expert paradigms and social movements. In the introduction to his 1961 work “The Complete Book of Birth Control”, the gynecologist and Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) vicepresident Alan F. Guttmacher explained the advantages of family planning:

This article evolved in the context of the project “Reproductive Decision-making in Germany and the USA in the Second Half of the 20th Century” within collaborative research area 1150 “Cultures of Decision-Making” sponsored by the German Science Foundation. A postdoctoral grant by the Gerda Henkel Foundation made archival research for this paper possible. https://doi.org/9783110524499-003

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Claudia Roesch [It] places in your hands a wonderful opportunity to make each of your children a truly wanted child, and to build a satisfying sexual relationship with your spouse free from fear of unwanted pregnancy. This knowledge can make your life healthier and happier. It can enable you to be a better parent because it makes parenthood a voluntary matter – not a penalty upon the sexual relationship. It permits couples to live together with dignity and joy, with pleasure and responsibility.1

According to Guttmacher, family planning included the following promises: health, happiness, better parenthood, high moral standards, loved children and a better sex life. What more could you ask for? In the book, Guttmacher introduced his readers to condoms, diaphragms, the contraceptive pill, vaginal douches, the rhythm method, coitus interruptus and spermicides. He moved individual values to the center of his pitch for birth control, but also referred to material values such as improving mothers’ health and the financial situations of poor families. From a global perspective, family planning promised to eradicate poverty and to spread liberal democracy. Contraceptives would not undermine traditional family structures or keep couples from starting families. Instead, birth control would strengthen existing families that were rationally planned and based on mutual love. Planned families formed a union to rear children, but also to guarantee the sexual adjustment of their adult members. They united pleasure and responsibility, individual self-fulfillment and service to the community and nation. This article examines how Planned Parenthood advertized family planning in the United States since 1942. It analyzes how campaigns promoted an ideal family and how narratives of reproductive decision-making changed from the mid-1940s until the 1960s. My source material consists of information brochures for family planning as well as conference reports and internal correspondences, which serve to trace long-term changes. I consider Planned Parenthood publications as advertisements for the product of “family planning”, which means that I assume that brochures picked up social trends, values and norms to reach their audiences. Therefore, I consider publications as mirrors, not as motors of social change. In order to trace long-term changes, I will first present the theoretical-methodological approach of this article, then I will give a short overview of the history of the American family in the 1950s and 1960s. After that, I will investigate how Planned Parenthood framed reproductive choice as central to liberalism in the 1940s. Third, I will discuss how family planning in the 1950s was supposed to safeguard material wellbeing and how Planned Parenthood extended this to poor and minority families in the 1960s. Finally, I will shed light on the ways the African American civil rights movement challenged this narrative.

1

Alan F. Guttmacher, The Complete Book of Birth Control, New York 1961, p. 4.

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What is Reproductive Decision-Making? This article examines norms and values within narratives about reproductive decision-making2 , which include any decision relating to human procreation. From my source material, I was able to trace four types of reproductive decisions that were debated in the second half of the 20th century. The first decision premise3 refers to the question of whether a couple practices family planning or not – that means whether it tries to influence how many children, at what intervals and in which point in time it will have them. This type of decision emerged in the mid-20th century. With the rise of secular tendencies, social expert cultures4 and access to reliable contraceptives, childbirth was no longer considered a gift of God or fate, but something to plan for. It faded from public debate in the 1970s when family planning became a routine practice for the majority of people. The second type of reproductive decisions derives from the first and contains the question of which contraceptive method to use. Until the 1960s, this decision was rarely negotiated in public debates since experts and family planning activists considered contraception a medical issue and placed the decision about the right “treatment” within a doctor’s hands5 . Only when the second-wave feminist movement and the consumer movement started to question medical authorities, choosing the right contraceptive became a decision that any woman should make on her own based on all the information available to her6 . 2

3 4

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I follow Clyde Kluckhohns’s definition of a value as a “preference, which is felt and/or considered to be justified.” This means values derive from a discursive negotiation between individual attitudes and social notions of morality, see Clyde Kluckohn, Values and Value Orientation in the Theory of Action, in: Talcott Parsons, Edward A. Shils (eds.), Towards a General Theory of Action, Cambridge 5 1962, p. 388–433, p. 396. For the concept of decision premisses, see: Uwe Schimank, Die Entscheidungsgesellschaft. Komplexität und Rationalität der Moderne, Wiesbaden 2005, p. 30. For an overview over expert cultures since the 1890s within the “scientization of the social”, see Lutz Raphael, Die Verwissenschaftlichung des Sozialen als methodische und konzeptionelle Herausforderung für eine Sozialgeschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts, in: Geschichte und Gesellschaft 22 (1996), p. 165–193. Following Lutz Raphael, I define experts as academics trained in humanities or life sciences (i.e. medical doctors, sociologists, psychologists, social workers, lawyers) who tried to reform the society in which they lived; Lutz Raphael, Embedding the Human and Social Sciences in Western Societies, 1880–1980. Reflections on Trends and Methods of Current Research, in: Kerstin Brückweh et al. (eds.), Engineering Society. The Role of the Human and Social Sciences in Modern Societies, 1880–1980, New York 2012, p. 41–56, p. 42. For a consumerist and second wave feminist critique of the pill, see Elizabeth Siegel Watkins, On the Pill. A Social History of Contraceptives 1950–1970, Baltimore 1998, p. 104. One of the most important initiatives, which gave women access to information to make independent reproductive decisions, was the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective’s publication of Our Bodies, Ourselves (1970). Refer to Kathy Davis, The Making of Our Bodies, Ourselves. How Feminism Travels across Borders, Durham, London 2007, p. 26.

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The third level of decisions revolves around the question of whether a woman should have a child at a certain point in time. This includes two different situations: first, the decision to stop using contraceptives to plan a pregnancy and second, to choose abortion in case of an unplanned pregnancy. The first situation includes the possibility of delaying motherhood in war time, to extend the interval between two pregnancies or to delay parenthood within the first year of marriage. The public discussed abortion as a woman’s decision only with the rise of the second wave of the feminist movement. In 1968, the National Organization for Women (NOW) included legal abortion in its list of demands and the Supreme Court ruling of Roe v. Wade (1973), which legalized abortion, framed it as a decision between a woman and her doctor7 . The fourth level of reproductive decisions includes those situations when couples could not get pregnant by natural means and faced the question of whether to use assisted reproductive technologies. While the invention of sperm banks, hormone therapy and in-vitro fertilization since the 1970s has strongly increased the amount of options to choose from, votive offerings from the bronze age or early 20th century experiments in sperm donation show that families have always tried to enhance their fertility. This shows that the four levels of decisionmaking did not necessarily follow a linear order. To be clear, this article does not study reproductive practices, but narratives of reproductive decision-making. In practice, falling birth rates among middle-class women in industrial nations or the prevalence of illegal abortion throughout the 19th and 20th centuries show that couples and women have determined their own reproduction, even though discourse did not frame this as decision-making. The aim of this study is not to examine actions taken by individual couples. Instead, it traces long-term processes of changes in social norms and values through narratives of decision-making. For this, it draws on the theoretical-methodological considerations of historical value change studies. Scholars of contemporary history have recently criticized sociological value change theories8 , which follow Ronald Inglehart’s value surveys in assuming a fundamental shift from material values of security to post-material values of individual self-fulfillment in the period from 1965 to 19759 . In contrast, historical value change studies investigate 7 8

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Rickie Solinger, Pregnancy and Power. A Short History of Reproductive Politics in America, New York, London 2005, p. 3, p. 185f. For a concise critiques of sociological value surveys as source material for historical research, see Isabel Heinemann, Wertewandel. Version 1.0, in: Docupedia-Zeitgeschichte, Oct. 22, 2012, URL: http://docupedia.de/zg/Wertewandel?oldid=84709 (access on Sep. 9, 2013), p. 4.; Rüdiger Graf, Kim Christian Priemel, Zeitgeschichte in der Welt der Sozialwissenschaften, in: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 59/4 (2011), p. 486. Ronald Inglehart, The Silent Revolution. Changing Values and Political Styles among Western Publics, Princeton 1977; Helmuth Klages, Wertorientierungen im Wandel. Rückblick, Gegenwartsanalyse, Prognosen, Frankfurt a. M. 1984.

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discourses about norms and values10 , asking in an open-ended fashion about shifts in the preference for material or non-material values within public debates, expert studies, advertisement, political campaigns or practical social work to carve out changes in social norms over longer periods of time. Therefore, I have adapted Inglehart’s distinction between material and postmaterial values by adding the categories of individual and collective values. According to Inglehart, material values include economic affluence, access to food and consumer goods as well as security against crime and disease11 . Postmaterial values mean individual self-fulfillment. As I do not want to impose Inglehart’s chronology on earlier periods, I refer to these as immaterial values, which allows for the inclusion of ideological values into this category. This means that there are four possible combinations of values. (1) Individual material values are for instance contained in the argument that fewer children mean more affluence for a family. (2) Collective-material values were underlying the argumentation of the Eugenics Movement in the interwar period, which considered “low quality” offspring a threat to the financial, biological and criminal security of the nation12 . (3) Individual-immaterial values were voiced in the demands of the first and second-wave feminist movement for women’s control over their bodies, while (4) collective-immaterial values brought together family planning with debates about the superiority of American liberalism over fascism and communism during World War Two. Beginning with these value-sets, an investigation into whether material or immaterial, individual or collective values were underlying Planned Parenthood campaigns helps tracing changes in norms and ideas of American family history.

The Family in American Postwar Society Already in 1988, historian Elaine Tyler May described the 1950s American family as a “bulwark against communism” and the threat of nuclear war. She was able to show how politics, media and expert analyses all considered the nuclear family

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For the use of discourse analysis as a means to verify instances of social change, which had been identified by historical value studies, see Bernhard Dietz, Christopher Neumaier, Vom Nutzen der Sozialwissenschaften für die Zeitgeschichte, in: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 60/2 (2012), p. 302. Cf. Inglehart, The Silent Revolution (as in n. 9), p. 16. For an analysis of the shifts within the Eugenics movement to move beyond biological explanations and to include social indications such as crime and “bad” motherhood, see Wendy Kline, Building A Better Race. Gender, Sexuality and Eugenics from the Turn of the Century to the Baby Boom, Berkeley et al. 2001.

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to be the foundation of society13 . Stephanie Coontz and Joanne Meyerowitz then pointed out that this family image was instead a product of TV sitcoms rather than a lived reality, especially for minority women. In addition, many white middle-class women undermined this concept14 . Nevertheless, Robert O. Self has recently demonstrated that since the New Deal era the American social order and welfare policy rested on the model of a male breadwinner and female homemaker15 . Welfare policy was based on Harvard sociologist Talcott Parsons’ version of modernization theory, which assumed a linear development from industrialization and urbanization to affluence, civil society and liberal democracy. Parsons himself had observed in 1942 that the isolated nuclear family was the social structure that was best adapted to an industrial and capitalist economic order. This family was relieved from obligations to extended family members, could invest its income independently, take part in consumerism and socialize its children16 . American NGOs like the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) spread this concept on a global level as a weapon within the Cold War containment policy17 . Planned Parenthood itself evolved from the activities of the nurse and labor union organizer Margaret Sanger, who had started in the 1910s to demand legal contraception as a means to fight poverty and illegal abortions18 . Later on, she also sponsored birth control as a means to regulate population19 . In 1921, Sanger founded the American Birth Control League and in 1923, she started the first counseling service with the Clinical Research Bureau, which used the guise of research to circumvent censorship laws. The Supreme Court ruled in 13 14

15 16

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Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound. American Families in the Cold War Era, New York 2 1999, p. 19f. Stephanie Coontz, The Way We Never Were. American Families and the Nostalgia Trap, New York 2 2000; Joanne Meyerowitz (ed.), Not June Cleaver. Women and Gender in Postwar America. 1945–1960, Philadelphia 1994. Robert O. Self, All in the Family. The Realignment of American Democracy since the 1960s, New York 2012, p. 18. Talcott Parsons, Age and Sex in the Social Structure of the United States, in: American Sociological Review 7/5 (1942), p. 604–16, p. 609. In 1955, Parsons further developed his observations into a theory of gender roles; see Talcott Parsons, The American Family, in: Talcott Parsons, Robert F. Bales (eds.), Family, Socialization and Interaction Process, New York 1955, p. 3–33, p. 21. For an overview of how American foundations tried to establish family planning as development aid in India, see Corinna R. Unger, Family Planning. A Rational Choice? The Influence of Systems Approaches, Behavioralism, and Rational Choice Thinking on Mid-Twentieth Century Family Planning Programs, in: Heinrich Hartmann, Corinna R. Unger (eds.), A World of Populations. Transnational Perspectives on Demography in the Twentieth Century, New York 2014, p. 57–82. See for instance Carole R. McCann, Birth Control Politics in the United States 1916–1945, Ithaca, NY, London 1994, p. 9. Ibid., p. 106.

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1937 that information about birth control did not fall under the Comstock Laws prohibiting the mailing of “obscene” material20 . Soon afterwards, some Southern states started to fund programs to promote family planning, mainly among the rural African American population, while in Connecticut and Massachusetts the sale of contraceptives to married couples remained illegal until 1965 and to unmarried couples until 197221 . In 1942, the Birth Control Federation of America (which came into being through the 1939 reunification of the American Birth Control League and the Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau, which had separated in 1928 due to differences in their missions) changed its name into Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA). The new name emphasized that the federation did not want to undermine the institution of the family. Therefore, it combined sex education and contraceptives with infertility treatment. Planned Parenthood has its headquarters in New York and runs affiliate clinics in almost every state. Experts (such as medical doctors, clerics, lawyers) plan the national campaigns in special councils that convene when needed, while clinics can act independently to a certain degree22 . Most of the research literature about the origins of the Planned Parenthood Federation deals with the personality of Margaret Sanger. Many studies discuss the question of whether Sanger was a Eugenicist or merely sought a strategic alliance with the Eugenics movement23 . Elaine Tyler May and Elizabeth Siegel Watkins have investigated Sanger’s initiative in the research for the contraceptive pill24 , while others have examined Planned Parenthood from the perspective 20 21

22 23

24

Manon Parry, Broadcasting Birth Control. Mass Media and Family Planning, Baltimore 2013, p. 39. In Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) and Eisenstadt v. Baird (1972) the Supreme Court ruled that restricting the sale of contraceptives to married or unmarried persons in the states of Connecticut and Massachusetts violated the right to privacy guaranteed by the American constitution; Solinger, Pregnancy and Power (as in n. 7), p. 177. See Cathy Moran Hajo, Birth Control on Main Street. Organizing Clinics in the United States 1916–1939, Urbana, Chicago, Springfield 2010, p. 47. Carole McCann saw Margaret Sanger’s move towards the Eugenics Movement only in the adoption of scientific language about sexuality, while Nancy Ordover and Angela Franks criticized Sanger for adopting demands to sterilize people infected with venereal diseases or diagnosed with “feeble-mindedness” and her contacts with German and British Eugenicists. In contrast, Cathy Moran Hajo’s recent study emphasizes the disagreements between the Eugenics Movement, which wanted to deny well-fit mothers’ access to contraceptives, and Sanger, who wanted to offer any woman a chance to practice family planning. See McCann, Birth Control Politics (as in n. 18), p. 106; Nancy Ordover, American Eugenics. Race, Queer Anatomy, and the Science of Nationalism, Minneapolis, London 2003, p. 137f.; Angela Franks, Margaret Sanger’s Eugenic Legacy. The Control of Female Fertility, Jefferson, NC, London 2005, p. 6f.; Moran Hajo, Birth Control (as in n. 22), p. 103f. See Elaine Tyler May, America and the Pill. A History of Promise, Peril and Liberation, New York 2010, p. 14; Siegel Watkins, On the Pill (as in n. 6) 1998, p. 20.

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of the second-wave feminist movement25 and discussed Planned Parenthood’s position regarding coercive measures of family planning and sterilization for African Americans26 . There is hardly any study on family concepts within the Planned Parenthood programs from the 1940s and 1950s or its collaboration with Protestant and Jewish clergy27 . My research project addresses these topics in a longitudinal approach by asking how family ideals, religious norms and expertise framed reproductive decision-making within Planned Parenthood programs.

Children by Choice – Family Planning in the Ideology of Liberalism “Children by choice – not by chance” – that was the headline of Planned Parenthood’s first national campaign brochure from 194228 . According to the brochure entitled “Planned Parenthood in Wartime” more and more doctors recognized the need for child spacing – consciously leaving a gap between two pregnancies to give the woman a chance to recover her health29 . Nevertheless, due to the attitude of voluntarism, American birth rates were higher than those “of frightened Germany and Italy combined”30 . A liberal political system, which offered industrial workers economic security, was considered to be superior to fascist and Nazi population policies based on coercion. While the American ideology supported population growth in peace time, in war time women decided independently to delay reproduction. Thus, in 1942, thousands of people – “war brides or their husbands [. . . ] women industrial workers, [. . . ] mothers in rural, slum and migrant areas”31 – sent requests to Planned Parenthood: “They begged for health and happiness, for their children – themselves. They wanted freedom through medical knowledge to choose when and under what conditions they would have their babies.”32 25 26 27

28 29 30 31 32

See Linda Gordon, Woman’s Body, Woman’s Right. Birth Control in America, Hammondsworth et al. 3 1977. Solinger, Pregnancy and Power, p. 171–176; Jennifer Nelson, Women of Color and the Reproductive Rights Movement, New York, London 2003, p. 92. Tom Davis, who as a pastor in the 1960s and 1970s, had been involved in setting up a Planned Parenthood clinic, wrote a study about the alliances between clergy and Planned Parenthood from the perspective on an informed witness, see Tom Davis, Sacred Work. Planned Parenthood and Its Clergy Alliance, New Brunswick, London 2005. N.N., Planned Parenthood in Wartime (1942), Planned Parenthood Federation of America Records, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Mass., p. 1. Ibid. Ibid., p. 2. Ibid., p. 3. Ibid., p. 4.

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The brochure warned that a lack of information about contraception undermined the American war effort. Already, absentee rates of women in the war industries were twice as high as those of male workers due to the widespread practice of illegal abortion and its consequences for women’s health33 . This proved that women without access to contraceptives, nevertheless, took family planning into their own hands, and often with fatal consequences. Therefore, information about and access to safe contraception was necessary. Negotiating material and collective values, family planning during World War Two thus served to improve public health, but also to strengthen the work force in the war industries. The campaign’s third argument was that voluntary family planning and the right to information about contraception within American liberalism was superior to totalitarian regimes. Therefore, the brochure concluded that knowledge produced freedom, using the slogan “In Democratic Organization Lies Strength”34 . Freedom, which could mean both the freedom of speech to talk about birth control in public and the freedom of women to live without fear of unwanted pregnancy, was framed as an immaterial collective value making family planning an element of a strong democracy. In the immediate postwar period, social experts continued to emphasize this narrative. In a speech given at the 1947 Planned Parenthood annual conference, the psychiatrist O. Spurgeon English explained: “Obviously, from the studies of psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers and those in allied fields, unplanned parenthood, unwanted parenthood and inadequate emotional preparation for parenthood are the greatest threats to peace and the advancement of the human race. Let a child start life feeling unwanted, unloved, and inferior, and there are no lengths to which he will not go to seek revenge upon a world, which had neglected him and made him feel inferior. This can take the form of marital tyranny, religious or racial bigotry, industrial tyranny, cruelty, or the despotic rule and destructive aggression of a dictator.”35

The psychiatrist drew a dystopian image of an unplanned family: there was little love, and ill-equipped parents generated inferiority complexes in their children, which in consequence caused social disintegration. English referred to contemporary sociological and psychological expertise, which considered childhood traumata as the origin of neurosis and maladjustment in adult life36 . He thus identified the unplanned family as an internal threat to American liberalism, 33 34 35

36

Ibid., p. 8. Ibid., p. 12. O. Spurgeon English, The Psychology of Parenthood, in: N.N., The Parent Problem. Addresses Delivered at the 26th Annual Meeting of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (Jan. 22, 1947), in: Planned Parenthood Federation of America Records, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Mass., p. 20. See Parsons, The American Family (as in n. 16), p. 20.

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since unprepared parents were going to raise future despots37 . At the same time, he produced the contrasting image of the ideal family, which family planning promised: children were loved, parents were mature and supported the emotional adjustment of every child, who would grow up to create a society based on morality, equality and peace. The PPFA campaign logo from 1947 until 1951 illustrated how this family would look: In the center of the drawing there was a white family with three children, the oldest was about ten, the middle one about five and the youngest one year old38 . All the family members wore modern leisure clothes, which marked them as part of the middle class. The age gap between the children indicates that the parents had planned their offspring according to the concept of child spacing. A ribbon with the words affection, health, security and opportunity holds the family together. Those four words represent the values that united families, but also the values that Planned Parenthood promised as a reward for using contraceptives. Underneath the image appeared the slogan “Saves Lives – Saves homes”, which presented birth control as a preventive health measure. This last aspect, which the first Planned Parenthood campaign of 1942 had already mentioned, was central to the campaigns of the 1950s with a turn towards individual health. The report of the 1957 annual conference stated: “Planned Parenthood is serving as a preventive health program – to help young married couples space wanted babies and build happy families.”39 It argued that too many pregnancies endangered the life and health of women – especially those suffering from diabetes, tuberculosis or heart disease. Another advantage of child spacing was that women could recover in between pregnancies, which experts considered a factor in the decline of infant mortality rates40 . In addition, contraception protected women against the dangers of illegal, unprofessional abortions. This reasoning clearly included material values, which were framed in an individual fashion: family planning served to protect the health of the individual woman and family. The brochures did not consider this as a measure of public health or a 37 38

39

40

For the debate about contraceptives within the Cold War containment policy, see Tyler May, America and the Pill (as in n. 24), p. 37. See for instance, N.N., Planned Parenthood Facts and Figures for Volunteer Workers (1949), in: Planned Parenthood Federation of America Records, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Mass., p. 12. N.N. Planned Parenthood Federation of American Annual Report 1957, in: Planned Parenthood Federation of America Records, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Mass. An article from Parents‘ Magazine, which Planned Parenthood redistributed, quoted a study by the U.S. Children’s Bureau, according to which infant mortality rates declined from 146 per 1000 births to 98 per 1000 deliveries if there was a gap of two years between pregnancies. Eric M. Matsner, The Planned Family, Reprint from Parents’ Magazine (undated), in: Planned Parenthood Federation of America Records, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Mass.

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means to strengthen the work force of the nation anymore. Instead, it connected individual health to consumerism and affluence. An undated Planned Parenthood brochure from around 1957 entitled “The Story of Two Families” introduced the reader to two couples. Both suffered from a syphilis infection41 . The first couple, which was described as “sad, sickly, weak”, did not seek any treatment and had a child each year. Many of their children had disabilities. The second couple, which was described as “happy, healthy and strong”, sought treatment after their first child was stillborn. Their doctor referred them to a Planned Parenthood clinic to avoid another pregnancy before they were cured. After they received contraceptive information there, they had three healthy children and lived in a “neat, clean home”42 . When comparing the two families, the one which practiced family planning became happy and lived in a respectable middle-class home. The other family became part of the rural underclass; they appeared dirty, their clothes were torn and their house was old. The wife had to hand-wash the clothes, which implies that they did not have access to modern household appliances. Thus the brochure emphasized the factor of “class”, as it promised couples social rise through family planning. When considering that in the beginning both couples were infected with a venereal disease, it actually promised rehabilitation and access to middleclass respectability even for those people who had left the moral path before. Here, family planning became the road back to decency and respectability.

Family Planning and the War on Poverty in the 1960s Since the early 1960s Planned Parenthood campaigns shifted from reaching out to white urban families to addressing poor and rural families, both black and white. Previously, African Americans and other non-white women were hardly addressed in the programs. Even though Margaret Sanger had opened a family planning clinic in Harlem in 1930 (which shut down again in 1936) and Planned Parenthood had closely followed birth control programs for black women in the rural South43 , the federation hardly ever explicitly reached out

41

42 43

The brochure is undated. Publications with a similar design and layout were published in 1957, which is why I assume that the brochure was from the same year. See N.N., The Story of Two Families (undated), in: Planned Parenthood Federation of America Records, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Mass. Ibid., p. 13. For a detailed discussion of the ambivalences between voluntarism and coercion in family planning programs in North Carolina, see Johanna Schoen, Choice and Coercion. Birth Control, Sterilization, and Abortion in Public Health and Welfare, Chapel Hill, NC 2005.

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to minorities44 . However, when Lyndon B. Johnson was the first president in office to officially endorse family planning as a means of fighting overpopulation45 , the focus of Planned Parenthood shifted. With the implementation of Johnson’s War on Poverty – a 1964 federal program to support minorities and fight poverty at the level of families and communities – the PPFA national headquarters encouraged affiliates to apply for funding from the program. An information leaflet to the affiliates emphasized that the goal was to gain funding for programs for voluntary family planning of poor families, to offer them access to health care, choice and control over their lives46 . But the sample application from Seattle attached to the leaflet argued that the suggested program offered advantages for both poor families and the general society: “For the Community there is: reduced need for rapid expansion of every public facility, for health and welfare services, for protection and rehabilitation, for the taxes to support these.”47 One page further down, it explained that the majority of poor clients were non-white families. This exemplifies that programs meant – among other things – to control the reproduction of minorities to save tax payers’ money. While the project applications for African American communities recurred to the image of the black single mother living off welfare checks created by the so-called Moynihan Report 48 , parallel campaigns for Puerto Ricans in New 44

45

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There were singular programs for African Americans in the 1950s and the first Spanishspeaking brochure aimed at Puerto Ricans in New York appeared in 1954. But this was a word for word translation from an English-speaking brochure aimed at white clients. Information brochures that explicitly addressed Puerto Rican lifestyles were not published until the mid-1960s. See Moran Hajo, Birth Control, p. 85; N.N., Para ayudarle en sus planes para levanter su familia (1954); N.N., Sin Miedo (1962), in: Planned Parenthood Federation of America Records, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Mass. Dwight D. Eisenhower publically endorsed Planned Parenthood only after the end of his second term in office, and John F. Kennedy rejected constrictions to birth control methods based on Catholic moral teachings without actively supporting any program for family planning. See: Dwight E. Eisenhower, Letter by Eisenhower on Birth Control, in: New York Times (23.06.1965), p. 21; N.N., Planned Parenthood Federation of American Annual Report 1960, in: Planned Parenthood Federation of America Records, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Mass. N.N., Family Planning Programs in the War against Poverty (1964), in: Planned Parenthood Federation of America Records, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Mass. p. 1f. N.N., Proposal Submitted by Planned Parenthood of Seattle (1964), in: Planned Parenthood Federation of America Records, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Mass. p. 1. The report by assistant labor secretary Daniel Patrick Moynihan to Lyndon B. Johnson about the poverty of African Americans depicted black single mothers as the cause of unstable families and poverty. In consequence, welfare policies used governmental measures to control the fertility of poor African American women, see Norbert Finzsch, Gouvernemen-

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York and Chicago referred to different narratives. In the colony of Puerto Rico, experts considered high unemployment rates, bad schools and overpopulation the main impediments for economic development. Sterilization programs had existed since the 1930s, and since 1942 the guest worker program Operation Bootstrap had tried to soften population pressures on the island while fixing a worker shortage on the mainland49 . Because of those circumstances, Puerto Rico seemed an ideal ground for medical trials of the contraceptive pill before its introduction to the American market in 196050 . Planned Parenthood also wanted to convince Puerto Ricans living in New York of the advantages of family planning through the 1965 Spanish-speaking movie “La Sortija de Compromiso” [the engagement ring]51 . The film followed a couple getting engaged and receiving advice on their marriage from relatives, friends, neighbors and Planned Parenthood clinic. It discussed contraception, women’s work, masculinity norms and the transition from an agricultural to a modern, urban society. After talking to a friend and a Planned Parenthood counselor, the protagonist Isabel decided that she wanted to continue working after marriage and not get pregnant until one year after the wedding. But her fiancé Pedro rejected both her work and contraceptives (she had been recommended the pill, the IUD or the rhythm method) and doubted her commitment to him. Only his friend Antonio – a father of only three children – could convince him about the benefits of family planning. Antonio explained that family planning protected the mother’s health and that families in a city did not need children as working hands. In the monologue that finally convinced Pedro, Antonio compared his own family to that of the neighbor Agualdo: Look at Agualdo [. . . ] he is not so big and he’s got six, seven children. You think that makes him a man? He can’t take care of them. And he’s not dumb. We both came here at the same time, he got married when I got married, but then right away they have children: boom, boom, boom, boom – And now, no job, a sick wife. And he’s smart. He could have made something of himself. Not that I am so great, but compare the chances of [my son – C.R.] Eduardo over there (he gestures in Eduardo’s direction) with Agualdo’s little Pachito. And you know something else? Next month or two, we’re gonna move into a new apartment – you know the ones over by the river?52

49

50 51

52

talität, der Moynihan-Report und die Welfare Queen im Cadillac, in: Jürgen Martschukat (ed.), Geschichte schreiben mit Foucault, Frankfurt a. M. 2002, p. 257–282. About the Operation Bootstap, see Lilia Fernández, Of Immigrants and Migrants. Mexican and Puerto Rican Labor Migration in Comparative Perspective, 1942–1964, in: Journal of American Ethnic History 39/3 (2010), p. 6–39, p. 16. See Siegel Watkins, On the Pill, p. 31. N.N., La Sortija de Compromiso (1965), in: Planned Parenthood Federation of America Records, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Mass. Within the archival collection, there is a Spanish version of the storyboard and the English translation of the screenplay. Juan E. Virguié Jr., The Engagement Ring (Second Edit, Feb. 1, 1965), in: Planned

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After pointing out the connections between family planning, masculinity ideals and the educational opportunities of his children, Antonio suggested that Pedro attended counseling on contraceptives himself: “You and Isabel go and find out about them, and decide what you want.”53 In the end, the couple was supposed to decide on their own which contraceptive to use. This means that the first level decision for family planning seemed the only rational option after pointing out all the financial and medical arguments, while the second level decision was supposed to follow the couple’s individual preferences, which allowed for factors like sexual satisfaction to be included. The film follows a similar narrative as the brochures about venereal disease discussed above: just as in the brochure from a decade earlier, it contrasted two families and promised social rise into the middle classes through family planning. But this campaign placed more emphasis on the differences between an agrarian, premodern society and the modern city. It also moved the wellbeing of children into the center by explicitly mentioning educational opportunities. It shifted from individual to collective values since the advantages of family planning not only referred to the couple, its health and financial stability. As family planning was a means to safeguard the future of the children, it secured the advancement of the whole ethnic group and caused fewer costs to the welfare state.

Campaigns for African Americans between Overpopulation and Self-Determination The extension of family planning for poor and minority families brought paternalistic attitudes back into the campaigns. In the report of its 1964 annual conference, Planned Parenthood issued a statement in cooperation with the New York Academy of Medicine, declaring that “(1) The primary responsibility for judgment rests with the attending physician; (2) the health of the potential mother is the primary and paramount consideration; (3) [. . . ] health is a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity”54 . The statement, adapting the WHO’s mission statement, declared any woman a potential mother and assigned doctors the final

53 54

Parenthood Federation of America Records, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Mass., p. 22f. Ibid., S. 23. The third paragraph is a word for word copy from the World Health Organization’s constitution adopted in 1946; N.N., Planned Parenthood Annual Report 1964, in: Planned Parenthood Federation of America Records, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Mass. p. 15; see also WHO Mission Statement, URL: http://www.who. int/about/mission/en/ (access on Feb. 7, 2017).

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responsibility to choose a contraceptive. The doctor was to make the decision in the best interest of the woman while considering both her physical and social wellbeing. This directive drew on material and individual values and at the same time was quite paternalistic. On the one hand, it assigned doctors the power to deny a woman motherhood if they considered her physically, psychologically or socially unfit. On the other hand, doctors also had the possibility to refuse contraceptives to women who were well equipped for motherhood. At the same time as reaching out to minorities, Planned Parenthood started to focus on limiting population growth worldwide. Since General William H. Draper published the brochure “The Population Bomb” in 1954 (and allowed Paul R. Ehrlich to use the title for his 1968 publication), debates drew a dystopian image of a growing world population fighting for even scarcer resources55 . By limiting population growth, activists, who closely worked with Planned Parenthood, aimed at avoiding another world war, poverty, environmental damage and traffic collapse in cities. Following the merger with the World Population Emergency Campaign NGO and an internal competition, Planned Parenthood changed its official name into Planned Parenthood World Population (PPWP) in 1963. During the 1966 annual conference, the famous anthropologist and long-time Planned Parenthood supporter Margaret Mead gave a speech that explained the connections between the size of the American middle-class family and global population growth within a modernization theory approach. She claimed: If the mass media spread the idea that what every American woman wants is a station wagon filled to the brim with children, complete with a well fed dog then this idea will become part of the aspirations of people everywhere . . . With such a picture rampant in their minds and ours, we can hardly advocate conception control for other countries.56

Mead drew on the archetypical American middle-class family driving a station wagon and living in the suburbs. But this family had too many children. The anthropologist referred to the fact that the average American woman in 1964 had on average 3.4 children – that was more than the women a generation before, and more than the two children average that was necessary for a balanced population development57 . This was the case even though nation-wide surveys

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See Paul and Anne Ehrlich’s article commemorating the monograph’s 40th anniversary: Paul R. Ehrlich, Anne Ehrlich, The Population Bomb Revisited, in: Electronic Journal of Sustainable Development 1/3 (2009), p. 66. Quoted from N.N., Planned Parenthood Annual Report 1966, in: Planned Parenthood Federation of America Records, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Mass. See the report issued by the American Census Bureau in 1983: Suzanne M. Bianchi, Daphne B. Spain, American Women. Three Decades of Change, U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census 1983, p. 6.

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by the Population Council had found that in 1965 80 per cent of married couples practiced some kind of birth control58 . Mead assumed that the image of the American middle-class family was so powerful that it inspired families worldwide. She warned against the negative consequences of classical modernization theory, which aimed at establishing the nuclear family model in developing countries as part of the path towards liberal democracy. By taking a global perspective, Mead critically examined American consumerism. Considering material implications worldwide, she implicitly called for a limit to voluntarism in family planning for the welfare of the (global) community. However, it was not international cooperation partners in the IPPF that protested against this view, but forces from within the USA itself. Since the mid-1960s, militant civil rights activists such as Malcolm X as representative of the Black Muslims, the Black Panthers and parts of the Student Non-Violent Coordination Committee (SNCC) picked up the 1934 argumentation of Jamaican journalist Marcus Garvey that birth control campaigns in black communities were a subtle form of “race genocide”59 . Garvey’s assumption that coerced sterilizations and birth control methods were a slow form of genocide was a response to the early 20th century Eugenics Movement’s claim that white America was under threat of “race suicide” if birth rates continued to decline60 . In reaction to the “race genocide” accusations, Planned Parenthood tried to engage in a dialogue with Malcom X and the members of the California group EROS (Endeavor to Raise Our Size) about the advantages of family planning. In 1962, they invited Malcolm X to visit the Harlem clinic. During his visit, he advocated the rhythm method to limit family sizes, from a pious Muslim’s perspective61 . The group EROS consisted of African American students of the University of California, Berkeley, whose goal was to initiate political change by producing more black voters. They did not mind African American families using contraceptives, but mistrusted the Planned Parenthood’s motives in promoting them62 .

58 59

60 61

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N.N., United States. Methods of Fertility Control, 1955, 1960 & 1965, in: Population Council. Studies in Family Planning 17 (February 1967), p. 1–12, p. 6. The Puerto Rican Young Lords Party had similar points of view in the early 1970s. See Schoen, Choice and Coercion (as in n. 43), p. 259; Nelson, Women of Color (as in n. 26), p. 94, p. 113. Alexandra Minna Stern, Eugenic Nation. Faults and Frontiers of Better Breeding in Modern America, Berkeley 2005, p. 90. See Wylda B. Cowles, Memorandum to Alan F. Guttmacher “RE: Summary of interview with Malcom X – Black Muslim Leader in the Harlem Area” (Jul. 19, 1962), in: Planned Parenthood Federation of America Records, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Mass. See Wylda B. Cowles, Memorandum to Alan F. Guttmacher “Meeting With EROS – Berkeley,

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The national headquarters then summoned a council of African American doctors, who debated the accusations, and held a Negro Physician Conference in 1968. Conference participants perceived problems in the “over aggressiveness” in programs for poor people, and in the fact that Planned Parenthood was an organization of the white middle class. Therefore, the council suggested hiring more African American staff and referring patients to black doctors in the communities. In addition, it suggested: “Avoid the demographic or population approach – there is need for greater empathy and need to relate to the problems of the individual and not those of the whole world”63 . Thus, it professed a transition towards more individual values. Douglas Stewart, the African American director of the PPWP Department of Community Affairs, summarized the recommendation of the council in a speech at the 1968 annual conference: Finally, it is imperative that we begin to erase from our public statements and from our fund raising appeals a relationship between family planning and a reduction in welfare costs and rates of illegitimacy [. . . ]. It is imperative too, when we are addressing a predominantly black audience, that we refrain from discussing the population explosion problem.64

According to Stewart, one of the major causes of mistrust among black communities beyond the militant Black Muslim circles was that Planned Parenthood had supported the 1967 Social Security Amendments. On the one hand, the reform provided more funding for family planning, but on the other hand, it cut federal support for children born out of wedlock65 . This gave the impression that family planning was meant to benefit the state and not African American communities. In consequence, African American doctors demanded a change of Planned Parenthood by-laws to include a new paragraph on “freedom of choice”, emphasizing voluntarism especially for welfare recipients and also in the context of

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California February 23, 1966” (Mar. 28, 1966), in: Planned Parenthood Federation of America Records, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Mass. N.N., Statement of the Negro Physician Conference (Aug. 7, 1968), in: Planned Parenthood Federation of America Records, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Mass. Douglas E. Stewart, Questions and Answers about the charge of “genocide” as it relates to Planned Parenthood-World Population, its affiliates, and the provision and expansion of private and publicly sponsored family planning programs in the U.S. (Sep. 14, 1968), in: Planned Parenthood Federation of America Records, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Mass. The individual states were to take over welfare payments for children born since 1968, which in the end meant a cut of financial means. African American commentators worried that Southern states could use the reform as an argument to introduce more coercive measures to control African American birth rates. See ibid., p. 8f.

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abortion and sterilization66 . However, members of the board of directors from the South considered this a step backward in the fight against overpopulation. The president of the Atlanta affiliate, Raphael B. Levine, argued in a letter to the board that overpopulation was the second greatest threat to society after nuclear war: If we are to avoid population limitation by death control, we must change either the attitude or the behavior of parents – or both, so that we may achieve such limitation by birth control. [. . . ] it is well-known in the behavioral sciences that such approaches can only have a limited effect. In fact, [. . . ] such an approach is self-defeating, because those on whom these approaches have an effect, and who do limit their family sizes, become an ever-smaller fraction of the total population in future generations, leaving only those who cannot or will not accept social responsibility.67

Levine referred to eugenic concepts of the 1920s and 1930s, like the idea of race suicide and the assumptions that behavioral traits such as responsibility were genetically transmitted, without explicitly mentioning the factor of race. Implicitly, however, it was clear that he was talking about African Americans. At the same time, he threatened euthanasia (death control) for the sake of the global community if people would not accept coercive measures, since – according to his understanding of behavior sciences – voluntary measures would not work anyway. This radical view did not find majority support within the Planned Parenthood by-laws committee, but members took it seriously. President Alan Guttmacher and medical director George J. Langmyhr suggested a compromise that included both voluntarism and responsibility. The by-law change that finally passed stated: We believe that while all people should recognize the great responsibility they assume when they become parents, no one should be forced to use birth control and we must be especially vigilant to preserve freedom of choice about family size for welfare recipients and other Americans dependent on public agencies.68

The compromise consisted in emphasizing voluntarism and the right to choose, especially for welfare recipients, while at the same time appealing to the responsibility of every man and woman. The result was an explicit demand for the 66

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Graham Heiner, Re: PP-WP Statement on Policy (Oct. 11, 1969), in: Planned Parenthood Federation of America Records, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Mass. Raphael B. Levine, Letter to fellow Board Members (Oct. 10, 1969), in: Planned Parenthood Federation of America Records, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Mass. Henry H. Villard, Memorandum to the Affiliates of Planned Parenthood World Population and the Board of Directors (Oct. 21, 1969), in: Planned Parenthood Federation of America Records, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Mass.; see also: George J. Langmyhr, Brief an Graham Heiner (Oct. 14, 1969), in: Planned Parenthood Federation of America Records, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Mass.

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freedom to make decisions as a step towards individual self-fulfillment, while implicitly still negotiating collective values. This compromise between the African American supporters of freedom of choice and conservatives concerned with population growth was expressed in the slogan of the 1968 PPWP campaign “Voluntary Parenthood and Population Policy”69 . Within the next couple of years, supporters of freedom of choice gained more influence within internal debates, as President Alan Guttmacher distanced himself from population planning organizations as a move not to alienate African American communities70 . A portrait of him in a popular medical journal described his attitude in the following words: “Freedom to choose – that’s the difference between genocide and family planning”71 . Also, the New York Times Magazine reported on the controversies within the Planned Parenthood board of directors about the question of population control. It summarized Guttmacher’s change of heart in the sentence “Compulsory birth control would be an invitation to revolt”72 . If the state applied coercive measures to reduce population growth, this would cause more race riots he argued, under the impression of riots in Los Angeles in 1966 and Chicago in 1968. In this way, the militant faction of the African American civil rights movement had caused a shift within the organization through its use of pressure and revolutionary rhetoric, as Planned Parenthood officials were most concerned with keeping public peace. This shows that individual and collective values could be entangled, and a striving for more material security could at the same time lead to greater individual self-determination.

Conclusion To conclude, the ideal family structure produced by active family planning hardly changed from 1942 until 1973. It mainly corresponded to the model of the white 69

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N.N., Planned Parenthood World Federation Annual Report 1968, in: Planned Parenthood Federation of America Records, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Mass. For instance, in March 1969, Guttmacher wrote to the Zero Population Growth Movement that he could not join the organization because he did not want to scare away African American clients, even though he had been a member of groups like the Human Betterment Foundation in the early 1960s. Planned Parenthood could only support the ZPG if it focused more on the white middle class than on minorities. See Alan F. Guttmacher, Letter to Richard H. Bowers (Mar. 25, 1969), in: Planned Parenthood Federation of America Records, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Mass. N.N., Contemporaries: Alan F. Guttmacher, M.D., in: Modern Medicine (Mar. 22, 1971), p. 22. David Dempsey, Dr. Guttmacher Is the Evangelist of Birth Control, in: New York Times Magazine (Feb. 9, 1969), p. SM 40.

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middle-class nuclear family with two or three children. However, what changed were the narratives of decision-making, which framed this ideal. While in the 1940s, collective and immaterial values stood at the center of debates and clearly took a global perspective in the war of liberalism against fascism, in the 1950s they were transformed into narratives about the individual’s rise into the middle class, which promised material values such as health and affluence. With the scares about overpopulation in the 1960s, collective values moved back into the center of campaigns, but now they clearly included material values and paternalistic attitudes towards poor families, minorities and people from developing countries. Only because of the pressure of the African American civil rights movement, debates moved towards more voluntarism. The immaterial perspective thus entered the campaigns with the onset of the new social movements. This analysis sheds light on a value shift within the narratives of reproductive decision-making. Changes came about due to interrelations between internal and external political demands (such as the Cold War containment policy or the War on Poverty), social science paradigms (such as Modernization Theory and debates about demography) and social movements. Because of these connections, debates about family planning as a decision premise offer a way to access social change within postwar US-American society. It shows that American debates took a global perspective at a time which historical research so far has described as an era of internally focused nostalgia73 . Instead, even the most homely and private unit of US-American society – the white middle-class nuclear family – took on a global dimension. The planned American family was not only the hegemonic family ideal inside the nation but was also a model to be exported, to spread democracy, consumerism and health across the world. In the end, it was the internal civil rights movement which questioned this optimistic progressive tale and thus opened the door towards more individual narratives: Since 1969, allusions to population control disappeared from Planned Parenthood programs and the organization now called itself Planned Parenthood of America, Inc. The 1972 annual report referred to the counseling services as “tools for decision-making”74 . Those included access to contraceptives, legal abortion, sterilization, infertility treatment, cancer screening, and medical care for pregnant women and infants. Through the pressure from the African American civil rights movement, family planning had indeed become a tool kit for individual self-determination.

73 74

Tyler May, Homeward (as in n. 13), p. 19f. N.N., Planned Parenthood of America, Inc. Annual Report 1972, in: Planned Parenthood Federation of America Records, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Mass.

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“Respect girls as future mothers”: Sex Education as Family Life Education in State Socialist Hungary (1950s–1980s) In state socialist Hungary as in other European countries, both East and West of the Iron Curtain, there was a growing abundance of sex education literature from the second half of the 1950s onwards. The present chapter examines some of the major publications that appeared in Hungary between the 1950s and the 1980s from a gender perspective, including material discussing the sexuality of the “Gypsy population.” It pays specific attention to so-called family life education publications, which were sex education material that formed an integral part of pronatalist reproductive politics in state socialist Hungary. They were linked to efforts towards increasing birth rates among Hungarians by coupling information on sexual relationships and the sexual act to marriage and child birth. The chapter outlines expert discourses that at times included opposing views on “normal” sexual behavior and traces some of the major changes in discourses on “abnormal” sexualities.

Introduction In state socialist Hungary as in other European countries, both East and West of the Iron Curtain, there was a growing abundance of sex education literature from the second half of the 1950s onwards. The sheer number of publications on this subject already indicates that there was an effort towards affecting the sexual behaviour of the population under state socialism. Michel Foucault established a connection between the exercise of power in modern states and the disciplining of sexuality. He argued that in the 18th and 19th centuries diverse scientific discourses emerged in Europe on sexuality that targeted the regulation of societies by optimising birth rates, fertility, marriage and the frequency of sexual relations1 . Such bioregulatory processes that aimed at ensuring a healthy and productive society explained the rising importance of this subject in modern states2 . Feminist historical scholarship has furthermore pointed to a variety of 1 2

Michel Foucault, The Will to Knowledge. The History of Sexuality, vol. 1., London 1979. Michel Foucault, Lecture from March 17 1976, in: “Society Must Be Defended”. Lectures at the Collège de France, 1975–76, New York 2003, p. 239–264.

https://doi.org/9783110524499-004

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ways in which power relations and state policies have shaped reproductive experiences and described how reproductive issues were related to the way politics were being made3 . The regulation of sexual conduct has been used to create and maintain class, gender and racial/ethnic differences, and hierarchies in imperial and nation states in Europe and across the Atlantic. Women of specific population groups perceived as “bearers of the nation” became subject to politics and practices aiming at increasing the size and improving the “quality” of their population4 . Since its beginnings in the early 20th century, sex education was central to these efforts. While addressing topics related to sexual relationships including the introduction of sex education to schoolchildren was novel at the time, it was largely driven by the goal to prevent the spread of venereal disease, which was perceived to be threatening individual and national health, and strengthen the values of monogamous marriage, reproduction and parenthood5 . These processes appeared parallel to the growing prominence of eugenics in Europe and the United States throughout the first half of the 20th century as a result of which sex education formed part of eugenically and increasingly also racially selective reproductive politics. As with the cases of Western European and North American imperial powers in the 18th and 19th centuries, reproductive discourses and practices in late 19th - and early 20th -century Eastern and Southeastern Europe were also tied to modernization and nation-building projects6 . The breakup of the Habsburg Monarchy and the rearrangement of national borders following the end of World War I in Eastern Europe gave a special salience to nationalisms and nation-

3 4

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Susan Gal, Gail Kligman, Reproduction as Politics, in: The Politics of Gender after Socialism, Princeton 2000, p. 15–36. Nira Yuval-Davis, Gender and Nation, London 1998; Philippa Levine (ed.), Gender and Empire, New York 2004; Seth Koven, Sonya Michel (ed.), Mothers of a New World. Maternalist Politics and the Origins of Welfare States, New York 1993. Julian B. Carter, Birds, Bees, and Venereal Disease. Toward an Intellectual History of Sex Education, in: Journal of the History of Sexuality 10/2 (2001), p. 213–249; Jeffrey P. Moran, Teaching Sex. The Shaping of Adolescence in the Twentieth Century, Cambridge, MA 2000; Lutz D.H. Sauerteig, Roger Davidson, Shaping the Sexual Knowledge of the Young. Introduction, in: Lutz D.H. Sauerteig, Roger Davidson (eds.), Shaping Sexual Knowledge. A Cultural History of Sex Education in Twentieth Century Europe, London 2009, p. 1–15, p. 7; Jonathan Zimmermann, Too Hot to Handle. A Global History of Sex Education, Princeton 2015. Maria Bucur, Eugenics and Modernization in Interwar Romania, Pittsburgh, PA 2002; Christian Promitzer, Sevasti Trubeta and Marius Turda, Introduction. Framing Issues of Health, Hygiene and Eugenics in Southeastern Europe, in: Christian Promitzer, Sevasti Trubeta, Marius Turda (eds.), Health, Hygiene and Eugenics in Southeastern Europe to 1945, Budapest 2011, p. 1–14, p. 2, p. 13.

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building in the region, including Hungary7 . Reproductive discourses and policy making were important elements of such politics. Concerns about the “dying of the Hungarian nation” emerged in the early 1920s, intertwined with the nationalist and eugenic movements of the time, resulting in selective pronatalist reproductive politics with an increasingly racialized content8 . As a result, sex education already emerged in the first half of the 20th century as part of a biopolitical concern about the future of the Hungarian nation. Sex education was firmly embedded in discourses about the health of the population and of the nation, and situated sexuality within the context of marriage, family and reproduction. While there was a minority of socialist and communist urban intellectuals in interwar Hungary who favored sexual counselling and a reform of sexual morals following the example of the Magnus Hirschfeld Institute for Sexual Research in Berlin9 , when in the 1920s voluntary and in 1940 compulsory marriage counselling was introduced it was motivated by eugenic and increasingly negative eugenic and racist efforts.10 At the time of its reemergence in state socialist Hungary sex education thus had a long history in the context of eugenic selective pronatalism. While in the 1950s in Hungary sex education addressed the taboo subjects of youth sexuality and sexual relationships11 , it was closely linked to the selective pronatalist reproductive policy program of the state socialist period that aimed to increase the birth rate among better-to-do Hungarians. As in other East and Southeast European state socialist contexts, sex education formed a central

7

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11

Balázs Trencsényi et al. (eds.), Nation-Building and Contested Identities. Romanian and Hungarian Case Studies, Budapest 2001; Marius Turda, Paul J. Weindling (eds.), Blood and Homeland. Eugenics and Racial Nationalism in Central and Southeast Europe, 1900–1940, Budapest 2007. Dorottya Szikra, A szociálpolitika másik arca. Fajvédelem és produktív szociálpolitika az 1940-es évek Magyarországán [Race protection and productive social policy in Hungary in the 1940s], in: Századvég 48/2 (2008), p. 35–77; Marius Turda, In Pursuit of Greater Hungary. Eugenic Ideas of Social and Biological Improvement, 1940–1941, in: Journal of Modern History 85/3 (2013), p. 558–591; Attila Kund, “Duties for her Race and Nation”. Scientistic Racist Views on Sexuality and Reproduction in 1920s Hungary, in: Sexualities 19/1–2 (2016), p. 190–210. The Magnus Hirschfeld Institute for Sexual Research in Berlin (1919–1933) was the first international attempt at the institutionalization of sexual science in the interwar period. Members of the institute fought unsuccessfully for the decriminalization of homosexuality in Weimar Germany. From the mid-1920s onwards until its closure by National Socialists in 1933, the institute focused its activities on sexual reform and enlightenment. Gábor Szegedi, Dangerous Liaisons. Marriage Counselling as an Early Discourse and Practice of Biopolitics in Hungary, in: Kaleidoscope: Journal of History of Culture, Science and Medicine 3/5 (2012), p. 286–306. For a detailed analysis of sexual advice literature in “Ifjúsági Magazin”, the Hungarian youth magazine between the 1960s and the 1980s, see Zsófia Eszter Tóth and András Murai, Szex és szocializmus [Sex and socialism], Budapest 2014.

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part of the preparation of young adults for marriage and family life12 . This corresponded to a conservative turn regarding the reinforcement of women’s roles as mothers in the nuclear family as early as the beginning of the period of de-Stalinization in the second half of the 1950s. Looking at a selection of expert discourses, including some of the most popular authors in the field of sex education, I was interested in finding out whom these publications addressed and whether their messages changed across the four decades of state socialism. In the following I show that publications encouraged a traditional “active” male/“passive” female gender division in sexual relationships among heterosexual, preferably married couples and asserted pregnancy and giving birth to be women’s “biological function and biological duty”. I focus on a specific group of sex education material called family life education, that emerged within the larger topic of family protection and in the framework of Hungarian pronatalism between the 1960s and the 1980s. Published by the Hungarian Ministry of Health and the Hungarian Red Cross, these works aimed to popularize pronatalist measures, especially following the introduction of the family policy package of 1973 which I address later in this chapter. I point out that despite their pronatalist message, family life education material emphasized women’s equality in state socialist society and encouraged husbands to share child care and household responsibilities with their wives. Concerning their gendered content these publications were much more progressive than other sexual education literature that were borrowing from and relying heavily on Western European and American contemporary scholarship. Addressing state socialism as a period in which expert discourses changed in interaction with Western European and American professional literature I also show that sex education material contained different and at times opposing views on “normal and healthy” sexual behavior and relationships and I trace change in approaches to “anomalies of sexual life” in the period between the 1950s and the 1980s. Finally, I present publications on the sexual behavior of Roma that in contrast to the above mentioned changes and variety in opinions demonstrated a consistency in professionals’ position on the “primitive” sexual culture and “libertine” sexuality of the “backward Gypsy population”13 . 12

13

Anelia Kassabova-Dintscheva, Neue alte Normen. Die versuchte Normierung der Sexualität im sozialistischen Bulgarien, in: Ethnologia Balkanica 8 (2004), p. 155–175; Agnieszka Kościańska, Sex on Equal Terms? Polish Sexology on Women’s Emancipation and “Good Sex” from the 1970s to the Present, in: Sexualities 19/1–2 (2016), p. 236–256; Kateřina Lišková, Sex under Socialism. From Emancipation of Women to Normalized Families in Czechoslovakia, in: Ibid, p. 211–235. I use the terms “Roma” and “Gypsy” in this chapter, being aware that there is a difference between those persons authorities identified as “Gypsies” and those who would identify themselves as Roma/Gypsy. While in Hungary Roma also self-identify using the word “Gypsy”, I use “Roma” to refer to members of this population group. I retained, however, the term “Gypsy” in accordance with the primary sources used for this paper.

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Sex Education as Family Life Education The re-emergence of sex education following the onset of state socialism in Hungary was situated in an international Cold War context of East–West controversy. After initial resistance to the subject in the Stalinist era, the political “thaw” after Stalin’s death in 1953 brought about the first publications in Eastern Europe, motivated both by reports on rising youth promiscuity and an effort to “counter the corrupting influence of the West.”14 The legalization of abortion as part of the thaw in most of the Eastern bloc countries coupled with a lack of contraceptives resulted in a rapid rise in abortions. By the mid-1960s in Hungary the abortion rate was one of the highest in Europe and fertility rates dropped beyond replacement level15 . Decreasing birth rates alarmed state actors across Eastern and Southeastern Europe, including Hungary at the time, and motivated not only the introduction of pronatalist welfare measures but also a growing openness towards the discussion of sexual relationships16 . The term “family life education”, familiar from the history of sex education in Europe and the United States in the first half of the 20th century, was revived both East and West of the Iron Curtain during the Cold War. In the United States, for example, post-war prosperity and return to normalcy embedded a celebration of the family “as key to American character, strength and security”17 . As a result, post-war American sex education promoted not just a physiological understanding of the body and sexual organs, but connected social and psychological processes to it. It stressed the importance of “human life and relationships” and “family climate and child rearing practices”18 . Family life education as a notion expressed that the content of sex education was to strengthen the family19 . 14

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Similarly, in the United States discussion about sex education was characterized by a Cold War discourse on the Soviet enemy. This manifested in attacking sex education as a Soviet plot to “to drown Western resolve in a sea of licentiousness” as well as in describing the socialist Eastern bloc as characterized by “ironfisted prudery”. Zimmermann, Too Hot to Handle (as in n. 5), p. 64f. From more than 123 300 registered pregnancy terminations in 1957 the number of abortions reached almost 207 000 in 1969. Total fertility rates in Hungary in the early 1960s were the lowest in the world. Ferenc Kamarás, Terhességmegszakítások Magyarországon [Abortions in Hungary], Data Archive of TÁRKI Social Research Institute, URL: http://www.tarki.hu/ adatbank-h/nok/szerepvalt/Kamaras-99.html [Accessed 6.4.2017]. Kassabova-Dintscheva, Neue alte Normen (as in n. 12), p. 156–158. On changing conceptions of welfare in state socialist Hungary, see: Lynne Haney, Inventing the Needy. Gender and the Politics of Welfare in Hungary, Berkeley 2002. Zimmermann, Too Hot to Handle, p. 58. Ibid. Ibid. The United States that took a prominent role in promoting sex education in so-called “developing countries” across the world also urged the elimination of the word “sex” from the name of organizations and school subjects.

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In a similar fashion the reinforcement of women’s roles as mothers in the nuclear family and widespread pronatalism led to the appearance of sex education under the pseudonym of family life education in the East and Southeast European context too. This often took place hand in hand with a moving away from earlier discourses motivated by the socialist ideology of women’s emancipation that emphasized women’s equality with men in the early 1950s20 . Family life education was part of pronatalist policy-making and discourse in state socialist Hungary and as such discussion about sex always involved references to marriage and giving birth to children. The connection between sex education and pronatalism was most clearly expressed by the 1973 family policy package aimed at increasing the number of children born into Hungarian families to an average of two to three children21 . Its central decree reintroduced compulsory marriage counselling familiar from the interwar period and tightened the preconditions of having an abortion. At the same time, it prescribed the introduction of sex education in the form of family life education into primary school education22 . Manuals and guidelines on sexual life that started to proliferate from the second half of the 1950s in Hungary contained a clear message concerning sexual relationships. It was important that young people were informed about so-called “healthy” and “unhealthy” sexual behavior, but sex was to take place only among married or to-be-married heterosexual couples. This was especially explicit in the specific group of family life education publications that had an openly pronatalist content. A document published jointly by the Hungarian Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Education and the Central Committee of the Union of Communist Youth in 1965 on the principles of sexual education declared, for example, that “beyond sexual enlightenment the goal of sexual education was to educate youths about sexual responsibility, responsibility for their partner and marriage partner and the responsibility of the would-be parents”23 . The document disapproved of sex among youths under eighteen arguing that they 20 21 22

23

Lišková, Sex under Socialism (as in n. 12). Decree 1040/1973 (X.18.) of the Council of Ministers on Population Political Tasks, in: Törvények és rendeletek [Acts and decrees] Budapest 1974. Ensuing publications for physicians on the meaning of family planning and the protection of women included specific guidelines for the teaching of sexual education classes in primary and secondary schools. István Batár (ed.), Nővédelem-családtervezés [The protection of women and family planning] Budapest 1978. Sex education, however, did not become an integral part of the school curriculum. It remained instead an optional subject to be addressed during “discussion hours with the head teacher”. It depended on the teachers whether they invited medical experts into the classroom or refrained from raising the subject completely. Egészségügyi Minisztérium Egészségügyi Felvilágosítási Központja (ed.), Alapelvek az ifjúság szekszuális felvilágosítására és nevelésére [The principles of the sexual education of youth] Budapest 1965. This and all following translations from Hungarian are by the author.

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lacked sufficient “mental maturity”. At the same time it claimed that “society should not reprehend” sexual relationships among youths older than eighteen or twenty and emphasized that these young people “had to be given support so that their relationship could mature into marriage”24 . Another handbook for boys aged seventeen to eighteen encouraged them to “look at and respect girls as future mothers” and keep in mind that “all men were given the capability to enter the profession of fatherhood”25 . It exclaimed that “only those men could be really happy, who fulfilled this profession”26 . Urging young people to start married life and have children were the central messages of these publications. In order to achieve this goal, family life education publications coupled information on sexuality with instructions about morality in sexual relationships. They usually emphasized that sex needed to take place within love relationships and warned against so-called “free love” or sexual relationships based on “nothing else but biological needs.” The sexual education handbook for boys, for example, categorized sexual life into five value-related types. It graded as most valuable “total sexual abstinence until statutory monogamous marriage”27 . Monogamous partnerships “without the security of marriage” based on mutual love came second, with sexual relationships “that were not for life but were based on emotional depth, mutual interests and solidarity” third, sexual relationships based on “mutual attraction and desire but providing only temporary satisfaction” fourth, and the least valued was free love in which “partners were often exchanged” and which had “no emotional content”28 . Relationships that centered on sexuality only were denounced as animal-like. “The sexual arousal of the other, intimacy, and sexual flirting” were discussed on par with “sexual violence and prostitution”29 . This was not much different from sex education west of the Iron Curtain, where even following the rise of the “sexual revolution” in the mid-1960s sexual relationships were predominantly discussed as needing to take place in a love relationship30 .

24 25 26 27 28 29 30

Cited in Székely Lajos (ed.), A családi élet iskolája. Kísérleti kézikönyv 17–18 éves fiúk számára [Family life education. Handbook for 17–18 year-old boys] Budapest 1972, p. 90. Ibid., p. 62, p. 4. Ibid., p. 4. Ibid., p. 74. Ibid. Ibid. In the mid-1950s Sweden was the first coutry in the world that introduced compulsory sex education in public primary schools. While not condemning sex outside marriage, national sex education handbooks nevertheless promoted “continence during adolescence.” Zimmermann, Too Hot to Handle, p. 67.

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Gender-Differentiated Messages in Sex Education Manuals Sex education publications and especially family life education material in the 1960s–1980s encouraged a traditional “active” male/“passive” female gender division in sexual relationships among heterosexual, preferably married couples and asserted “pregnancy, giving birth as well as breast feeding” to be women’s “biological function and biological duty”31 . A family life education handbook for girls in the late 1980s concluded, for example, by stating that its purpose was to prepare girls for motherhood: “Women’s profession is motherhood, and all girls need to prepare themselves for that.”32 Despite their traditional take on sex education in which emphasis fell on the importance of the heterosexual nuclear family, handbooks and manuals propagating sex education as part of family life education also argued for increasing gender equality within the family. Building on socialist ideology numerous works underlined women’s equality in society. They encouraged young men to take part in the daily work tasks at home and become future husbands who “shared child care and household responsibilities with their wives”33 . This message was part of the publications of the Hungarian Red Cross in the 1960s. A central figure behind this progressive content was a leading member of the Hungarian Women’s Council, and from the late 1960s onwards vice-secretary and vice-president of the Hungarian Red Cross, Zsuzsa Ortutay34 . Ortutay was committed to the idea of “the modern family” in which men’s and women’s roles and their division of work was to reflect “the principle of the equality of human beings” that formed the basis of socialist society35 . She used her political positions between the 1960s and the early 1980s to speak and publish about the need to modernize the relationship between husbands and wives in accordance with the new “social situation” of women36 . She skillfully turned the official party and government position on the centrality of the family and family life education into an argument for the need to 31 32 33 34

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Székely, A családi élet iskolája (as in n. 24), p. 59–62. Ibid. Ibid., p. 63, p. 102. Zsuzsa Ortutay, b. Zsuzsa Kemény (1913–1982) was a representative of the art of movement in dance and dance education in Hungary between the 1930s and the 1950s. Following World War II she promoted the introduction of dance education with an emphasis on female gymnastic movement. She was married to ethnologist and communist politician, among other roles minister of education between 1947 and 1950, Gyula Ortutay. From the 1960s onwards as a leading member of the Hungarian Women’s Council and as vice-secretary and later vice-president of the Hungarian Red Cross she was engaged in promoting women’s equality and sexual education in the framework of official family politics. Archives of the Institute of Political History, Budapest (PIL), Zsuzsa Ortutay, 908.f. 10. ő.e. Ibid.

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modernize the family37 . An important element in her speeches and introductory texts to family life education publications was the idea that since women were both mothers and workers, men could not remain only workers38 . They had to fulfill their roles as fathers too. Ortutay claimed that “the change in the social division of productive work” also required a change in the division of chores in the family. “Old and outdated modes of functioning in a family, such as men’s patriarchal and authoritative attitude, oppressive aggression towards children, traditional division of household chores in which working women became overburdened” led to malfunctioning families and divorce, she argued39 . While this message concerning the need for men’s greater participation in care and reproductive work in the home did not in practice minimize the double burden that characterized women’s everyday lives in state socialist Hungary, it was part of the country-wide community-level work Red Cross activists carried out in the field of family protection and in popularizing the pronatalist goals of the 1973 family policy package. The journal of the Red Cross featured, for example, a full page sized photo on its front cover in early 1980 showing a man bathing a doll baby. The picture was taken at a training course in family life education organized for husbands and young men in the city of Kecskemét40 . By the 1980s family life education manuals already built on existing scholarship in state socialist Hungary on gender inequality. Concerning the division of labor in the household the earlier cited handbook for girls critically evaluated existing gender inequalities in the family. It ostracized public attitude on separate spheres: “The modernisation and reform of family life is hampered by such attitudes. As a result, despite the high employment rate of women (45% of active wage earners are women) men have taken over only 19–20% of household work from women. On workdays, Hungarian men spend not quite 45 minutes with shopping, washing clothes, cooking cleaning and child care, while women spend 37

38

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Welfare state scholar Dorottya Szikra writing about the introduction of a generous maternity leave regulation in 1967 in Hungary that aimed both at increasing birth rates and decreasing women’s employment rates, noted that the Hungarian Women’s Council protested against such a definition of women’s liberation and “lobbied for better female employment opportunities and child care institutions”. Tomasz Inglot, Dorottya Szikra, Christina Rat, Continuity and change in the family policies of the new European democracies. A comparison of Poland, Hungary, and Romania, A National Council of Eurasian and East European Research (NCEER) Working Paper, 2011, p. 29. See for example Zsuzsa Ortutay, Erzsébet Gál, Családi életre nevelés a szülői házban és az iskolában [Family life education in the home and at the school], Budapest 1976 and Ortutay’s numerous unpublished speeches, PIL, Zsuzsa Ortutay, 908.f. PIL, Zsuzsa Ortutay, 908.f. Családi élet iskolája férjeknek és fiataloknak Kecskeméten, a városi vezetőség rendezésében [Family life education for husbands and young men organized by the city council of Kecskemét], in: Magyar Vöröskereszt Mozgalmi Értesítő 1 (1980).

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more than four hours with these activities. The proportion of work division is even worse on Sundays, when men also have more free time: 30 minutes to men as opposed to more than five and half hours to women.”41 In its final conclusion, the handbook for girls stated: “In a family the cooperation of both women and men is necessary. It would therefore be good when boys before graduating from secondary school would gain modern information necessary to become a father. In modern families there is work division. Fathers need to be able to look after babies just as the female members of the family.”42 Directing this message only to secondary school graduates the handbook apparently addressed a middle-class readership, thereby covertly reflecting the family policy concept of the 1980s according to which more children were to be born into educated and better-to-do rather than uneducated and less-well-to-do families. Meanwhile, these publications not only addressed women but had a clear message about the importance of the family and raising children for men too. Notably, sex education material within the framework of family life education that was a clear manifestation of the state’s pronatalist reproductive politics contained a more progressive vision of gender relationships in the family than other sex education publications inspired by American and Western European theories of psychosexual development. At the same time as family life education publications promoted men’s participation in household work and fathers’ share in the daily care work around children, male psychologists advocating the introduction of sex education in school curricula had a much more traditional vision of appropriate gender roles. Using Anglo-American literature on psychosexual development and the concepts of “biological sex” and “gender role” in the 1970s and the 1980s, prominent Hungarian psychologist Béla Buda instructed parents on the importance of mediating the gender appropriate models of outer appearance and behavior to their children. In a volume on the role of parents in the education of their children from 1980, he acknowledged contemporary theories on the difference between biological sex as a given and gender role as a socially learned and mediated set of behavior and norms that shaped a person’s gender identity43 . He attributed a central role to the model parents transmitted to their children in their “healthy development.” Addressing directly the issue of gender equality, Buda stated that “although the traditional gender division of work was slowly 41

42 43

István Körmendy, Lajos Székely, Mihály Bogárdi, A családi élet iskolája lányoknak. Tudnivalók és tanácsok nagylányok számára [Family life education for girls. Information and advice for adult girls], Budapest 1988, p. 68. Ibid., p. 75. Béla Buda, Szülői és nevelői teendők a gyermekkorban [Parental and educational tasks in childhood], in: László Ludas M. (ed.), A szexualitásról. A fogamzásgátlástól a felnőttéválásig [About sexuality. From contraception to reaching adulthood], Budapest 1980.

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changing and in the field of work and social activities gender discrimination was disappearing, this did not mean that there would be a social expectation towards the dissolution of masculine and feminine character traits.”44 Buda advocated that parents spend time with their same sex children making sure they transmitted a sex-appropriate gender role to them. The photographs illustrating Buda’s argument on the healthy psychosexual development of children in fact showed a strictly gender differentiated world in which being feminine and masculine were tightly related to a gender segregated division of household work. Girl children were presented playing with dolls and learning their role as care workers in the family, feeding and nursing babies, sewing with their mother and helping their grandmothers in cleaning. As opposed to this, the only picture of a boy child with his father showed them examining a piece of technical equipment, a film projector in the family home. In a further volume just a few years later authored along with Buda by another well-known Hungarian sexual psychologist, Vilmos Szilágyi, and established sociologist-demographer László Cseh-Szombathy, the ideal modern marriage with no rigid gender-specific roles was contrasted to traditional and outdated (bourgeois) marriages where men were financial maintainers and women housewives45 . Although in this publication women were portrayed in male-dominated areas of employment, such as science, and men doing housework in the home, the accompanying text called into question the progressive message of these images. When Vilmos Szilágyi argued that both marriage partners had to make an effort to be able to take-over “the household tasks of the other person” he reinforced the existence of gender-divided household work46 . He furthermore emphasized that equal status in marriage did not mean “sameness or even similarity” and that “there were often misunderstandings” related to the sharing of household work: “These are, for example, that many women identify equality with aping men, copying traditional male habits and mode of thinking and force upon themselves a role that is against their nature. Another misunderstanding is that they try to ensure equality by insisting on the idea of sharing on a fifty-fifty percent basis or even on an ‘eye for an eye’ principle.”47 These words contradicted the notion of gender equality that the publication claimed to embrace. In a chapter about the contribution of parenting to the character development of not only mothers but fathers too, to the extent that they participated in caring for their children, Szilágyi claimed that it was “especially women’s personality that

44 45 46 47

Ibid. Béla Buda, László Cseh-Szombathy, Vilmos Szilágyi, Szexualitás és párkapcsolat a felnőttkorban [Sexuality and partner relationships in adulthood], Budapest 1979. Ibid., p. 52. Ibid., p. 51f.

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mothering greatly enriched: Women’s development often increased by leaps and bounds when they became mothers.”48 Under the cover of progressive marriage based on the equality of the partners involved, Szilágyi practically argued for the maintenance of the gendered division of care work in the home or at most a slight change in its distribution. Additionally, in a dramatic contrast to the general consensus in family life education and the majority of sex education publications about sex taking place within the boundaries of marriage, he also argued for sexual freedom in married life49 . Szilágyi maintained that fidelity to the marriage partner could entail sexual relationships with a third person. He legitimated such sexual freedom with the argument that it was a sign of modernity and equality in marriage when neither of the partners needed to equate fidelity in a relationship with sexual monogamy50 . In light of the expectations towards women as mothers he had outlined earlier in his text, and his vision of gender equality, such a definition of progressive marriage sounded much like its traditional predecessor he had strongly criticized, where married men but not women had the privilege to have sexual adventures. A conservative take on gender difference was also strongly visible in sex education publications from Western Europe that were translated into Hungarian in the 1960s and the 1970s. Although Western European feminist movements had by then started to voice criticism of the inequality of the gender division of labor in the public and the private spheres, this left one of the most popular sex education materials, a film produced in Western Germany in 1967 entitled “Helga” unaffected51 . The film became one of the biggest national and international commercial successes of West German cinema. Published as a book in Hungary in 1972, “Helga” conveyed a message that fitted the Hungarian pronatalist reproductive politics of the time52 . The story of the film was the sexual education of Helga, who was about to get married. A female gynecologist informed her about the sexual act as well as contraception. Shortly afterwards, Helga got pregnant and attended a training course for pregnant women, where she learned about the details of childbirth. In the end, Helga was a happy mother, who gave birth to 48 49 50 51

52

Ibid., p. 159. Vilmos Szilágyi, A házasság jövője – avagy a jövő házasságai [The future of marriage – marriages of the future], Budapest 1978. Ibid., p. 143–153. Erich F. Bender, Helga. Vom Werden des menschlichen Lebens, Rinco Film, Munich 1967. The Hungarian-speaking version of the film based on the German original was made in 1969 and entitled: Az emberi élet keletkezéséről [On the origins of human life], Mokép, Pannónia Filmstúdió, Budapest 1969. The film was, however, never screened in Hungarian cinemas. The book version of the film in West Germany was: Erich F. Bender, Helga – Liebe, Sexualverhalten, Geburtenregelung, Menschwerdung, Wiesbaden 1968. The Hungarian edition was entitled: Helga – Szerelem, szexuális élet, szülés, születésszabáyozás [Love, sexual life, birth, birth control], Budapest 1972.

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three more children. “Helga” contained, however, none of the gendered messages regarding the involvement of fathers in parenting and childcare that the family life education material published at the same time by the Hungarian Red Cross and the Ministry of Health did53 . Not only did the pictorial content of the book, which used still-shots from the film, show only women looking after infants but the text also instructed women that they needed to accept that men by nature were (sexually) aggressive54 . A similar conservative vision on gender roles was present in the highly popular Hungarian edition of the German physician Fritz Kahn’s book on sex education from 1968 entitled “The School of Love”55 . Published originally in 1957 in Switzerland, the book projected a traditional gender break-down of male and female roles in sexual relationships and marriage. In one of the numerous examples underpinning Kahn’s work, he instructed mothers on the importance of preparing their daughters for a happy marriage “in today’s era of emancipation”: “It is a bad start to the marriage if the young wife begins to experiment first time ever with cooking in the early weeks of her married life, and the young husband suffers as a guinea pig from the badly prepared soups and sauces.”56 While Kahn’s book was one of the first publications in state socialist Hungary that contained a detailed description of the sexual organs and the sexual act, that turned the book an immediate bestseller, it conveyed a strict division of the female and male “nature” and gendered roles in both the social and the sexual spheres. Kahn defined desire in men and women as each other’s opposite: “The man has to inseminate the woman and the woman has to be inseminated by the man. As a result, the characteristics of men aim at getting the woman and those of women to attract the man.”57 Such a conservative take on gender and sexuality was in sharp contrast to the ideology propagated in family life education publications. 53

54 55

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In his introduction to the Hungarian edition, gynecologist Imre Hirschler who published several highly popular books on sex education between the 1960s and the 1980s praised the informative character of its content. The Hungarian edition nevertheless could not be published without a note on the fact that “the West German author’s point of view differed at times from the socialist position. Although we cannot agree with all of the author’s claims it is still a useful and a high standard publication”, closed Hirschler his recommendations. Bender, Helga – Szerelem, szexuális élet (as in n. 52), p. 11. Ibid., p. 147. Fritz Kahn, A szerelem iskolája [The school of love], Budapest 1968. The German original was published in Switzerland: Muss Liebe blind sein? Schule des Liebes- und Eheglücks. 1000 Antworten auf 1000 Fragen, Rüschlikon–Zürich 1957. Kahn’s earlier publication on sexual life, entitled Unser Geschlechtsleben. Ein Führer und Berater für jedermann, Rüschlikon–Zürich 1937 had already been translated into Hungarian in 1944. It is worth noting that this book was also republished several times in Hungary, even following the systemic changes: Nemi életünk. Vezérfonal és tanácsadó mindenki számára [Our sex life. Guidelines for everyone], Budapest 1944 (4 1957). Ibid., p. 114. Ibid., p. 118.

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The “Perversions” and “Anomalies of Sexual Life”: Changing Visions on Masturbation and “Homosexuality”58 Despite a general consistency in considering sexual life part of married life or at best a love relationship prior to marriage, discourse provided by Hungarian professionals between the 1950s and the 1980s related to sexual education entailed change. The discussion of sexual practices and relationships defined as perversions and anomalies diverging from “healthy” and “normal” sexuality, such as the practice of masturbation and “homosexuality” illustrate this well. In the 1950s the description of both these topics manifested the continuity of discourses typical of the first half of the 20th century, including eugenics. By the 1970s and the 1980s views diversified and reflected the familiarity of authors with a variety of other examples of international scientific literature. The eugenic discussion of masturbation that was widespread in Europe and across the Atlantic in the interwar period and also characterized sex education literature in post-Revolution Russia was its association with a condition that weakened the (male) human body59 . Recognizing it primarily as a pathology of male sexuality that could and needed to be kept under control, sex educators warned about its dangers beyond individual health, leading to the so-called degeneration of society. The accepted vision on masturbation was that it deprived (heterosexual) men of the capability of healthy conception through the losing of too much semen, which also led to deteriorating health. The consequences of this were feared especially from a eugenic perspective, where personal health and national health were strongly connected60 . Interestingly, the ideas on masturbation by the author of a Hungarian advice book for boys in the 1950s were similar. The publication emphasized that “boys should not arouse their instincts with purposefully focusing their thoughts on it through reading porn magazines and films; the artificial arousal of the nervous system is not good, it takes much energy away that a healthy body and the building of the nervous system needs.”61 Declaring masturbation “a selfish and

58

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The primary sources addressed in the present analysis used the word “homosexuality” to refer to sexual acts among same-sex couples. I retain the use of the word when referring to these texts but indicate with quotation marks that the notion is considered derogatory and pathologizing by movements fighting for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, transgender, intersexual and queer (LGBTTIQ) rights. Frances Lee Bernstein, The Dictatorship of Sex. Lifestyle Advice for the Soviet Masses, DeKalb, ILL 2007. Marius Turda (ed.), The History of East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945. Sources and Commentaries, London 2015. István Harsányi, Fiúk könyve [Book for boys], Budapest 1958 (1 1954), p. 203.

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superfluous act,” and “a low level form of eliminating physical and mental tension” caused by sexual desire, the psychologist author advisor warned boys about its health hazards: “It results in an increased functioning of the organs, and such exertion of the body during the phase of physical development is harmful. When it becomes a daily practice, it can deprive the body from necessary nutriments. The body becomes tired and weak. The biggest danger is that one can get addicted to it: victims can only get rid of it with great effort. Mental symptoms accompany it too: a feeling of shame and a sense of guilt.”62 The author recommended boys to display self-control and channel the energies given by sexual desire into mental work and physical exercise. Instead of letting sexual instincts manifest themselves in a “brutal form” they were to “live them out at a higher level” in art, sports and study63 . The eugenic vocabulary was at its clearest when the author expressed the dangers he saw for wider society in individual sexual relationships that were started at a “too young” age. They resulted in “a badly developed generation” for which “there was no need in a healthy society wanting to develop.”64 The eugenic character of this sex education material from the 1950s supports findings related to the continuity of eugenics across the systemic divide in reproductive (bio)politics in state socialist Hungary65 . Increasingly from the mid-1960s the accepted vision on masturbation changed from considering it an illness to a “natural bodily function” that manifested intensively in puberty especially in the male body and most discussion continued to concentrate on boys. Warnings were widespread on restricting masturbation to sexuality in puberty. Based on a survey among West German university students, the author of “Helga” stated that approximately eighty percent of both male and female students “satisfied their sexual desire through masturbation. In puberty masturbation as a temporary phenomenon can be considered normal.”66 Among older youths, such as university students, the text declared it to be “a serious disorder”67 . With reference to international scientific opinion, in 1984 gynecologist Imre Hirschler had already concluded that masturbation caused neither physical nor psychological damage68 . He criticized the former position on the dangers of “excess masturbation” leading to sexual malfunctioning in married life, and 62 63 64 65

66 67 68

Ibid. Ibid., p. 204. Ibid., p. 205. See: Marius Turda, “If our race did not exist, it would have to be created”. Racial Science in Hungary, 1940–1944, in: Anton Weiss-Wendt, Rory Yeomans (eds.), Racial Science in Hitler’s New Europe, 1938–1945, Lincoln 2013, p. 237–258; Szegedi, Dangerous Liaisons (as in n. 10). Bender, Helga – Szerelem, szexuális élet, p. 137. Ibid. Imre Hirschler, Nemcsak nőkről nemcsak nőknek [Not only about women not only for women], Budapest 1984.

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claimed that those with a stronger sexual instinct who masturbated more in puberty had a more active sexual life later too69 . A book by physician and popular sex education author Attila Bágyoni published in 1985 informed the public about the high percentage of masturbating women, and stated that for close to fifty percent of these women masturbation was the only form of sexual satisfaction in married life70 . In summary, from considering it a sexual anomaly practiced mostly by boys in the mid-1950s, masturbation came to be acknowledged in the 1980s not only as a “normal” bodily function also widespread among married women, but symptomatic of a lack of sexual education and corresponding skills among men to provide sexual satisfaction for women. Another topic regarding which there was a visible change in the scientific opinion voiced in sex education literature between the 1950s and the 1980s in Hungary was “homosexuality”. Although a detailed discussion of expert discourse on “homosexuality” goes beyond the limits of the present analysis, it is nevertheless important to mention that as with scientific opinion concerning masturbation it was characterized by a continuity in some ideas that originated in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and also influenced by contemporary international literature71 . Building on medical discourse from the beginning of the 20th century, “homosexuality” was principally considered a perversion and an illness of male sexuality in Hungary in the 1950s72 . A publication from 1958, for example, considered “homosexuality” one among numerous “deviancies and perversities of the sexual instinct,” including masochism, exhibitionism, paedophilia and sodomy73 . It referred with appreciation to the fact that “in all civilized countries” “homosexuality” was penalized by law, and urged that “patients” started psychiatric treatment as soon as possible. In 1961 “homosexuality” between consenting adult men was decriminalized in Hungary with reference to medical arguments emphasising that “homosexuality” was a biological phenomenon and should not be treated as a crime74 . As a result, by the 1970s and early 1980s expert opinion shifted towards the acknowledgment of male “homosexuals”. They were declared to be of “as much worth as any other person”. “Homosexuality” was

69 70 71 72

73 74

Ibid., p. 37. Attila Bágyoni, Üzenet a férfiaknak [A message to men], Budapest 1985, p. 82–87. For a detailed discussion see: Judit Takács, Homoszexualitás és társadalom [Homosexuality and society], Budapest 2004. For a discussion on expert discourses related to lesbianism in the first half of the 20th century in Hungary, see: Anna Borgos, Amor lesbicus a háború előtti orvosi irodalom tükrében [Amor Lesbicus in light of medical discourses before World War II], in: Kalligram Jul-Aug (2007), p. 51–61. István Haraszti, A nemi élet kérdései [Questions concerning sexuality], Budapest 1958, p. 188f. Judit Takács, Queering Budapest, in: Jennifer V. Evans, Matt Cook (eds.), Queer Cities, Queer Cultures. Europe since 1945, London 2014.

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no longer considered an illness but a “sexual anomaly” that was different from “normal sexuality”75 . Many of the concepts concerning the reasons for “homosexuality” shared before World War II still lived on, including the blaming of parents, especially mothers, for over-loving and excessively protecting and controlling their male children and children’s consequent abnormal fear of (hetero)sexuality76 . Defining homosexuality as a failure in normal psychosexual development caused by a “chain of disorders” affecting boys from early childhood to adulthood, Béla Buda claimed in 1980 that it could be prevented as well as treated successfully. While he cited Alfred C. Kinsey’s publications concerning the widespread incidence of “homosexual behavior” among white Americans77 , he nevertheless disregarded inborn “homosexuality” and disqualified it as the result of seduction by older men. Evoking an association of “homosexuality” with paedophilia, Buda maintained that schoolchildren needed to be informed about its causes in order to protect them against maldevelopment78 . Tolerance towards homosexuals was in his view important to facilitate their transformation and therapeutic change into heterosexuals, “so that they could also experience the pleasures of a fuller sexual life”79 . This view modified only slightly by the mid- to late-1980s with the discussion of “female homosexuality” and an increased emphasis on tolerance towards “homosexuals”. Attila Bágyoni and Lajos Székely, for example, argued that “homosexual sex” was better suited for reaching orgasm among women than heterosexual sex80 . They nevertheless found it a “reassuring” research finding that “initial homosexuality” among men “died out” and in the majority of cases men continued to live in heterosexual relationships81 .

75 76 77

78 79 80 81

Buda, Homosexuality, in: Ludas, A szexualitásról (as in n. 43), p. 192–200. Ibid., p. 195f. Alfred C. Kinsey, Wardell B. Pomeroy, Clyde E. Martin, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, Philadelphia 1948; Alfred C. Kinsey et al., Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, Philadelphia 1953; Buda, Homosexuality, p. 194. Ibid., p. 200. Ibid. Attila Bágyoni, Lajos Székely, Válasz a nőknek [An answer to women], Budapest 1987. Ibid., p. 244.

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“The sexual life of the Gypsy population is characterized by both liberty and libertinism”82 : The Representation of Sexuality among Roma Contrary to a well-definable change in expert opinion on both “normal” sexuality and its “anomalies” between the 1950s and the 1980s, there was largely uniform agreement among professionals publishing on sexuality among the Romani population in Hungary. The subject did not emerge as part of sex education literature, where social or ethnic differences among men and women were left unaddressed. Sexuality among Roma or people from “backward social layers” and “disadvantaged social groups” as they were also called in state socialist Hungary, was discussed as part of medical and educational studies and articles in medical journals on the “situation of the Gypsy population”, including their health education83 . Information concerning sexual practices among Roma also formed an integral part of pronatalist reproductive discourses in state socialist Hungary. An examination of these discourses, policies as well as ensuing practices from an intersectional perspective, taking into account both gender and racial/ethnic differentiation, showed that pronatalism was selective84 . Parallel to a general pronatalist discourse across the four decades of state socialism in Hungary, Romani women were targeted by varying degrees and forms of antinatalist discourses and practices85 . A major concern voiced by health education and medical professionals disturbed by the low birth rate among Hungarians was the growing size of the “Gypsy population”. Medical experts paid special attention to sexual practices among Roma in order to try to halt or decrease a perceived “rapid increase” in their birth rates86 . These concerns were not unique to Hungary or the state so-

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György Mészáros, Szerelem, házasság, szexuális élet a magyarországi cigányoknál [Love, marriage and sexual life among the Hungarian Gypsies], in: Forrás 16/11 (1984), p. 54–68, reprinted in László Füzi, Lajos Pintér, Endre Szekér (eds.), Forrás Antológia, 1979–1989 [An anthology of the Hungarian Journal Forrás, 1979–1989], Kecskemét 1990, p. 225. The major medical journals, including those specialising in health education, published hundreds of articles concerning the health status and health education of the “Gypsy population” between the 1960s and the 1980s. Attila Melegh, Living to Ourselves. Localising Global Hierarchies in State-Socialist Hungary in the 1970s and 1980s, in: Journal of Modern European History 9/2 (2011), p. 263–283; Attila Melegh, On the East/West Slope. Globalization, Nationalism, Racism and Discourses on Eastern Europe, Budapest 2006, p. 76–87. Eszter Varsa, “The Gypsy Population is Constantly Growing”. Roma and the Politics of Reproduction in Cold War Hungary, in: Sara Bernasconi, Heike Karge, Friederike KindKovács (eds.), Beyond Medicine. The History and Politics of Public Health in Twentieth Century Europe, Budapest (forthcoming). Ibid.

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cialist time period but characterized reproductive and sexual politics concerning minority and colonized populations, who were considered a “danger” to the (nation) state in diverse historical and national/imperial contexts. In the United States, for example, the denial of reproductive freedom marked the history of African-American women from the time of slavery, and through birth control and sterilization abuse, into the second half of the 20th century87 . Fear of their procreation perpetuated a deeply negative image not only of African-American but also Mexican-American families and men and women’s sexualities88 . In publications appearing from the early 1960s onwards, professionals gave a highly homogenising description of “the sexual customs of the Gypsies” in Hungary. Descriptions provided by district physicians and local public health officials on the situation of the Gypsy population in their area of practice often included mention of “low cultural levels”. Alcoholism, smoking, a lack of personal hygiene as well as marriage at a very young age were listed as some of the typical characteristics of “Gypsies” or “backward population groups” as a consequence of their “cultural backwardness.”89 Some authors painted a “culture of primitiveness” among members of these communities, comparing it to other “undeveloped countries” and “primitive cultures” where sexual instincts were lived out without taboos90 . A typical example was the contribution of a teacher at a conference on the education of “Gypsy” children from the late 1970s. He argued that due to overcrowded housing and living conditions and especially under the “influence of alcohol” Romani parents did not hide sexual relations from children91 . Citing Margaret Mead on “the sexual customs in primitive cultures”, where “erotic games among children were not forbidden” he assumed that “in traditional Gypsy families there were 87 88 89

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Dorothy Roberts, Killing the Black Body. Race, Reproduction and the Meaning of Liberty, New York 1999. Elena R. Gutiérrez, Fertile Matters. The Politics of Mexican-Origin Women’s Reproduction, Austin 2008. Among numerous others: Miklós Fodor, Adatok a szigetvári járás cigány lakosságának életkörülményeiről [Data on the living conditions of the Gypsy population in the Szigetvár Region], in: Medicus Universalis 2 (1969), p. 9–16, p. 11; Lajos Juhász, Egészségnevelés cigányok körében Szabolcs-Szatmár megyében [Health education among Gypsies in Szabolcs-Szatmár County], in: Egészségügyi Munka 23 (1976), p. 239–241, p. 239; Zoltán Benkő, Szabolcs-Szatmár megyében élő cigánylakosság helyzete és egészségnevelésének lehetőségei [The situation of the Gypsy population in Szabolcs-Szatmár County and possibilities for their Health Education], in: Egészségügyi Munka 22 (1975), p. 303–307, p. 306. György Seregély, Miksa Almásy, Ildikó Höffer, Elmaradott lakosságcsoport magatartása a születésszabályozás terén [The birth control behavior of the backward population group], in: Egészségügyi Felvilágosítás 8 (1967), p. 109–112. Sándor Gulyás, Szerelem, házasság, szexualitás – és a cigánygyermek [Love, marriage, sexuality and the Gypsy child], in: Zsolt Szövényi (ed.), A cigánygyerekek nevelése-oktatása. Nemzetközi tudományos konferencia [The education of Gypsy children. An international conference], Pécs 1979, p. 127–131, p. 128.

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most likely no restrictions imposed” on children either92 . Medical professionals also reinforced this argument. The high number of unplanned children among Roma was noted in a report on a survey of reproductive behavior, for example, conducted in 1967 in north-east Hungary and published in one of the medical journals focused on health education. The authors established that there was no relationship between the monthly income or the housing conditions of parents and the number of children they planned to have. As a result, they hypothesized that this “lack of influence of the social situation of backward social groups” [on the planned number of children] was a result of “certain characteristic features (habits, superstitions, etc.)” they had. “But it was also possible”, they continued, that “we [were] facing such a degree of primitivism that [made] the existence of individual will unrealistic.”93 Another often repeated idea concerning the sexual life of Roma was that it was characterized by “liberty and libertinism”94 . Quoting from a novel by a wellknown Romani author, the earlier cited teacher claimed that “the only meaning to the lives” of teenage Romani boys was sexuality95 . Most often, however, the argument had a gendered referent and was used to describe Romani women’s sexuality in negative terms. A contemporary expert of Romani traditions and customs, for example, stated in an article in the early 1980s that women between twenty and thirty-five often changed their sexual partners. He supported this claim with reference to “a large percentage of his female data providers” who complained about a lack of sexual satisfaction in their marriage. He concluded that married women’s frequent search for new sexual partners was a result of the fact they served as the “objects for the satisfaction of their husbands”96 . While he insisted that this behavior should not be termed promiscuity, because relationships were not without emotional content, Romani women’s inherent promiscuity was a popular subject that also surfaced in medical publications. Medical professionals, who between the 1960s and the 1980s published extensively on the health status and health education of the “Gypsy population” focused on the reasons for and ways to halt the “high fertility rate” among Roma. They voiced concern about early sexual contact and teenage births among Romani girls. Some defined high birth rates as the result of the problematic “gestational 92

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Ibid. Working in Samoa and New Guinea in the late 1920s and the first half of the 1930s, anthropologist Margaret Mead claimed among others that different cultures affected individual development differently. She argued that sexual development could be more or less difficult accordingly. She described the “primitive” culture of Samoa, where according to her, there were hardly any restrictions placed on youths’ sexual explorations, as a positive example from which the “civilised” world could learn. Seregély, Almásy, Höffer, Elmaradott lakosságcsoport magatartása (as in n. 90), p. 112. Mészáros, Szerelem, házasság (as in n. 82), p. 54–68. Gulyás, Szerelem, házasság (as in n. 91), p. 129. Mészáros, Szerelem, házasság.

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behavior” of women: Romani women gave birth “too often, had their first pregnancy too young, and kept giving birth to children for too long”97 . Behind such behavior medical professionals identified the “inherent promiscuity” of Romani women as well as “promiscuity resulting out of crowded living conditions”, the sexual oppression of women by their husbands and even sexual contact among relatives. An article in a medical journal on health education among the Gypsy population of a south-west Hungarian region, for example, provided a combination of these arguments: Crowded living conditions have negative outcomes with regard to sexual-morality. Among [people from] backward social layers marriage does not have its needed endurance, because of the inferiority of women as marriage partners. Promiscuity is often a result of the fact that more families live in one house. This is also the reason for a too early start in sexual life. It is important to mention the existence of sexual relationships among family members.98

Change was envisioned through employment and the consequent assimilation of this “backward social layer” into Hungarian majority society.

Conclusions Sex education and especially family life education formed an integral part of pronatalist reproductive politics in state socialist Hungary. This chapter traced the ways in which sex education was linked to efforts towards increasing birth rates among Hungarians by coupling information on sexual relationships and the sexual act to marriage and child birth. Through its emphasis on providing information on sexuality to youths as a way to ensure an increase in birth rates among better-to-do Hungarian families, family life education represented on the one hand a continuity in pre-World War II frameworks of eugenically selective pronatalism. On the other hand, the gendered message related to a more equal sharing of child care and household work among men and women embedded in this literature was more progressive than other examples of similarly pronatalist sex education literature that relied heavily on Western European and American professional literature. This suggests two conclusions in relation to value change as manifested in expert discourses regarding sexuality in state socialist Hungary between the 97 98

Mihály Horváth, A cigánykérdés gyermekegészségügyi vonatkozásai [The paediatric implications of the Gypsy question], in: Egészségügyi Munka 25 (1978), p. 208–210. Sándor Cserteg, Egészségügyi felvilágosító és nevelő munka a Marcali járás cigánylakossága körében [Health education among the Gypsy population of the Marcali Region], in: Egészségügyi Felvilágosítás 2 (1961), p. 134–157, p. 145.

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1950s and the 1980s. One relates to a wider debate on the meaning of the socialist transformation in the Soviet Union and East and Southeastern Europe. While so-called totalitarianist historians have argued for the overall suppression and victimization of people in socialist dictatorships, others maintained that even during Stalinism important value changes occurred in society leading to a transformation not only in the social structure but also the expectations and values of people living in state socialist societies99 . While the present chapter did not cover all sex education literature published between the 1950s and the 1980s in Hungary, family life education material suggests that at least at the level of discourse and propaganda there was a marked effort to change the values of the population related to the issue of women’s emancipation. Publications explicitly targeted men emphasizing the importance of their involvement in household work in order to save the institution of marriage in socialist society. In this respect, Hungarian sex education literature was markedly different from its Eastern European counterparts that especially in the 1970s and 1980s carried more conservative messages related to gender100 . Second, sex education publications from the state socialist period underscore that from the 1960s onwards there was an exchange between East and West in scientific discourse. Male scholars like Buda and Szilágyi actively borrowed and relied on American literature, and used it to reassert a more conservative gender agenda than that entailed by the socialist emancipation of women. At the same time, interaction with Western scholarship also played a role in the greater acceptance of forms of sexuality in scientific discourse that were earlier decried as perversions and abnormalities. Meanwhile, discourse concerning sexuality among Roma that appeared in the 1960s remained constant on the “problematic” nature of the sexual habits of “Gypsies”. This was closely related to selective pronatalism in Hungary that aimed to increase birth rates among better-to-do and educated Hungarians while hoping to decrease fertility rates among less well-to-do and uneducated populations, many of whom were Roma.

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For a description and critique of the totalitarian paradigm see: Sheila Fitzpatrick, Revisionism in Soviet History, in: History and Theory 46/4 (2007), p. 77–91; Mark Edele, Soviet Society, Social Structure and Everyday Life. Major Frameworks Reconsidered, in: Kritika. Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 8/2 (2007), p. 349–373. On value change in Soviet society see: Stephen Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain. Stalinism as a Civilization, Berkeley 1995. Kassabova-Dintscheva, Neue alte Normen; Kościańska, Sex on Equal Terms (as in n. 12); Lišková, Sex under Socialism.

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Popular Medical Discourses on Birth Control in the Soviet Union during the Cold War: Shifting Responsibilities and Relational Values In the mid-1950s, when the first medical tests of the pill started in the West, abortion was re-legalized in the Soviet Union. Although at first glance these events seem to be unrelated, in the subsequent decade the confrontation of “abortion versus the pill” created probably one of the most significant disputes in the national population policies on both sides of the Iron Curtain during the Cold War. This chapter zooms in on Soviet stances on birth control by addressing the evolution of popular medical discourses surrounding the medicalization of birth control during the Cold War. Drawing on a Foucauldian analysis of biopower, we illuminate how responsibilities concerning birth control were assigned to and shifted between medical practitioners and ‘ordinary’ men and women from 1955 to 1975. The analysis is based on nearly one hundred articles published in the popular Soviet health magazine “Zdorovie” [Health], which was the only available periodical source containing professional advice on birth control methods until the 1980s. The main argument arising from this study is that after having re-legalized abortion (1955), the Soviet state sought a means to regulate fertility that would not have as negative an impact on fertility rates as the then increasing abortion rates were believed to have. This effort led to doctors being made the main gatekeepers of birth control during an unofficial anti-abortion campaign in the 1950s, and encouraging natural methods of birth control as part of spousal cooperation in the 1960s. At the same time, birth control in the Soviet Union had to be as effective as the US birth control pill, especially after the pill was introduced in 1960 in the West, and easily controllable by the state, as eventually intrauterine devices (IUDs) appeared to be in the 1970s in the Soviet Union. Like abortion, IUDs allowed doctors to easily supervise women, which would not be possible with the birth control pill. We suggest that relational values around birth control emerging on the two sides of the Iron curtain informed this Soviet biopolitical struggle. In contrast to the verbalized “Kitchen Debate”, it was a latent yet apparant hegemonic struggle in the private sphere of everyday life, the roots of which can be traced back to the Cold War.

https://doi.org/9783110524499-005

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Introduction When the first medical tests of the pill started in the West in the mid-1950s, abortion was re-legalized in the Soviet Union (1955). Although at first glance these events seem to be unrelated, in the subsequent decade the confrontation between “abortion versus the pill” created probably one of the most significant disputes in the national population policies on both sides of the Iron Curtain during the Cold War. In the West, for many national governments the pill became a means of fighting against the legalization of abortion1 . In the East, the re-legalization of abortion, which was associated with women’s liberation, served as an unofficial excuse for not letting the pill become an actual means of birth control in the 1960s and 1970s2 . Some argue that “the [Soviet] government was scared that the diffusion of the pill could lead to a significant decrease in birth rates” that would be hard to control3 . Contradictorily, while officially rejecting hormonal contraception, the Soviet state was importing it from neighboring socialist countries that produced it, such as Poland4 and Hungary5 , to treat infertility and menopause6 . Furthermore, in tandem with the re-legalization of abortion, and like other Eastern bloc countries, the Soviet states started an internal anti-abortion campaign and demographic policies that were pronatalist

1

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3 4

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Sylvie Burgnard, The Family Planning Service and the Pill in Geneva (1965–1980). A Step towards Women’s Emancipation?, in: The History of the Family 20/1 (2015), p. 27; Lara Marks, Sexual Chemistry. A History of the Contraceptive Pill, New Haven, London 2010, p. 18; Loren Anton, Yoshie Mitobe, Kristina Schulz, Politics of Reproduction in a Divided Europe. Abortion, Protest Movements and State Intervention after the Second World War, in: Kathrin Fahlenbrach et al. (eds.), The ‘Establishment’ Responds. Power and Protest during and after Cold War, New York/London 2012, p. 104; Jodi Vandenberg-Daves, Modern Motherhood. An American History, New Jersey 2014, p. 203. Amy E. Randall, “Abortion will Deprive you of Happiness!”. Soviet Reproductive Politics in the Post-Stalin Era, in: Journal of Women’s History 23/3 (2011), p. 15; Anton et al., Politics of Reproduction (as in n. 1), p. 115. Игорь Кон, Аборт или контрацепция?, (2003), URL: http://demoscope.ru/weekly/2003/ 0123/analit02.php [Accessed 5.6.2017]. All translations by the authors of this paper. Agata Ignaciuk, Clueless about Contraception. The Introduction and Circulation of the Contraceptive Pill in State-Socialist Poland (1960s-1970s), in: Medicina nei Secoli. Arte e Scienza 26/2 (2014), p. 518. György Seregély, Oralis fogamzásgátlás és egészségügyi felvilágosítás, Issue No. 4 of 1966 of Egészségügyi Felvilágosítás/Health Education, p. 145–149; Tischler János, “Az infecundin–sztori, 1967”, URL: http://beszelo.c3.hu/cikkek/az-infecundin-sztori-1967 [Accessed 5.6.2017]. A. A. Popov, H. P. David, Russian Federation and USSR Successor States, in: H. P. David, J. Skilogianis (eds.), From Abortion to Contraception. A Resource to Public Policies and Reproductive Behavior in Central and Eastern Europe from 1917 to the Present, Westport, CT 1999, p. 247.

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and paternalistic7 . So, what were the actual Soviet stances on birth control prior to and during the Cold War? Historically, Soviet policies around birth control were quite progressive when looked at from a global perspective. The Soviet Union was the first state in the world to legalize abortion in October 1920. At the same time, abortion legalization paved a path to the medicalization of birth control8 . Some scholars, indeed, argue that the 1920 legalization was not so much a response to the reproductive needs of civil society, but rather a way to grant the Soviet state more control over women’s bodies by institutionalizing their reproductive practices9 . This increased control was argued for primarily as a means to decrease maternal mortality due to clandestine abortions and to support improvements in the participation of women in the labor market, and by these means to advance Soviet society on the path towards progressiveness10 . In practice, the medicalization of abortion and reproduction overall meant that women’s bodies were made visible (or accessible) to state medical authorities and institutions11 . This medicalization to some extent constrained women’s agency in reproductive decisions and practices, for example, by abandoning midwifery services and traditional medicine12 while simultaneously enabling women to enter full-time employment. However, restrictions on medical practices concerning reproduction became even stricter during Stalin’s pronatalist politics and the criminalization of abortion in 1936, when condoms and withdrawal were the only available means of birth control13 . 7

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Anton et al., Politics of Reproduction, p. 109; Popov, David, Russian Federation (as in n. 6), p. 228; Randall, “Abortion will Deprive you of Happiness!” (as in n. 2), p. 31; Gail Kligman, The Politics of Duplicity. Controlling Reproduction in Ceausescu’s Romania, Berkeley 1998, p. 52; Rada Drezgić, Policies and Practices of Fertility Control under the State Socialism, in: The History of the Family 15/2 (2010), p. 192. By medicalization of birth control we understand the process of how state/medical authorities expanded into the formerly intimate practices around birth control. See: Peter Conrad, Medicalization and Social Control, in: Annual Review of Sociology 18/1 (1992), p. 209. Popov, David, Russian Federation, p. 250; Wendy Z. Goldman, Women, the State and Revolution. Soviet Family Policy and Social Life, 1917–1936, Cambridge 1993, p. 256. Popov, David, Russian Federation, p. 236; Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, On Birth Control, in: Women and Communism. Selection from the Writings of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin, London 1951, p. 81; Id., The Working Class and Neo-Malthusianism, in: Collected Works 19 (1913), p. 235. Yulia Gradskova, Soviet People with Female Bodies. Performing Beauty and Maternity in Soviet Russia in the mid 1930–1960s. Stockholm 2007, p. 77. The rise of biomedicine was a global trend in the late 19th and early 20th century; for the example of the US see: Barbara Ehrenreich, Witches, Midwives, and Nurses. A History of Women Healers, ReadHowYouWant.com, 2010. On the evolution of midwifery services in Ukraine see: Олена Боряк, Баба-повiтуха в културно-iсторичнiй традицiї українцiв: мiж профанним i сакралним. Iн-т мистетствознавства, фолклористики та етнологii iм. МТ Рильського, 2009. On popular birth control methods in the late 1920s and 1930s see: В. А. Гуревич, Статеве життя селянки. Медвидав, Харькiв 1931, p. 89.

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These restrictions were loosened after the death of Stalin in 1953 and when abortion was legalized again in 1955. The post-1953 period, often referred to as de-Stalinisation and the Khrushchev Thaw, was associated with a general relaxation of the repressive socio-political system of the Soviet state and a return to original communist values, including women’s equal rights14 . The re-legalization of abortion signified one of the liberating premises of the post-war period because officially it meant again granting women the ability to decide on the timing of births15 . Moreover, the re-legalization of abortion was intended to decrease the number of clandestine abortions, which were one of the main causes of maternal mortality during Stalin’s abortion ban (1936–1955)16 and hence contributed to a decrease in the total share of the labor force. The medicalization of birth control in the Soviet Union, however, did not end with the re-legalization of abortion, as, on the contrary, it accelerated after 1955. Cold War tensions did not take place solely in the sphere of political influence and technological advancements but also in the private sphere of everyday life and the emerging consumption culture, as exemplified in “the Kitchen Debate”17 . Importantly, in the Soviet context, Cold War tensions coincided with rapid population decline18 , which became a threat to the ideology of communism insofar as within that ideology it was inconceivable that a communist state would produce conditions within which populations would decline19 . This double threat, demographic and ideological, made both women’s productive and reproductive labor essential for the state’s growth. In this context, women’s reproductive freedom was closely connected to their role as mothers and, similar 14 15

16 17

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Popov, David, Russian Federation, p. 238. Ibid. Importantly, the same process was taking place in the US where the pill tests that started in 1956 led to the approval of the pill in 1960. See more in: Marks, Sexual Chemistry (as in n. 1), p. 40. А. Вишневский, Демографическая модернизация России 1900–2000. Новое Издателство, Москва 2006, p. 212; Popov, David, Russian Federation, p. 243. “The Kitchen Debate” refers to the series of improvisational exchanges between Richard Nixon and Nikita Khrushchev during the opening of the American National Exhibition in Moscow on July 24, 1959. The debate featured discussions on everyday standards of life and particularly those related to household organization and consumption. For more on this subject, see in: Ruth Oldenziel, Karin Zachmann, Cold War Kitchen. Americanization, Technology, and European Users, Massachusetts 2011; Susan E. Reid, Cold War in the Kitchen. Gender and the de-Stalinization of Consumer Taste in the Soviet Union under Khrushchev, in: Slavic Review 61/2 (2002), p. 211–252. Вишневский, Демографическая модернизация (as in n. 16), p. 155; Yuliya Hilevych, Strong Families and Declining Fertility. A Comparative Study of Family Relations and Reproductive Careers in Soviet Ukraine, Wageningen PhD disserations 2016, p. 6; Sergei Zakharov, Russian Federation. From the First to Second Demographic Transition, in: Demographic Research, S7, 24 (2008), p. 907. Lenin, On Birth Control (as in n. 10), p. 82.

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to the developments taking place during Stalin’s rule20 , the role of the family as a “primary cell of the society” continued to be emphasized21 . The emphasis on women’s rights and on their importance for the family implied that in practice the ‘romantic’ nature of women was pushed to the fore and women’s primary role as a mother and wife became central22 exemplifying values similar to those underlining reproductive politics and practices in the West before the sexual revolution23 . Emerging family-oriented discourses in the Soviet Union during the Cold War encouraged women to perform productive labor, housewifery and motherhood, and to contribute to population growth24 . Importantly, the Soviet state never defined abortion as a tool to limit births, but rather as a way for women to space births and so successfully combine these roles25 . Nevertheless, a rapid increase in abortion rates after 1955 was a sign that women started practicing abortion to limit the number of children26 . That said, no effective methods were introduced until the 1970s when intrauterine devices (IUDs) became more easily available in the Soviet Union27 . To address this contradiction in Soviet reproductive politics in the post-war period, a significant body of literature has examined how these state regulations impacted motherhood28 and the medicalization of abortion29 . Less attention, however, has been paid to how the medicalization of birth control, broadly defined, was governed by the Cold War legacies during a period when fertility was rapidly declining in the Soviet Union (in some Soviet republics it reached below20 21 22

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24 25 26 27 28

29

Goldman, Women, the State and Revolution (as in n. 9), p. 256. Popov, David, Russian Federation, p. 250. Gradskova, Soviet People with Female Bodies (as in n. 11), p. 82; Natalia Vinokurova, Reprivatising Women’s Lives. From Khrushchev to Brezhnev, in: Rebecca Kay, (ed.), Gender, Equality and Difference during and after State Socialism, Basingstoke 2007, p. 74; Lynne Attwood, Creating the New Soviet Woman. Women’s Magazines as Engineers of Female Identity, 1922–1953, New York, 1999, p. 166. In the US and Western European countries the struggle to recover population loss was seen in women’s role bearing children, while men were meant to rebuild the economy. See: Erica Carter, How German is She? Postwar West German Reconstruction and the Consuming Woman, Michigan 1997, p. 45. Vinokurova, Reprivatising Women’s Lives (as in n. 22), p. 76. Michele Rivkin-Fish, Anthropology, Demography, and the Search for a Critical Analysis of Fertility. Insights from Russia, in: American Anthropologist 105/2 (2003), p. 300. A. A. Popov, Family Planning and Induced Abortion in the USSR. Basic Health and Demographic Characteristics, in: Studies in Family Planning 22/6 (1991), p. 369. Popov, David, Russian Federation, p. 247. Gradskova, Soviet People with Female Bodies; Natalia Chernyaeva, Childcare Manuals and Construction of Motherhood in Russia, 1890–1990, Iowa 2009; Anna Temkina, The Gynaecologist’s Gaze. The Inconsistent Medicalisation of Contraception in Contemporary Russia, in: Europe–Asia Studies 67/10 (2015), p. 1527–1546. Randall, “Abortion will Deprive you of Happiness!”; Radka Dudová, Regulation of Abortion as State-Socialist Governmentality. The Case of Czechoslovakia, in: Politics & Gender 8/01 (2012), p. 123–144.

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replacement levels already in the early 1960s)30 . Moreover, little research has examined the role assigned to different actors – women, men and medical practitioners – and their responsibilities in the context of the Soviet medicalization of reproduction. This chapter addresses the evolution of popular Soviet medical discourses surrounding the medicalization of abortion and other birth control methods during 1955–1975, and places these developments in the context of the Cold War. Drawing on a Foucauldian analysis of biopower combined with Hall’s methodology of encoding, this chapter illuminates how responsibilities concerning birth control were assigned to and shifted among Soviet medical practitioners and ‘ordinary’ men and women in the popular health magazine “Zdorovie” [Health]31 during the period studied. “Zdorovie”, issued by the state and written by state medical professionals and doctors, is an appropriate forum to explore these issues since its primary focus has been to make medical knowledge more accessible to the general public. In the following, we begin by presenting our methodology and source. Next, we present results informed by three dominant themes in popular Soviet medical discourses about birth control emerging from the magazine “Zdorovie”: medical versus clandestine abortion; birth control as a benefit for health; ‘hormonal contraception–IUDs nexus’. Finally, we conclude with a discussion of how values concerning reproduction were relationally constructed on both sides of the Iron Curtain.

Methodology and Source “Zdorovie” (1955–present) was a popular state-published monthly magazine on health issues in the Soviet Union and remained the only periodical written source containing professional advice on birth control methods at least until 1983, when the subject of marriage and family life was introduced into the Soviet school curriculum32 . It sold some 50 000 copies at the time of its launch and by 1980 its sale increased to 12 150 000 copies33 . “Zdorovie” was available at newspaper stores, post offices and most commonly by subscription. The magazine was not 30

31 32 33

As was the case, for example, in Ukraine and in Russia. See: А. Вишневский, Демографическая модернизация (as in n. 16), p. 153; В. Стешенко, Дослiдження народжуваностi й плiдностi у реальних поколiнь жiнок України: висновки для сьогодення, in: К.: IДСД НАНУ 1 (2010), p. 8f. Zdorov’e, Ministerstvo zdravoohranenija SSSR, Gosydarstvenoe izdatelstvo medicinskoy literatury (1955–1975), ISBN: 0044-1945. Popov, David, Russian Federation, p. 253. It is still published today and is available in many post-Soviet countries under the same name.

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gender specific and was presented as an educational material for both men and women. It was edited by state officials and the articles in the magazine were (co-) authored by state-employed medical practitioners and doctors. Selected voices were represented as sources of authoritative advice that the general population was to follow34 . In our methodology we combine a Foucauldian perspective on biopower with Stuart Hall’s encoding/decoding (1980) approach. This provides us with a theoretical framework through which it is possible to analyze the magazine “Zdorovie” in terms of power-knowledge interactions. Through the lens of Hall’s encoding analytical approach, particular values and interests of the Soviet state in a context of the Cold War, rapid population decline and de-Stalinisation are understood to be encoded in “Zdorovie”35 . Hence, this study recognizes “Zdorovie” as a public pedagogical forum through which the general population was taught their subject positions, identities, values and social relations36 . These representational practices in “Zdorovie” can be understood after Foucault as “a technique of power” by the state “to observe, monitor, shape and control the behavior of individuals situated within a range of social and economic institutions”37 . This specific power, according to Foucault, is an example of “biopower” or “biopolitics”: “forms of power exercised over persons specifically in so far as they are thought of as living beings: a politics concerned with subjects as members of a population, in which issues of individual sexual and reproductive conduct interconnect with issues of national policy and power.”38 From this perspective, “Zdorovie” can be seen as a medium through which the Soviet state, via selected voices of state-employed medical practitioners and doctors, connected the issues of individual sexual and reproductive conduct to issues of national policy and power (e.g., concerning population decrease, high abortion rates, the Cold War)39 . Through this state sanctioned magazine, readers acquired knowledge about their own bodies, they were taught the staterequired reproductive practices and sexual behaviors, and they were supposed 34 35 36 37

38 39

See also: Temkina, The Gynaecologist’s Gaze (as in n. 28). Stuart Hall, Encoding/Decoding, in: Stuart Hall et al. (eds.), Culture, Media, Language, London 1980, p. 128. Henry A. Giroux, Breaking into the Movies. Pedagogy and the Politics of Film, in: JAC 21/3 (2001), p. 587. Colin Gordon, Governmental Rationality. An Introduction, in: Peter Miller, Colin Gordon, Graham Buchell (eds.), The Foucault Effect. Studies in Governmentality, Chicago 1991, p. 3; Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish. The Birth of the Prison (A. Sheridan, Trans.), New York 1995, p. 27f. Gordon, Governmental Rationality (as in n. 37) (emphasis in original), p. 4. Drawing on Foucauldian biopower and biopolitics, the existing studies have demonstrated the role of medical authorities as assigning particular responsibilities to themselves and to female and male bodies, and the role of female and male reproductive subjects as using their own means to exercise responsibilities over their bodies. See similar studies: Temkina, The Gynecologist’s Gaze; Burgnard, The Family Planning Service (as in n. 1).

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to develop the motivations necessary to be good communist citizens. From this perspective, this chapter aims to investigate the evolution of popular medical discourses surrounding the medicalization of birth control during the Cold War. In particular, we focus on how responsibilities concerning birth control were assigned to and shifted between medical practitioners and ‘ordinary’ men and women from 1955 to 1975. To address this aim we posed the following research questions: (1) which knowledge, particularly with respect to birth control and abortion, was made publicly accessible and which was not?; (2) what responsibilities were assigned to different actors (medical authorities, women and men) and in what context?; and (3) how did Cold War tensions around population struggle influence the shifts the Soviet birth control discourses take? Over the studied period, 1955–1975, about 95 articles of various lengths on the subject of birth control and abortion appeared in “Zdorovie”. Among them, 14 articles were published on abortion, 13 on birth control, and 68 in which birth control and abortion were mentioned but the articles’ main topics were different. These topics were often related to men’s and women’s reproductive health, such as infertility, hygiene, venereal diseases and miscarriage among other pregnancy problems, and to sex education. The magazine articles were coded and analyzed using Atlas.ti.

Results In our analysis of “Zdorovie” we identified three dominant themes in the discourse concerning knowledge and responsibilities around birth control: 1) medical versus clandestine abortion; 2) birth control as a benefit for health, and 3) the ‘hormonal contraception–IUDS nexus’. These issues and their order illustrate the non-linear evolution and shifting of the Soviet medical discourse about the role of birth control in individuals’ everyday lives during the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. At the same time, these discourses are not mutually exclusive and they gradually evolved from one into another as shown in this section. Medical versus Clandestine Abortion: Abortion as a Means to Control Women’s Bodies

“Zdorovie” was launched in 1955, the same year the abortion was re-legalized. The first articles to discuss the issues of birth control primarily targeted abortion and portrayed it as the sole method of preventing an unwanted birth40 . The first 40

Zdorovie 3 (1956), p. 10; 4 (1956), p. 13; 4 (1957), p. 20.

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article on birth control specifically was published somewhat later and discussed several alternatives to abortion, primarily female methods such as caps and spermicides, without giving any practical details on how to use these methods41 . However, the precautions given included that a doctor should decide on the right method and not the woman. This presentation of birth control in the 1950s contrasted with the information available about abortion that was more detailed, as we show below. Importantly, in all “Zdorovie” articles that discussed abortion and other birth control alternatives published before 1965 (18 over the 9-year span), the doctors’ authority in giving advice on abortion or any other means of birth control methods functioned as an essential element in the technique of biopower. In this section, we start by discussing abortion, and in the next two sections we build on this and consider other birth control methods. To represent themselves as holding medical, hence, objective knowledge, the authors of the articles, typically practicing male gynecologists or doctors with an academic degree (whose gender is notable because most doctors were female)42 , provided detailed description of the medical procedure, educating the readers about the dangers of abortion43 . The following passage from one of these articles published in 1956 provides a description of the procedure: The danger of abortion always lies in the fact that a doctor performs it without seeing the object [fetus] during the operation. And under these circumstances some serious directions are still to be performed: the cervix should be forcedly extended, then special instruments should be inserted inside, and then the fertilized egg has to be detached from the cervix and removed.44

Similar descriptions of abortion procedures and warnings against related dangers and subsequent complications were particularly common before the 1960s. Among the most common complications mentioned were sepsis and penetration of the cervix, which were argued as potentially leading to permanent sterility and in more severe cases to death45 . The most noteworthy is that these articles 41

42

43 44

45

Zdorovie 8 (1957), p. 31. The very first article on broader sexual matters than abortion was published in Zdorovie 5 (1956), p. 28 called “Marital hygiene” (authors’ transition) did not discuss birth control at all. Surprisingly, condoms and coitus interruptus, which were popular methods of birth control during Stalin’s abortion ban, as well as in the post-Stalin era, were not mentioned in any of these artciles. See: Mary Buckley, Women in the Soviet Union, in: Feminist Review 8 (1981), p. 88. The choice of male medical practitioners indicates the state’s preference for men’s voices to represent state ideology. Randall, “Abortion will Deprive you of Happiness!”, p. 21. Zdorovie 2 (1956), p. 10, (authors’ translation). Importantly, at this time the only method of abortion was curettage, and anaesthetics were not widely used. Curettage was replaced by vacuum aspiration in the mid-1970s, when anaesthetics also became a part of the procedure. See: Popov, David, Russian Federation, p. 239. See for example: Zdorovie 4 (1956), p. 13; 8 (1957), p. 31; 2 (1958), p. 24, 12 (1958), p. 20; 10 (1959), p. 22.

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suggested that both medical and clandestine abortion could equally result in any of these complications. While this practice would be unthinkable in the West where abortion was not legalized, in the Soviet Union, due to its legalization (1920–1936) and women’s common performance of double shift as both workers and mothers of at least two children in a context where no effective alternative was available, abortion was still practiced even when it was banned (1936–1955) contributing to high post-abortion mortality46 . In “Zdorovie’s” articles we see the state’s strong interest in reducing both the rate of and harm arising from abortion in the context of the re-legalization of abortion. Indeed, while, as we have shown previously, maternal mortality was still comparatively high in the Soviet Union, these anti-abortion messages used the threat of post-abortion mortality to make women fear abortion procedures even though they were legally entitled to abortion. As part of this popular medical discourse, women were portrayed as having the right to an abortion. In this context, doctors were seen as “advisors” who provided women with necessary assistance. A quote from an article (1957) about a popular-science film “Why did I do it?” illustrates this point. This article presents a woman who considered abortion, but after hearing a story of another woman about her experiences of aborting a first pregnancy that resulted in sterility, she changes her mind: A consultation at the gynecologist’s office: a doctor has a talk with her patient, a lady with the slightly tired but kind face. She [the doctor] wants to understand why Lena, a woman in her blooming young years and happy about her marital life, so desperately wants to have an abortion. Is it because she is scared of going into labor? But this is unreasonable. Or is it because of some household difficulties? But these are always possible to solve. The doctor asks and tries to convince and prove all of these, but it leads to no result. That woman who sits in front of her is very aloof and stubborn and she does listen either to advice or to warnings. Her decisions are definite. She would not change her mind.47

This article, similar to others targeting abortion, vividly illustrates a dominant message around abortion that was encoded in “Zdorovie”: women make independent decisions about their reproductive health, but they are guilty if they ignore their doctor’s advice. This idea that women are independent decisionmakers concerning their reproduction insofar as they obey their doctor’s advice was normalized and this norm was used to police women. For example, one of the illustrations for an anti-abortion article depicted a sad woman sitting alone on the bench and a happy woman standing behind with her two children48 . For those who did not follow the norm, there was punishment. The hardest punish46 47 48

Popov, David, Russian Federation, p. 241; Popov, Family Planning (as in n. 26), p. 376. Zdorovie 2 (1957), p. 27 (authors’ translation). Zdorovie 4 (1956), p. 13.

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ment was permanent sterility that would automatically deprive women of the ‘joy of motherhood’ and could lead to family dissolution49 . In representing sterility as the punishment for ignoring a doctor’s advice, this disciplining technique invited readers, particularly women, to take up the subject position of the woman with children instead of the woman who underwent abortion and became sterile. The significance of this discursive technique becomes more apparent when taking into account a social context in which women were encouraged to perform a double shift50 . In the 1960s, the technique of biopower became more closely directed toward women who underwent clandestine abortions – often referred to as “criminal” abortion in “Zdorovie” – with which the medical dangers described above were re-associated51 . Importantly, this specific rhetoric of naming clandestine abortion as criminal was also legally supported as “all out-of clinic abortions resulting in death or serious bodily injury” were considered criminal procedures52 . Descriptions of how “criminal” abortion harms women’s health and which methods could be used became more common. The following passage from an article on women’s health describes a method of non-medical abortion using liquid soap that killed a woman: During pregnancy, blood actively circulates around the uterus. There are many blood vessels, especially around the place where the placenta starts to form. After the soap solution was used, the placenta started to separate from the uterus and these vessels got opened. Subsequently, once the air that came to the uterus together with other liquids reached the heart, it caused immediate death. [. . . ] Some women also think that if they inject some disinfecting liquids or antibiotics in their uterus, it will save them from the complications. However, the reality is very different.53

Again, a binary construction was deployed to discourage women from having abortions. This time, clandestine abortion was constructed as not only dangerous but also deadly. In contrast, medical abortion – performed at hospitals – was portrayed as a safe and reliable medical practice during which doctors maintained control over women’s bodies and, therefore, could foresee complications54 .

49 50

51 52 53 54

See also: Randall, “Abortion will Deprive you of Happiness!”, p. 20. The Soviet propaganda poster from 1968 “Один ребенок хорошо, два лучше!” (“One child is good, but two – better”) by Vasilij Stepanov clearly represents this vision on the Soviet family size. About the poster and on the issue of two child family see also: Anna Rotkirch, Katja Kesseli, “Two children puts you in the zone of social misery”. Childbearing and Risk Perception among Russian Women, in: Helene Carlbäck, Yulia Gradskova, Zhanna Kravchenko (eds.), And They Lived Happily Ever After. Norms and Everyday Practices of Family and Parenthood in Russia and Central Europe, Budapest, New York 2012, p. 150. Zdorovie 4 (1960), p. 24; 5 (1965), p. 17; 9 (1967), p. 20; 2 (1968), p. 11. More on clandestine abortions see: Popov, David, Russian Federation, p. 243. Zdorovie 4 (1960), p. 24 (authors’ translation). Zdorovie 9 (1964), p. 22; 5 (1973), p. 15.

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This shift in the popular medical discourse around abortion could be seen as a compromise. In response to resistance from the population made manifest through the still high number of clandestine abortions55 , subsequent postabortion mortality and the state’s inability to offer an effective alternative during the first years after the legalization56 , medical abortion came to be represented as safe, whereas previously both medical and clandestine abortions were represented as dangerous. In the context of this discursive distinction between medical and clandestine abortion, detailed descriptions and information on how medical abortion was performed became rare. This knowledge now became the exclusive property of doctors, which turned women into “non-knowledgeable” hence docile, subjects who were supposed to submit to doctors’ advice. This construction produced a new norm: women, when necessary, could undergo abortion as long as it was medical. That said, neither clandestine nor medical abortion was advised for a first pregnancy. The rationales for this advice were that it might lead to tubal pregnancy, to a retroverted uterus and to other complications of the uterus associated with medical abortion, and to infertility and death in case of clandestine abortion57 . These rationalizations supported the new norms against which women’s reproductive behaviors were judged. By making a discursive distinction between medical and clandestine abortion, “Zdorovie” introduced a certain type of rationality that dominated the birth control debate over the studied period: doctors as knowledgeable protectors versus uninformed women who they protected. This clear division was made possible by making knowledge about abortion the sole property of doctors. As such, doctors became not solely advisors but also “gatekeepers”58 who would protect women from the negative outcomes and complications that came with clandestine abortion. In this construction, medical practitioners were represented as benevolent protectors on whom women could rely. Consistent with biopower, “Zdorovie” taught the population to recognize medical practitioners as agents of knowledge: those with the knowledge of what is best for women.

55

56 57 58

Scholars suggest that ‘clandestine abortions’ were popular among unmarried women who sought more personalized care and privacy. See: Popov, David, Russian Federation, p. 243. Furthermore, this private care allowed a woman to request anaesthetics that were not used in the hospitals, which also made some married women seek clandestine abortions. Importantly, clandestine abortions in cities were still performed by professional doctors. For more on abortion practices see: Yuliya Hilevych, Abortion and Gender Relationships in Ukraine, 1955–1970, in: The History of the Family 20/1 (2015), p. 95. Popov, David, Russian Federation, p. 241; Popov, Family Planning, p. 376. See for example: Zdorovie 9 (1962), p. 15; 9 (1967), p. 20. See also: H. P. David, Abortion in Europe, 1920–1991. A Public Health Perspective, in: Studies in Family Planning 23/1 (1992), p. 3.

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This paternalistic rhetoric was maintained through the entire study period (up until the mid-1970s)59 , which an example from 1964 illustrates: Doctors always pay special attention to women who are under the threat of the most tragic hardship – that of not becoming a mother. Sometimes this hardship could be due to an illness but mostly it is due to an abortion, which was done without giving it a proper thought. In other cases, these hardships are pregnancy interruptions, which are hard to treat. But hard does not mean impossible. And in most cases, doctors hold a solution.60

This passage also illustrates that some discursive constructions continued: that abortion could lead to infertility, that a woman who did not obey the medical practitioner’s advice was guilty and therefore naturally exposed to punishments, that such harm could be mitigated by medical practitioners, and that doctors were the allies of women and held solutions to these problems. This shift in representations of medical practitioners encouraged women to increase their trust in them in a context where women continued to have clandestine abortions that the state was unable to control61 . Here the new rationality underlying this instance of biopolitics is revealed: in response to women continuing to have clandestine abortions, affirming medical and condemning clandestine abortion helped the state to govern the population. This affirmation of legal abortion hand in hand with condemnation of clandestine abortion served to obscure the state’s inability to offer an effective alternative to abortion. Furthermore, as other studies suggest, this discursive construction was an integral part of an informal anti-abortion campaign that discouraged women from frequent abortions62 . Intriguingly, during the 1960s, the emphasis on birth control as a marital practice became more explicit, as we show in the next section. While abortion was still seen as a woman’s decision, husbands emerged as actors who took responsibility for protecting their wives from unwanted pregnancies.

59

60 61 62

Similar aspirations of protectiveness towards women occurred not only in the sphere of reproductive health but also in other spheres of everyday life, such as how women were to combine their role as both a worker and a mother. After the mid-1950s, while continuing to be still largely employed full-time, women were unofficially discouraged to occupy jobs in industry, agriculture and transportation, where a heavy workload was more common, compared to the sectors of education, healthcare and culture, where it was also possible to have a more flexible working schedule and so combine work with household and childcare duties. See: Vinokurova, Reprivatising Women’s Lives, p. 76. Zdorovie 9 (1964), p. 22 (authors’ translation). Surprisingly, Zdorovie is silent on why women continued to seek clandestine abortions. Randall, “Abortion will Deprive you of Happiness!”, p. 21.

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Birth Control as a Benefit for Health: Calling on Husbands to Protect their Wives

Most of the articles focusing specifically on birth control were published after 1960 (11 out of 13) and more general articles on sexual health and hygiene also appeared in this decade. Overall, after 1960 the discourse that birth control should provide health benefits beyond preventing an unwanted pregnancy became dominant in the magazine. Importantly, as we will show, this discourse emerged with the incorporation of both spouses’ responsibility (and guilt) for protecting women’s bodies (or not) from unwanted pregnancies, which, as discussed previously, was often connected to abortion. At first glance, this discourse seems to compete with the one that existed around abortion, as now doctors’ knowledge and power over birth control seemed to be challenged. Doctors certainly continued to be “gatekeepers” in birth control issues. However, this shift in responsibilities around birth control produced the “natural complement theory” according to which men would be responsible for protecting their wives from an unwanted pregnancy by encouraging more healthy and reliable methods of birth control, while wives were required to cooperate63 . In this respect, men’s reproductive capacities and contraceptive practices also became targeted. Though apparently benevolent, this shift moved the exercise of state power from a “clinic” a woman might choose to visit to her “own bedroom”. The new view on shared responsibility over women’s bodies between spouses emerged in “Zdorovie” through the construction of a new rubric “A talk about sex education” (“Razgovor o polovom vospitanii”) between 1965–1967. Additionally, in the late 1960s and until the mid-1970s, matters related to birth control were also appearing in other rubrics as “At the consultation with a gynecologist” (“Na priyome y ginekologa”), “To the attention of women” (“Vnumanie zhenschuny”), and “Parents you should read this” (“Roditeli prochtite”), among others. In these rubrics, different topics concerning men’s and women’s reproductive health starting from youth up to the late forties were discussed. More attention was now paid in particular to gendered responsibilities around birth control, such as the male and female contraceptives that were introduced. In the 1960s, “Zdorovie” constantly introduced new methods of female contraception, indicating that women’s needs and struggles to find alternatives to abortion were taken into account. Intriguingly, similar to abortion, these methods often required a lot of additional attention from medical practitioners. For example, the so-called mechanical contraceptives, like female condoms and cervical caps, which could be used with spermicides such as gramicidin gel, required the close and regular assistance of a doctor who would have to advise on size

63

Zdorovie 12 (1962), p. 20; 10 (1971), p. 27.

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and help with inserting a cap into the woman’s body64 . After all, this procedure was to be repeated every 6–7 days, which automatically made it a less attractive option for a working woman because of the time investment required. Other alternatives were vaginal douches, tampons with some simple liquids like citrus acid that could be used together with female condoms, and the application of spermicide cream on a tampon prior to intercourse65 . After the early 1960s, vaginal douches were presented as a method for treating vaginal infections, rather than as a post-coital contraceptive, because they turned out to be a not very effective means of birth control and could even lead to infertility and ectopic pregnancy66 . Because of this, after the mid-1960s vaginal douches were rarely mentioned in general discussions on birth control and were only discussed in the context of their negative effects. Finally, in 1962 “Zdorovie” introduced the calendar method and more extensive explanations were provided in 1963, 1964 and 197167 . This method was presented as a healthy alternative, but at the same time, as not always being effective. In this respect, the calendar method began to be portrayed as a tool for planning a pregnancy rather than for postponing it, which was a similar idea with abortion when it was legalized. In order to be effective in the long run, the calendar method had to be combined with other methods. Although all the female methods described above were represented as relatively “healthy”, in contrast to abortion, they were also portrayed as not entirely effective, unless combined with male methods, such as condoms. While this combination may look purely practical, it had a particular rhetoric surrounding it: a husband had “to protect his wife” (“berech zheny”) from unwanted pregnancy68 . In the written and oral testimonies of Soviet women from the 1950s and 1960s, this rhetoric was also commonly used69 . This rhetoric, due to the state’s inability to present an effective birth control method for women, assigned a “protective” subject position first to medical practitioners and, when it turned out that did not work, to husbands: first doctors and then husbands were responsible for women’s bodies. To normalize the subject position of protector, couples were advised to use condoms70 . Surprisingly, this information was primarily directed towards women as it was mainly discussed in the articles on female contraception. Women were advised to use different female methods interchangeably and 64 65 66 67 68 69

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Zdorovie 2 (1967), p. 21. Zdorovie 12 (1962), p. 20; 2 (1967), p. 21. Zdorovie 9 (1960), p. 13; 1 (1973), p. 23. Zdorovie 2 (1962), p. 20; 9 (1963), p. 18f.; 10 (1964), p. 20; 1 (1971), p. 30. Zdorovie 12 (1962), p. 20. Hilevych, Abortion and Gender Relationships (as in n. 55), p. 95; Anna Rotkirch, The Man Question. Loves and Lives in late 20th Century Russia, Helsinki 2000 (Research Reports 1/2000), p. 75. Zdorovie 12 (1962), p. 19; 2 (1967), p. 21; 1 (1973), p. 17; 5 (1974), p. 21.

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to take breaks in between, and for this reason condoms were introduced as a valuable method of birth control71 . As such, women were also educated about how to assign responsibility to their husbands. Indeed, in the 1950s and 1960s, condoms and coitus interruptus were the most popular methods of birth control after abortion72 . Although condoms were easily available at any pharmacy and were also produced in the Soviet Union (the so-called “rezinovoe izdelie nomer 2”), they were perceived as unpleasant and of bad quality, which certainly contributed to the fact that they were never fully accepted by either men or women73 . A simple description in 1967 on how to wear a condom to avoid malfunction and rupture74 can be seen as a lesson designed to overcome some of these negative reactions. In this light, condoms were presented as not only fully effective in avoiding unwanted pregnancy but also as perfectly accessible without additional doctor’s assistance75 . With this gesture individuals were ‘given’ full control over reproduction. This shift in responsibility came at a time when state officials thought that husbands were pro-natalist76 . But most importantly male methods also did not have as many side effects as most female contraceptive methods did. Moreover, the fact that “Zdorovie” addressed condoms in the context of female birth control methods suggests that the state was eager to educate women with regards to its effectiveness, as women did not fully approve of this method and men were reluctant to use it77 . The emphasis on condoms was coupled with the discussion of other male birth control practices, primarily those that were neither effective nor medically accepted, such as coitus interruptus. Historically, this was the most common practice of birth control in Soviet society, when abortion was banned and after the re-legalization of abortion78 . Coitus interruptus did not correspond with dominant medical ideas and, in practice, was an unreliable method that could possibly lead to an unwanted pregnancy and hence abortion79 . However, this method was widely practiced, and therefore, it became a primary target in “Zdorovie”. Instead of attacking this method as unreliable and possibly leading to unwanted pregnancy, the technique used was to present it as causing numerous negative

71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79

Zdorovie 8 (1967), p. 31; 12 (1962), p. 20; 2 (1967), p. 21; 1 (1973), p. 17. Popov, Family Planning, p. 373. Hilevych, Abortion and Gender, p. 96; Popov, David, Russian Federation, p. 247. Zdorovie 2 (1967), p. 20. Zdorovie 1 (1973), p. 17. Randall, “Abortion will Deprive you of Happiness!”, p. 27. Hilevych, Abortion and Gender, p. 95; Rotkirch, The Man Question (as in n. 69), p. 208. Гуревич, Статеве життя селянки (as in n. 12), p. 89; Popov, David, Russian Federation, p. 373. It is a well-documented fact that coitus interruptus, although one of the least effective methods of birth control, could be still practiced successfully. See: Gina Santow, Coitus interruptus and the Control of Natural Fertility, in: Population Studies 49/1 (1995), p. 28.

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effects on men’s health. Namely, it was described as one of the main sources of the weakening of their sexual power and of disturbing the nervous system among other factors, which could eventually result in impotence and hence in infertility.80 This replication of the rhetoric of infertility around men’s birth control methods would have struck a chord with women, who had internalized fear of infertility as a side-effect of birth control, and led them to discourage their partners from using this method. Knowledge of this method was never directly introduced into the domain of women’s responsibilities and its side effects were often discussed as solely concerning men even though women could also have been affected81 . This strategy drew on existing discursive resources to encourage men to find other more effective and healthy alternatives, such as condoms and abstinence. In contrast to the construction of coitus interruptus as unhealthy, abstinence was presented as a fully natural, effective and healthy method of birth control for both men and women in “Zdorovie” in the 1950s, and particularly in the 1960s and early 1970s. One technique used to normalize the construction of abstinence as healthy was to draw parallels with animals that had intercourse only for procreation. The articles argued that evolution (should) have made humans carry similar instincts82 . Another technique targeted married men: the practice of abstinence during marriage was suggested as a benefit to their health by saving their energy for work and leisure, and hence for the benefit of the society and family, respectively83 . The pre-marital practice of abstinence, on the other hand, was constructed differently. It was presented as a function of saving unmarried men from catching different sexually transmitted diseases, such as gonorrhoea and syphilis, and transmitting these to their (future) wives84 . At the end of the 1960s and in the early 1970s, unmarried men, in particular, became portrayed as commonly affected by sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). In this discourse addressed to men, doctors provided knowledge to protect themselves and patients were made to feel guilty if they did not follow their doctor’s advice85 . This discursive strategy was very similar to that surrounding abortion in the mid-1950s, but which had targeted women. It used education about the threat of the negative consequences 80 81

82 83 84 85

Zdorovie 10 (1965), p. 5; 10 (1966), p. 18; 10 (1971), p. 27; 5 (1972), p. 20. In Western biomedical literature of that time, coitus interruptus was portrayed as being equally bad for men’s and women’s health, particularly regarding psychological damage caused by the trauma of interrupted intercourse when it was the sole practice. See: Kate Fisher, Simon Szreter, “They Prefer Withdrawal”. The Choice of Birth Control in Britain, 1918–1950, in: Journal of Interdisciplinary History 34/2 (2003), p. 270. Zdorovie 2 (1966), p. 19. Zdorovie 5 (1956), p. 29; 10 (1964), p. 19; 2 (1966), p. 18; 5 (1967), p. 23. Zdorovie 5 (1972), p. 20f. Zdorovie 10 (1971), p. 26f.

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of disobeying doctors, such as SDTs and infertility, both to construct doctors as benevolent authorities and to discipline men’s and women’s sexual conduct. This partial repetition of the abortion rhetoric – now focusing on men and SDTs – suggests that unmarried men were articulated in the discourse as having full responsibility over reproductive decision-making. During this time in the US, abstinence was also advocated as a healthy and necessary premarital practice particularly for single women86 . Similar to the US, the practice of abstinence in the Soviet Union was placed in the context of men’s personal health and hence that of women, since men and women together were thought to contribute to the well-being of the entire family and by extension of the state87 . Female abstinence was only briefly mentioned88 . It may seem surprising that “Zdorovie” did not put much emphasis on educating women about the dangers of premarital sex. This could be explained partially by the fact there was still a strong societal taboo on premarital sex for women, which was often the reason why premarital childbearing was rare89 . Furthermore, the Soviet state officially accepted single motherhood, which was in contrast to the US and the Catholic part of Western Europe where women who became pregnant out of wedlock could be forced to give their child up for adoption90 . Thus, this uneven spread of attention to men’s and women’s abstinence signals how the state put more responsibility on unmarried men to practice abstinence. “Zdorovie” articulated a link between birth control, men’s and women’s health and the Soviet state in which it was silent about its struggle to encourage population growth. This was done so as to maintain the official ideology: it was a priori presumed that populations do not decline under communism91 . Yet, this (quiet) struggle shows the inability of the Soviet state to introduce a reliable method that would help decrease abortion rates and simultaneously enable it to govern its population. The logical question would be why state authorities and medical practitioners did not introduce the pill? This issue should also be analyzed from the perspective of the Cold War competition. Similarly, as was the case with 86 87 88 89 90

91

Vandenberg-Daves, Modern Motherhood (as in n. 1), p. 196. Zdorovie 10 (1965), p. 4; 2 (1966), p. 18; 5 (1975), p. 20. Zdorovie 1 (1974), p. 14f. Hilevych, Strong Families and Declining Fertility (as in n. 18), p. 46. On the Soviet Union and single motherhood see: Helene Carlbäck, Lone Motherhood in Soviet Russia in mid 20th Century – In a European Context, in: Carlbäck, Gradskova, Kravchenko (eds), And They Lived Happily Ever After (as in n. 50), p. 25. On birth mothers in the US and Western European countries see: Ann Fessler, The Girls who Went Away. The Hidden History of Women who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades before Roe v. Wade, London 2007; David Howe, Phillida Sawbridge, Diana Hinings, Half a Million Women. Mothers who Lose their Children by Adoption, The Post Adoption Center, London 1992. See more on Neo-Malthusianism and birth control under communism in: Lenin, On Birth Control, p. 82.

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consumer culture and “the Kitchen Debate”, there seemed to be a struggle within political systems concerning birth control in the private sphere of everyday life, as we show in the next section. The Hormonal Contraception–IUDs Nexus: State Efforts to Regain Direct Control over Women’s Bodies

When the involvement of men in birth control did not produce the desired results, there was a search for alternatives. By the late 1960s, two opinions, that abortion was a possible cause of infertility and that any birth control method should also be good for one’s health, became hegemonic. These two arguments together created the framework within which “Zdorovie” portrayed the use of hormones, namely the pill, for contraceptive use. Importantly, the period between the late 1960s and early 1970s was the time when the use of the birth control pill became controversial in the Western medical and popular debate, mainly because of the discovery of related side effects which had not been studied carefully before the pill went on the market92 . In the Soviet context, this Western debate seemed to be the primary source for highlighting the side effects of the pill: several articles in “Zdorovie” drew on debates at international conferences rather than on the findings of Soviet doctors, as was the case with abortion93 . It is important to note that the pill was imported to the Soviet Union from neighboring socialist countries, such as Hungary and Poland94 . This implied that little or no value was placed on the development and medical testing of the pill by Soviet scientists themselves. Moreover, to show that Western countries failed to provide their women with a safe birth control method, such as medical abortion, was consistent with Cold War politics, at least until 1973 when abortion was legalized in the US95 . In this context, the pill was portrayed as an effective but unhealthy technology for women’s sexual liberation outside the Soviet Union96 . The first articles addressing hormonal contraception in the early 1960s present it as associated with undesirable side effects, such as problems with menstrual cycle and breast development97 , ectopic pregnancy98 and even men’s temporary infertility by causing impotence and thus suppressing the work of male sex glands 92 93 94 95 96 97 98

Marks, Sexual Chemistry, p. 96. Zdorovie 2 (1967), p. 30; 5 (1974), p. 20. Popov, Family Planning, p. 247. On abortion as the state’s achievement in protecting Soviet women see: Zdorovie 12 (1962), p. 18; 5 (1965), p. 17. Zdorovie 5 (1974), p. 20. Zdorovie 2 (1962), p. 20. Zdorovie 9 (1960), p. 13.

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(testicles)99 . In the later 1960s and early 1970s, while hormonal contraception was still portrayed with caution and as a matter to be discussed with a doctor, the effectiveness of the method was acknowledged and some details of how it actually worked in a woman’s body were now more openly discussed100 . However, “Zdorovie” adopted a rhetorical stance regarding the pill, which echoed that around clandestine versus medical abortion in the early 1960s. In this case, the pill was contrasted with a novel alternative, an intrauterine device (IUD). An article published in 1974 discussed positive and negative sides of new contraceptives, namely the pill and IUDs in binary form101 . This article was the first in “Zdorovie” to give this type of overview of both methods. It presented IUDs as a healthy and effective method and as such a perfect substitute for abortion. On the contrary the pill was presented as an effective but not entirely healthy method, which could cause complications in later pregnancies and other health disorders such as vein inflammation102 . This repeated pro-IUD representation taught women not only to use but also to not even consider the pill. Importantly, like the pill, IUDs (copper and plastic) were also first developed and produced in the US in the 1960s103 . However, in the Soviet view, contrary to the pill and similar to abortion, IUDs made women’s bodies more visible and more useful to the state in terms of labor, housewifery and motherhood, as will be shown in the next paragraph. The first articles on IUDs appeared in “Zdorovie” in 1973104 . IUDs were presented both as a reliable and an easily accessible method. On the one hand, IUDs allowed doctors to maintain a close supervision of women at all stages and, similar to abortion, they supported the construction of doctors as advisors and “gatekeepers”. On the other hand, IUDs enabled women to practice spacing and limiting births much more easily, since an IUD can be used continuously for two to three years. Importantly, this method did not require the actual involvement of a husband. This means that doctors could directly supervise women and eliminate their husband from decisions about birth control. “Zdorovie” immediately gave this method a “green light” by also providing advice about when a woman needed to acquire it by stating that a doctor could easily insert it after menstruation ended105 , which again paralleled the rhetoric surrounding medical abortion with a doctor as a “gatekeeper” of birth control that started 99 100 101 102 103 104 105

Zdorovie 9 (1962), p. 31. Zdorovie 5 (1974), p. 20. Ibid., p. 20f. Zdorovie 2 (1967), p. 20; 5 (1974), p. 20. Chikako Takeshita, The Global Biopolitics of the IUD. How Science Constructs Contraceptive Users, Cambridge, Massachusetts 2012, p. 73–103. Brief accounts on IUDs were previous discussed in 1973: Zdorovie 1 (1973), p. 17; 8 (1973), p. 17. Zdorovie 1 (1973), p. 17; 8 (1973), p. 17; 5 (1974), p. 20.

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in the mid-1950s. The only limitation was that it was suitable for women who already had at least one child106 , similar to abortion. It was not recommended for women who did not have their first child yet since they were expected, as discussed in the previous section, to practice abstinence. Immediate acceptance of IUDs signified state authorities’ recognition of the fact that the population needed a tool not only to space births, which previous birth control methods supported, but also to limit them107 . The discursive strategy deployed in “Zdorovie” put a limit on the universality of the pill and encouraged IUDs. While the pill was also represented as a reliable and possible means of birth control for specific circumstances, it was recommended only for women who could not use other methods, and this decision was to be discussed with a doctor108 . Furthermore, the primary purpose of the pill was presented as a treatment of infertility and menopause. This, in fact, had been the original use for progesterone in combination with other hormones, before their contraceptive abilities were discovered109 . “Zdorovie” treated the pill as treatment for infertility and menopause quite differently than the pill as a form of birth control. The general population was not educated about side effects when the pill was discussed as a treatment for infertility or menopause110 , and that knowledge remained with medical practitioners. In contrast, as we have shown, the general population was taught about the many negative side effects of the pill as a form of contraception whose use, ultimately, required discussion and prescription by medical practitioners. A coupling of the rejection of the pill for contraception and acceptance of IUDs in “Zdorovie” may suggest Soviet hostility to the major achievements of US and Western biomedicine during the Cold War. Different in origin, but similar in effect, other scholars suggest that it was too costly to adopt the pill for contraception, as it would require the re-education of medical practitioners and a whole new set of tests to be carried out on the pill111 . Whether these were the only reasons or not, in the following decade the perception of hormonal contraception as dangerous for women’s health became hegemonic in the Soviet Union, and to this day the use of hormonal contraception remains 106 107

108 109 110 111

Zdorovie 5 (1974), p. 21. The idea of limiting births and hence fertility comes from Neo-Malthusian theorising about population, which communist thinkers and leaders have never accepted. See: Lenin, On Birth Control. That said, the Soviet state had to acknowledge that the idea of smaller families was also in the state’s interest, which subsequently implied limiting rather than spacing births. Zdorovie 5 (1974), p. 20f. Marks, Sexual Chemistry, p. 70. For the pill as a treatment for infertility see: Zdorovie 12 (1958), p. 20; 5 (1974), p. 20. On the pill as a treatment for menopause see: Zdorovie 9 (1956), p. 12; 5 (1974), p. 20. Кон, Аборт или контрацепция? (as in n. 3).

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very low while abortion and IUDs are still the most popular women’s methods of birth control, alongside with men’s methods, i.e. coitus interruptus and condoms112 .

Conclusions This study analyzed how in the Soviet Union responsibilities for birth control were attributed to different actors – women, men and medical practitioners in a manner that allowed the state to maintain control over its population. By drawing on a Foucauldian analysis of biopower, we discussed how the medicalization of birth control was attempted not by force but by encoding particular messages in “Zdorovie”. We found a discourse at the center in which the state, either directly or through men, claimed knowledge and authority that was used to protect women. This construction naturalized early medical practitioners’ exercise of power over women’s bodies in controlling women’s access to medical abortion and, thus, gaining control over the entire population. In the mid-1950s and early 1960s legal abortion was presented as the only safe and effective means of birth control. However, the state’s attempts to manage abortion rates in the 1960s were unsuccessful. Presumably pro-natalist men were then included in birth control decision-making in a manner consistent with the “natural complement theory” within which men are seen as responsible for protecting women from an unwanted pregnancy by using more healthy and reliable methods of birth control, such as condoms and abstinence. In this discursive formation, medical practitioners still maintained their subject positions as “gatekeepers” in these matters whose main role was to protect women by educating men. This discursive shift was also connected to the failure of the state to offer effective methods of birth control other than abortion, such as the pill, which, in the 1960s, was already available in the US and many Western European countries. In the 1970s, however, the state regained direct power, and thus control, over women’s bodies from men with the introduction of IUDs. This method was presented as a safe alternative to abortion. Also, IUDs allowed doctors to easily supervise women, since they would have to insert an IUD into a woman’s uterus, and it was easy for women to use it since they could keep it there

112

See for example: Nataliia Levchuk, Brienna Perelli-Harris, Declining Fertility in Ukraine. What is the Role of Abortion and Contraception? MPIDR Working Paper WP 2009-045, Rostock 2009; Larissa Remennick et al., Family Planning Practices and Attitudes Among former Soviet New Immigrant Women in Israel, in: Social Science & Medicine 41/4 (1995), p. 569–577; Larissa Remennick, Epidemology and Determinants of Induced Abortion in the USSR, in: Social Science & Medicine 33/7 (1991), p. 841–848.

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for two to three years. This discursive turn also illuminated the state’s need to introduce a more reliable birth control method in a context where hormones as a means of birth control were already accessible in the West. The pill–IUDs nexus provides an example of Soviet biopolitics: use of the pill would not allow women’s bodies to be visible to medical practitioners as easily as abortion; yet, abortion was linked to infertility. IUDs made women’s bodies visible and provided a viable alternative to abortion that did not require the state to recognize the pill as a Western success. This analysis of the Soviet birth control discourses demonstrates the productivity of situating Soviet biopolitics in the context of the Cold War. The evolution of the discursive fields described above was not solely the matter of national population politics in the Soviet Union, but also and perhaps even more prominently it was a product of Cold War competition. The Soviet state sought a means of birth regulation that would not have as negative impact on fertility rates as the high abortion rates were believed to do. At the same time, the Soviet birth control methods had to be as effective as the US contraceptive pill, especially after the pill was introduced in 1960 in the West, and easily controllable by the state, as eventually IUDs appeared to be. We suggest that this struggle over birth control is yet another example of a hegemonic struggle in the Foucauldian sense, a product of the Cold War, in the private sphere of everyday life, similar to “the Kitchen Debate”. Our research implies that “the Kitchen Debate” and the struggle around birth control could be connected processes, as the sphere of consumption and households, the battleground in the first, constituted the context for the individual possibilities and decisions in the second. Therefore, further research to address these Cold War interdependencies though a comparative lens by also including the US and Western Europe in this picture would be productive. That said, it would be too short-sighted to conclude that the Soviet population’s reproductive behavior was totally dominated and controlled by the state and that Soviet state power was always capable of maintaining its hegemony over its population. If we take for granted what is written on the pages of “Zdorovie”, we would (mis)recognise the benevolent yet regulatory biopower exerted on men and women by the state via the medical practitioners as absolute. In this respect, this type of research is unable to detect the (ir)rationalities and agency of individuals in reproductive decision-making. Therefore, future research should also look into how the population understood state messages and practiced birth control in their everyday lives.

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Acknowledgments We wish to thank the participants of the conference “Making Children? 20th Century Value Changes in Human Reproduction and Family Planning” (April 2016, Mainz) and of the workshop “Interrogating the Fertility Decline in Europe” (January 2017, Bochum) for their valuable comments. We would also like to thank the editors of this volume and Peter Tamas for their valuable feedback on the earlier versions of this paper.

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Paradox of the Pill: Oral Contraceptives in Spain and Poland (1960s–1970s) This chapter analyzes the early circulation of oral contraceptives in Spain and Poland (1960s–1980s) using comparative historiographic methodology and a variety of sources, including: archival documents, medical literature, daily press, women’s and Catholic magazines, legal sources and opinion polls. In Spain, where the sale and advertisement of all contraceptive methods were illegal between 1941 and 1978, the pill began to circulate in the early 1960s and was officially introduced as a prescription drug for the treatment of a variety of gynecological problems. Despite the legal ban on disseminating information about contraception, the pill was widely discussed in both the medical and general press, the ongoing discussions being stimulated by contemporary debates about the pill within the Catholic Church. Demand for the pill grew dramatically during the first two decades of its circulation, enhanced, among other factors, by the successful medical marketing and advertising of anovulatory drugs by international pharmaceutical companies operating in Spain. In Poland, despite a lack of legal restrictions regarding contraception, the pill circulated to a far lesser degree. While Western brands began to appear on the Polish market in the early 1960s, the local pharmaceutical industry only started to manufacture the first Polish pill towards the end of the decade. Easy access to abortion since the mid-1950s meant authorities placed little emphasis on providing women with effective contraceptive methods. Coupled with inefficient management of pharmaceutical production and distribution on the centrally planned market, this contributed to the limited circulation of the pill in Poland. A close examination of Polish medical literature reveals that most Polish doctors defended the pill’s safety if used under medical supervision. The same argument was put forward in the general press, which played a key role in promoting the pill and other contraceptive methods, but also highlighted problems with access to the drug and criticized the alleged preference of Polish women for abortion as a birth control resource. The main conclusion is that in Spain, the pill was one of the vectors that enhanced the transition of values attached to reproduction and sexuality during the last years of Franco’s regime. It also contributed to enhancing doctors’ involvement in family planning provision and counselling. In contemporary Poland, in contrast, the pill only played a marginal role, failing to catalyze a similar value transaction.

https://doi.org/9783110524499-006

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Introduction In 1977, a year before the sale and promotion of birth control was decriminalized in Spain after a prohibition of over 35-year, more than 8 million blister packs of oral contraceptives had been sold in the country. The same year in state-socialist Poland, a country with a comparable population size and where contraception was not only legal, but also enjoyed official support from the regime, only about 1.5 million packages of oral contraceptives were purchased1 . Why were oral contraceptives far more popular in Spain, where the circulation of all contraceptive methods had been banned for decades, than in Poland, where the State officially supported contraception? This chapter aims at examining this paradox. The temporal framework for my analysis is the first twenty years of circulation of the pill on international markets. Oral contraceptives made their debut in 1960, when the American Food and Drug Administration authorized the pharmaceutical company Searle to commercialize Enovid, a combination of synthetic progesterone and oestrogen, which had been circulating in the US since 1957 for the treatment of “menstrual disorders” and endometriosis, on prescription as a hormonal contraceptive. Almost immediately, the pill began circulating on the Spanish and Polish markets, but, as this chapter will demonstrate, its subsequent trajectories developed differently. Over the past two decades, there has been a growing academic interest in the social and cultural itineraries of the pill in Anglo-Saxon and Western European contexts2 . The comparative approach3 , applied by historians of the pill to the British, American and West German cases4 , has proven a fruitful way of studying the impact of social, medical and economic factors on the pill’s local trajectories. In this chapter, my intention is to examine these trajectories 1

2

3 4

Gerardo Hernández Rodríguez, Aborto y planificación familiar. Aspectos sociológicos, in: Revista Española de Investigaciones Sociológicas 5 (1979), p. 137–163; Marek Okólski, Abortion and Contraception in Poland, in: Studies in Family Planning 14/11 (1983), p. 263– 276 (268). Lara Marks, Sexual Chemistry. A History of the Contraceptive Pill, New Haven, London 2010, p. 60–88; Elizabeth Siegel Watkins, On the Pill. A Social History of Oral Contraceptives, 1950–1970, Baltimore 1998; Eva-Maria Silies, Liebe, Lust und Last: Die Pille als weibliche Generationserfahrung in der Bundesrepublik 1960–1980, Göttingen 2010; Ulrike Thoms, The Contraceptive Pill, the Pharmaceutical Industry and Changes in the Patient-Doctor Relationship in West Germany, in: Teresa Ortiz-Gómez, María Jesús Santesmases (eds.), Gendered Drugs and Medicine. Historical and Socio-Cultural Perspectives, Farnham 2014, p. 153–174; Eva-Maria Silies, Taking the Pill after the ‘Sexual Revolution’. Female Contraceptive Decisions in England and West Germany in the 1970s, in: European Review of History/Revue Européenne d’Histoire 22/1 (2015), p. 41–59. Stefan Berger, Comparative History, in: Stefan Berger, Heiko Feldner, Kevin Passamore (eds.), Writing History. Theory and Practice, London 2003, p. 161–179. Marks, Sexual Chemistry (as in n. 2); Silies, Taking the Pill (as in n. 2).

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in non-democratic regimes, the historiography of which remains embryonic5 . Applying a comparative perspective to two countries under dictatorships with contrasting underlying ideologies and different market organizations, but with a similar predominance of the Catholic religion among their citizens, allows for an examination of the intersections of dictatorial States’ reproductive policies and changing social perceptions of – and values attached to – contraceptive practices in these regimes. Central to this enquiry is the concept of drug circulation, which takes pharmaceuticals as entities onto which multiple cultural meanings of health and illness, medicine, gender and sexuality are inscribed, and which travel through space and time, spreading ideas and values6 . This study compares the circulation of the pill in Spain and Poland during the 1960s and 1970s, using a historiographic methodology with a gender perspective. It is based on a variety of sources: archival documents, particularly of the pharmaceutical firms which operated in Spain and Poland, legal sources, opinion polls, medical literature, and daily press as well as general interest, women’s and Catholic magazines. In what follows, I first briefly discuss the specificities of the 5

6

Social historiography of birth control in Central and Eastern Europe after 1945 has focused on gendered constructions of abortion policies and practices (Amy E. Randall, “Abortion will Deprive you of Happiness!”. Soviet Reproductive Politics in the Post-Stalin Era, in: Journal of Women’s History 23/3 (2011), p. 13–38; Yuliya Hilevych, Abortion and Gender Relationships in Ukraine, 1955–1970, in: The History of the Family 20/1 (2015), p. 86–105; Barbara Klich-Kluczewska, Making Up for the Losses of War. Reproduction Politics in Post-War Poland, in: Maren Röger, Ruth Leserowitz (eds.), Women and Men at War. A Gender Perspective on World War II and its Aftermath in Central and Eastern Europe, Osnabrück 2012, p. 307–328. This literature has left circulation of oral contraceptives in the region largely unexplored. Recent studies on East German (Annette Leo, Christian König, Die ‘Wunschkindpille’. Weibliche Erfahrung und staatliche Geburtenpolitik in der DDR, Göttingen 2015) and Polish cases (Agata Ignaciuk, “Clueless about Contraception”. The Introduction and Circulation of the Contraceptive Pill, in: Medicina nei secoli. Arte e scienza 26/2 (2014), p. 491–518; Sylwia Kuźma-Markowska, Międzynarodowe aspekty dzialaności Towarzystwa Świadomego Macierzyństwa w latach 50. i 60. XX w., in: Bożena Płonka-Syroka, Aleksandra Szlagowska (eds.), Problem kontroli urodzeń i antykoncepcji. Krytyczno-porównawcza analiza dyskursów, Wrocław 2013, p. 265–282) aim to bridge this gap. Similarly, contraceptive policies of dictatorial regimes of the Southern Europe in the second half of the 20th century have only recently attracted academic attention: Ana Maria Prata Amaral Pereira, Women’s Movements, the State, and the Struggle for Abortion Rights: Comparing Spain and Portugal in Times of Democratic Expansion (1974–1988), Michigan 2008; Teresa Ortiz-Gómez, Agata Ignaciuk, “Pregnancy and Labour Cause More Deaths than Oral Contraceptives”. The Debate on the Pill in the Spanish Press in the 1970s, in: Public Understanding of Science 24/6 2015, p. 658–671; Agata Ignaciuk, Teresa OrtizGómez, Esteban Rodríguez Ocaña, Doctors, Women and Circulation of Knowledge on Oral Contraceptives in Spain. 1940s–1970s, in: Ortiz-Gómez, Santesmases (eds.), Gendered Drugs and Medicine (as in n. 2), p. 133–152. María Jesús Santesmases, Christoph Gradmann, Circulation of Antibiotics. An Introduction, in: Dynamis 31/2 (2011), p. 293–303.

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Spanish and Polish cases, focusing on gender regimes, the States’ reproductive policies, the roles of the Catholic Church and the particularities of each country’s drug markets and pharmaceutical industries. These remarks sketch a background for a more detailed discussion of the introduction and subsequent trajectories of the pill in Spain and Poland during the 1960s and 1970s. Finally, I draw some concluding remarks, linking the success of the pill in Spain with the change of values related to family, sexuality and reproduction it catalyzed in this country and failed to catalyze in Poland, the second case study.

Contraception, the State and Gender in Spain and Poland in the Sixties and Seventies During most of the period under discussion, Spain and Poland were dictatorships and as such shared the presence of a repressive State apparatus and its control over the media. Also, in both countries, the Catholic Church played an important role in promoting models and values related to gender, family and sexuality. Its relationship with the authorities, although complex and changeable throughout the 1960s and 1970s, may be summarized as collaboration in Spain and conflict in Poland. The opposite underlying ideologies: national-Catholicism (Spain) and state-socialism (Poland), also forged different birth control policies, gender regimes and the shape of markets – including the drug market – in each country during the early years of the pill’s circulation. Spain between 1939 and 1975 was ruled by the military regime of General Francisco Franco, a regime which was self-defined as national-Catholic. Indeed, and especially during the first decades of the dictatorship, the Spanish Roman Catholic Church was the Franco regime’s ideological backbone. As a result of the State-Church alliance, acts considered sins by the Church were codified by the regime into crimes. One example of such codification was the 1941 law “for the protection of natality, against abortion and contraceptive propaganda”7 . Serving the purpose of reconstructing the nation after a devastating war, it criminalized all “non-spontaneous” abortion and banned selling, advertising, distributing and publicly exhibiting contraceptives. The ban was officially lifted only in 1978 – three years after the dictator’s death, which in 1975 triggered the beginning of the democratic transition in the country8 . 7 8

Ley de 21 de enero para la protección de la natalidad, contra el aborto y la propaganda anticoncepcionista, in: Boletín Oficial del Estado 33 (1941), p. 768f. Agata Ignaciuk, Políticas reproductivas y práctica médica en España y Polonia (1941–1983), in: Anticoncepción hormonal en España y Polonia. Discursos, debates y prácticas entre 1960 y 1980, Granada 2015.

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The national-catholicization of Spain under Franco also influenced the installation of specific gender models. Especially rigid during the first two decades of the dictatorship (1940s–1950s), gender norms imposed on women promoted their removal from the workforce. After getting married, women were typically expected to become full-time housewives and bear numerous children9 . Yet, the regime aged with the dictator and although political repression continued until Franco’s death in 1975, the 1960s and first half of the 1970s brought a slow erosion of state control of the press10 , increased participation of women in higher education and paid employment, and transformation of the economy from the autarchy of the early decades of Francoism to internationalization from 1959 on11 . This transformation had an immediate effect on the local drug market, which, although it continued to be heavily regulated, in the 1960s and 1970s was undergoing an intense process of internationalization and faced the expansion of international pharmaceutical companies12 . After the Second World War and until 1989, Poland became a communist dictatorship under the rule of the Polish Unified Workers’ Party. The Catholic Church, stronger in Poland than in any other Central and Eastern European country and with a great proportion of Poles declaring themselves Catholics, stood in opposition to the state-socialist regime. As an institution which succeeded in maintaining itself as independent from the dictatorship, the Church was perceived as freedom and democracy’s defender. After 1945, the relationship between the hierarchy of the Church and communist authorities was balanced between fragile tolerance and open conflict and persecution of the clergy by the authorities. As opposed to contemporary Spain, promotion of contraceptives and the provision of information about birth control in Poland was not only legal, but also financed by the State, which sponsored the establishment of the Society for Conscious Motherhood (1957), the organization designated to disseminate contraceptive information throughout Polish society with the aim to prevent abortion from becoming a standard birth control method13 . Pregnancy termina9 10 11

12 13

Gloria Nielfa Cristóbal (ed.), Mujeres y hombres en la España Franquista. Sociedad, economía, política, cultura, Madrid 2003. Enrique Borderia Ortiz, La prensa durante el Franquismo. Represión, censura y negocio, Valencia 2000. Pablo Martín Aceña, Elena Martínez Ruiz, The Golden Age of Spanish Capitalism: Economic Growth Without Political Freedom, in: Nigel Townson (ed.), Spain Transformed. The Late Franco Dictatorship, 1959–75, New York 2007, p. 60; Monica Threlfall, Feminist Politics and Social Change in Spain, in: Monica Threlfall (ed.), Mapping the Women’s Movement: Feminist Politics and Social Transformation in the North, London 1996, p. 115–151 (151). Laura Chaqués Bonafont, Política industrial farmacéutica, in: Estructura y política farmacéutica, Madrid 2002, p. 166–213 (196f.). Kuźma-Markowska, Międzynarodowe aspekty (as in n. 5); Agata Ignaciuk, “Ten szkodliwy zabieg”: Dyskursy na temat aborcji w publikacjach Towarzystwa Świadomego

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tion was legalized in Poland in April 1956 and was made available free of charge in public clinics and hospitals to women who declared that they faced personal or economic difficulties14 . The laicization of Polish society the communist authorities aimed for was also reflected in state-proposed gender models. Polish women, whose equality with men was inscribed in the People’s Republic of Poland 1952’s Constitution15 , were expected to participate in paid employment. The encouragement of this participation had different levels of intensity in different moments of the regime’s history, varying from promoting women taking ‘male’ jobs in heavy industry, mines and agriculture during the Stalinist period16 to conceptualizing them as a ‘reserve army of labor’ (especially in the 1970s and 1980s)17 . On the other hand, the Polish pharmaceutical industry, similarly to other industries, was nationalized and surrendered to the principles of central planning, and manufactured drugs for a largely autarchic market. Similar to what happened in neighboring countries, Western pharmaceutical companies were banned from establishing a strong presence in Poland until capitalization of the communist economy commenced in the 1990s. Despite the differences between the two regimes, oral contraceptives appeared in both Spain and Poland almost simultaneously: at the beginning of the 1960s, very soon after they were launched in the US. Enovid, together with Anovlar and Lyndiol, the best-selling products of Europe-based pharmaceutical firms Schering and Organon, were also the first brands to be circulated in both Spain and Poland. They were initially used on a small scale in some of the gynecological clinics of each country, which received samples of the products for testing from the manufacturers18 . Yet, the subsequent trajectories of the pill in each country took a radically different shape.

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15 16

17 18

Macierzyństwa/Towarzystwa Planowania Rodziny, in: Zeszyty Etnologii Wroclawskiej 1/20 (2014), p. 75–97. Aleksandra Czajkowska, O dopuszczalności przerywania ciąży. Ustawa z dnia 27 kwietnia 1956 r. i towarzyszące jej dyskusje, in: Marcin Kula (ed.), Kłopoty z seksem w PRL. Rodzenie nie całkiem po ludzku, aborcja, choroby, odmienności, Warszawa 2012, p. 99–186. Art. 66, Konstytucja Polskiej Rzeczpospolitej Ludowej uchwalona przez Sejm Ustawodawczy w dniu 22 lipca, in: Dziennik Ustaw 33 (1952), p. 345–370 (364). Małgorzata Fidelis, Women, Communism, and Industrialization in Postwar Poland, Chicago 2010; Ewelina Szpak, Female Tractor Driver, Labour Heroine and Activist. Images of New Socialist Rural Women in the Polish Communist Press (1950–75), in: Steven G. Ellis, Lud’a Klusáková (eds.), Imagining Frontiers, Contesting Identities, Pisa 2007, 413–428. Jacqueline Heinen, Monika Wator, Child Care in Poland Before, During, and After the Transition. Still a Women’s Business, in: Social Politics 13/2 (2006), p. 189–216 (193). Ignaciuk, Anticoncepción hormonal (as in n. 8), p. 154.

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Making Contraception Respectable: The First Two Decades of the Pill’s Circulation in Spain The introduction of the pill in Spain followed the same mechanism as in the US in the late 1950s: it was officially commercialized as a therapeutic drug for the treatment of a wide range of gynecological problems and sterility. Yet, while the FDA’s authorization for Enovid to be sold in the US as an oral contraceptive in 1960 updated formal indications for prescription beyond therapy, in Spain therapeutic indications continued to legally back the sale and advertisement of these products until the ban on contraceptive propaganda was lifted in October 197819 . The drugs commercialized in countries such as the UK, United States or West Germany as oral contraceptives were known in Spanish medical circles and in wider society as anovulatorios or anti-ovulation drugs, a technical name that connoted their contraceptive potential without appealing to it directly. Between the early 1960s and late 1970s, anovulatorios’ brands and sales multiplied on the Spanish market. While in the mid-1960s, there were at least five brands in circulation, this number tripled before the end of the 1960s, with some 24 brands available at the beginning of the 1980s. Similarly, sales of anovulatorios rocketed from some 35.000 blister packs in 1964, reaching, according to different sources, between 1.700.000 and 3.300.000 in 1970, and peaking at almost 9.700.0000 in 197820 . With their growing availability and consumption, Spain was similar to the US, Britain, the Netherlands or West Germany, where no legal restrictions existed on the sale and promotion of contraceptives21 . The early trajectory of anovulatorios in Spain can be divided into three phases: preparation (first half of the 1960s), discussion (mid-1960s to mid-1970s) and consolidation (after 1975). During the first half of the 1960s, anovulatorios started circulating on the Spanish market. Initially, this circulation was limited to selected research clinics in major hospitals, where they became objects of small-scale clinical trials. Following the introduction of a new law regulating the activities of pharmaceutical companies in Spain in 196322 , anovulatorios also began to be widely advertised in medical journals. Local medical knowledge about these new drugs built upon Spanish doctors’ familiarity with international research on nor-steroids, partic19 20 21 22

Ley 45/1978 de 7 de octubre por la que se modifican los artículos 416 y 343 bis del Código Penal, in: Boletín Oficial Del Estado 243 (1978), p. 23604. Carmen Sánchez Carazo, Introducción de los anovulatorios orales en España. Aspectos morales, sociales y médicos, Madrid 1998, p. 315. Marks, Sexual Chemistry; Silies, Liebe, Lust und Last (as in n. 2). Decreto 2646/1963, de 10 de agosto que regula los laboratorios de especialidades farmacéuticas y el registro, distribución y publicidad de las mismas, Boletín Oficial del Estado 240 (1963), p. 14303.

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ularly the works of Gregory G. Pincus, John Rock and collaborators, the team involved in making synthetic progesterone into a contraceptive pill in the US in the second half of the 1950s23 . Despite the ongoing Spanish legal ban on contraceptive propaganda, up-to-date information about international developments regarding the pill was discussed in Spanish medical journals freely and without obscuring its contraceptive properties24 . First local trials, conducted mainly in Barcelona and Madrid and reported between 1963 and 1965 on the pages of key local journals for obstetrics and gynecology, focused on therapeutic possibilities and mechanisms of action of early brands Enovid, Lyndiol or Anovial25 . Anovial 21, distributed in Spain by the local branch of Schering AG Berlin, Productos Químicos Schering, was also the first brand to be advertised in the Spanish medical press in 1964. This and other early adverts of anovulatorios focused on their therapeutic uses, such as painful menstruation, sterility, endometriosis and irregularities of the menstrual cycle. Advertising aimed at physicians was one of many resources used in the careful and coordinated marketing strategies of pharmaceutical companies operating on the Spanish market. These were carried out with the aim of fostering medical and, subsequently, also social acceptance for ovulation inhibitors, an acceptance which ended up being extended to contraception in general. These marketing resources26 included the provision of drug samples for trials, visits by firms’ sales representatives to physicians, sponsored medical literature and persuasion of ‘opinion-leaders’ to research with, write about and publicly endorse anovulatorios, as well as physician-targeted advertising in key Spanish journals for obstetrics and gynecology.

23 24

25

26

Marks, Sexual Chemistry, p. 57. For a detailed discussion of the methodology used for the analysis of the publications about anovulatorios in Spanish medical press, see Ignaciuk, Anticoncepción hormonal; Esteban Rodríguez-Ocaña, Agata Ignaciuk, Teresa Ortiz-Gómez, Ovulostáticos y anticonceptivos. El conocimiento médico sobre la píldora en España durante el Franquismo y la transición democrática (1940–1979), in: Dynamis 32/2 (2012), p. 467–494. Pere Pujol Amat, Progestagenos de sintesis e inhibición de la ovulacion, in: Medicina Clinica 41/5 (1963), p. 396–405; Manuel Márquez Ramírez, Jordi Massanas Rosado, Pere Pujol Amat, Proyección sobre el endometrio de los inhibidores hormonales de la ovulación, in: Acta Ginecológica XVI (1964), p. 33–35; Pere Pujol Amat, Jordi Massanas Rosado, Manuel Márquez Ramírez, Primeras experiencias con inhibidores hormonales de la ovulación, in: Acta Ginecologica XV (1964), p. 648; Victor Cónill Serra, Anovulatorios y deporte femenino, in: Revista Española de Obstetricia y Ginecología 22/142 (1965), p. 206f.; Victor Cónill Serra, Consideraciones ginecológicas sobre anovulatorios y deporte femenino, in: Medicina Deportiva 2 (1965), p. 155f. On the historical development of drug marketing in the West: Jean-Paul Gaudillière, Ulrike Thoms, The Development of Scientific Marketing in the Twentieth Century. Research for Sales in the Pharmaceutical Industry, London 2015.

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The beginning of advertising campaigns for anovulatorios in Spain coincided with the publication of the first articles dedicated to the pill in the Spanish media. In “Triunfo”, which in 1962 became one of the key Spanish opinion magazines critical of the regime, its regular collaborator, liberal theologian Enrique Miret Magdalena introduced the pill to the magazine’s readers, and praised it as a ‘natural’ cycle regulator, useful for enhancing the effectiveness of cycle-observation based birth control27 . Miret Magdalena’s discussion of the pill in terms of its potential utility for Catholic spouses anticipated key discursive nodes of the mid-1960s to mid-1970s discussions about anovulatorios in Spain. These discussions, taking place in medical circles as well as in wider society, as reflected in growing coverage of this drug in professional as well as general press, were facilitated and legitimized by the intensification of the debates about the pill within the Catholic community. The question whether the pill could be used in a Catholic marriage had caused controversy since the late 1950s. In 1958, in a discourse given during the international Congress of Hematology, widely circulated within the Spanish Catholic community28 , Pope Pius XII condemned artificial contraception and insemination, and emphasized a moral difference between ‘direct’ and ‘indirect’ sterilization achieved through the employment of oral contraceptives. ‘Indirect sterilization’, when ‘ovarian rest’ produced by the pill was a side-effect for medical treatment, was morally acceptable, whilst ‘direct sterilization’, when temporary infertility was the main objective of prescribing and taking the drug, was not. These declarations by no means ended the controversy. The Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) discussed the idea of ‘responsible parenthood’, or the right of married Catholics to decide upon the number of children they would bear. In making this decision, parents would have to be as generous as possible, but take into account their particular circumstances and (temporarily or permanently) limit the number of children if health problems or economic difficulties occurred29 . While recognizing that sex served not only reproductive purposes but was also a mean of enhancing love and communication between (Catholic) spouses, the Council did not publish any official statements about the possibility of using the pill for the purposes of responsible parenthood30 . 27 28

29

30

Enrique Miret Magdalena, La Iglesia y la natalidad, in: Triunfo 194 (1964), p. 36f. See also Ortiz-Gómez, Ignaciuk, “Pregnancy and Labour” (as in n. 5). Pio XII, Discurso a los participantes en el Congreso Internacional de Hematología del 12 de Septiembre de 1958, in: Ecclesia 899 (1958); see also Sánchez Carazo, Introducción de los anovulatorios orales (as in n. 20), p. 105. Karina Felitti, El mundo católico ante la paternidad responsable, in: La revolución de la píldora. Sexualidades y política en la Argentina de los años sesenta, Buenos Aires 2012, p. 153–188 (157f.). Karina Felitti, La Iglesia Católica y el control de la natalidad en tiempos de concilio: La

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This possibility had been endorsed by many theologians and renown secular Catholics, such as Dr. John Rock, a key figure in the early history of oral contraceptives, responsible for their early testing31 , and a firm defender of the pill as a ‘natural’ contraceptive method that, as such should be included within the one-item-catalogue of the Catholic Church of accepted contraceptive methods: the periodic abstinence. Behind many of the voices endorsing the pill stood the defense of it as being a ‘natural’ contraceptive method in a double sense. First, it did not interfere with the ‘normal’ course of coitus (the penis penetrating the vagina and ejaculating inside it), ‘corrupted’ by birth control methods such as coitus interruptus or a condom. Second, temporary sterility produced by the pill was achieved by substances analogous to those naturally present in women’s bodies and mimicking natural states of sterility that female organisms went through during pregnancy, breastfeeding or menopause. They also criticized the rhythm method as ‘unnatural’ in a sense that the preparation (careful menstrual cycle observation) and abstinence it required severely interfered with a couple’s sex life, and complained about its limited reliability32 . In 1963, the same year as Rock’s book “The time has come: A Catholic doctor’s proposal to end the battle over birth control”33 was first published, Pope John XXIII established the Pontifical Commission on Birth Control. Its aim was to deliberate about contraception, and in particular about oral contraceptives’ compatibility with the Catholic doctrine. John XXIII’s successor, Paul VI, expanded the Commission from six to over 70 members, including bishops, theologians, medical physicians and lay Catholics. In 1967, the Commission’s report endorsing married Catholics’ right to choose the contraceptive methods they wished to employ to exercise “responsible parenthood” was made public; a minority report was also issued stating that the Church should continue with its rejection of all ‘artificial contraception’, including the pill. In 1968, the publication of Pope Paul VI’s Encyclical “Humanae Vitae”, which reiterated the banning of all ‘artificial’ contraception, and authorized the pill only if used for ‘indirect sterilization’, proved that expectations raised towards the possibility of changing the Catholic Church’s official birth control politics were in vain34 . Yet, the pill continued to be the object of passionate discussions among Catholics worldwide. Many theologians continued to defend the couple’s right to choose the contraceptive methods best suited to their needs, and to encourage them to prioritize their own awareness over the Encyclical. In the same fashion, many interpreted the

31 32 33 34

recepción de la encíclica Humanae Vitae (1968) en Argentina, in: Anuario IEHS 22 (2007), p. 349–372. Marks, Sexual Chemistry, p. 57. Sánchez Carazo, Introducción de los anovulatorios orales, p. 132. John Charles Rock, The Time Has Come. A Catholic Doctor’s Proposals to End the Battle over Birth Control, London 1963. Felitti, La revolución de la píldora (as in n. 29).

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papal document as guidance but not as a norm, whose non-observance would equal mortal sin and exclusion from the Catholic community.35 In the Spanish context of the legal ban of contraceptive propaganda, these ongoing debates contributed to the dissemination of information about the pill and contraception in general, especially during what I call the “discussion” phase of the pill’s Spanish trajectory, between the mid-1960s and mid-1970s. This dissemination was prominent in Spanish print media, where the pill was discussed freely despite the ongoing prohibition of divulging information about birth control. From 1966 on, the press in Spain was regulated by a new Press Law, which replaced preventive censorship with ‘volunteer consultation’, fines and the suspension of publication36 . The new legislation triggered a gradual loss of state control over the media and amplified the number of spaces available for pluralism and dissension37 . Among these spaces, Spanish ‘democratic’ opinion magazines, such as the already mentioned “Triunfo” or “Cuadernos para el Diálogo”, which flourished after 1966, played a key role. In these magazines, anovulatorios, or simply ‘the pill’, were habitually represented in the second half of the 1960s as a legitimate resource for Catholic couples who wanted to delay their children’s births or limit their family size38 . Similar discussions were also prominent in daily press titles such as “ABC” or “La Vanguardia”, which, apart from echoing ecclesiastic discussions, focused on controversy over the pill’s side effects39 . At the same time, conservative approaches to contraception remained prominent in some titles. Contemporary women’s magazines, such as the widely read “Ama” and “Telva”, were aimed at housewives, and tended to promote a conservative vision of femininity and family, rejecting all forms of birth control as a threat to women and the Catholic family40 . During the first half of the 1970s, the focus of the Spanish press’ coverage of the pill shifted towards representing its use as a widespread and ‘normal’ practice, no longer necessarily confined to married Catholics. While both the general press and women’s magazines continued to reproduce sensational news about the pill’s alleged dangerous side effects, the media also increasingly depicted oral 35 36 37 38

39 40

Sánchez Carazo, Introducción de los anovulatorios orales, p. 189f. Santos Juliá Díaz, España, 1966, in: Hoy no es ayer. Ensayos sobre historia de España en el siglo XX, Barcelona 2010, p. 233–244 (235). Ibid. Ignaciuk, Anticoncepción hormonal, p. 224–227; Agata Ignaciuk, Love in the Time of El Generalísimo: Debates about the Pill in Spain Before and After Humanae Vitae, in: Alana Harris (ed.), The Schism of ’68: Catholics, Contraception and Humanae Vitae in Europe, 1945–1975, London 2018. Ortiz-Gómez, Ignaciuk, “Pregnancy and Labour”, p. 664–667. Agata Ignaciuk, The Contraceptive Pill in the Magazines for Women in Spain and Poland (1960s–1970s), in: Aleksandra Różalska, Marek Wojcieszek, Elżbieta H. Oleksy (eds.), Personal of the Political. Transgenerational Dialogues in Contemporary European Feminisms, Cambridge 2015, p. 169–186.

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contraceptives as something ingrained in Spanish society. It was common for the print media to publish women’s (including young and single women’s) opinions about the pill and contraception in general, together with surveys covering the pill’s consumption and its sales’ data, thus contributing to a consolidation of social approval for its widespread use41 . Contemporary large-scale sociological surveys indeed showed that the pill was the most widely known contraceptive method amongst most Spanish married women. According to a poll on women’s attitudes towards family planning conducted in 1971, 70% of those interviewed “had heard of the pill” compared to 58% who knew the rhythm method42 . From the mid-1960 to mid-1970s, equally heated debates on anovulatorios took place within the medical community. The discursive nodes for these debates were the new drugs’ mechanisms of action, their side effects, and social and moral aspects of their use. Many contributors to Spanish medical journals in their articles echoed the conservative Catholic rejection for contraception in general, which is not a surprise considering that during the 1960s a large proportion of Spanish doctors declared themselves Catholics and admitted that religious beliefs had a considerable impact on their medical practice43 . While discussions on religious or moral aspects of the pill and its ultimate rejection was commonplace in Spanish medical literature, especially before 197544 , at least since the second half of the 1960s medical journals gave space to doctors publicly speaking against the convergence of medical and religious discourses and calling for a deeper engagement of medical professionals in the provision of family planning methods and advice45 . The notion of ‘therapy’ was central to the debates on social aspects of anovulatorios in the Spanish medical press46 . Following the legal norm, prescribing the pill was legal as long as there were therapeutic reasons for such a prescription, but the meaning of ‘therapy’ in Spanish medical journals stretched or shrank in correlation with the author’s ideology. Many doctors rejected the pill alto-

41 42 43 44 45

46

Ignaciuk, Anticoncepción hormonal, p. 232–235. Juan Díez Nicolás, Actitudes de las mujeres españolas hacia los métodos de planificacion samiliar, in: Revista Española de la Opinión Pública 31 (1973), p. 27–59. Salustiano del Campo, Los médicos ante el problema de la limitacion de la natalidad, in: Cambios sociales y formas de vida, Barcelona 1968, p. 230–244. Ignaciuk, Anticoncepción hormonal, p. 181–191. Los medicos ante la píldora. Segundo coloquio de Doctor, Dr. Doctor. Información profesional y administrativa Diciembre (1967), p. 49–57; Santiago Dexeus Font (ed.), Tratado de ginecología, Barcelona 1970; Vicente Salvatierra Mateu, Apuntes de ginecología, Granada 1973; Victor Cónill Serra, La planificacion familiar en la práctica hospitalaria, in: Progresos de Obstetricia y Ginecología 17/1 (1974), p. 29–36; Enrique Solano Berral, Planificacion familiar. Métodos anticonceptivos, Hispalis Médica. Revista Sevillana de Medicina y Cirurgia 31/362 (1974), p. 689–741. Ignaciuk, Anticoncepción hormonal, p. 171.

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gether47 , and others only recommended its prescription for the treatment of irregular menstruation or endometriosis, adhering to the papal authorization of pill use in ‘indirect [temporary] sterilization’48 . However, from the mid-1960s on, numerous professionals supported prescribing the pill in situations where pausing ovulation was the primary aim, in other words, to induce ‘direct [temporary] sterilization’, condemned by Pius XII and in the “Humanae Vitae”. This was the case, for example, when the pill was prescribed to guarantee ‘rest’ to a new or breastfeeding mother49 . For a growing number of doctors, who increasingly made their stance public towards the mid-1970s, providing the pill to a patient facing personal or economic difficulties could also be justified as therapeutic and thus legitimate and legal50 . This was the idea behind the first semi-clandestine outpatient birth control clinics, which started to be established in some of the major university hospitals in Madrid and Barcelona during the first half of the 1970s. Under the names of ‘sterility’ or ‘puerperal’ clinics, they were initially aimed at hospitals’ patients who had undergone difficult pregnancies or had health problems which made pregnancy inadvisable, but soon expanded their target patients to hospital workers and the general public51 . Oral contraceptives, probably in most cases donated by the manufacturers, were the most frequently recommended contraceptive method in these early clinics52 . From the second half of the 1960s, apart from donating free oral contraceptives to doctors involved in the early family planning clinics, pharmaceutical companies also developed the marketing of the pill through the intensification of doctor-targeted advertising. Advertisements for anovulatorios in medical journals multiplied53 , while the centrality of their therapeutic potential gave way

47

48 49

50 51

52 53

I.e. Juan Jimenéz Vargas, Guillermo López García, Aborto y contraceptivos, Pamplona 1973; Guillermo. López García, Aspectos médicos sobre el control de natalidad, aborto y contraceptivos, in: Gaceta Medica de Bilbao 24/6 (1974), p. 555–567. I.e. Pedro de la Fuente, Miguel Alemán, Control de la natalidad por regulación de la puesta ovular, in: Acta Ginecológica 20/12 (1969), p. 946–959. I.e. Lorenzo Abad Martinez, Las nuevas drogas anticoncepcionales. Puntos de vista deontológicos, in: Revista Española de Obstetricia y Ginecologia 21/137 (1964), p. 317–326; Los médicos ante la píldora; Alejandro Novo, Regulación de la natalidad, in: Toko–Ginecología Práctica 28/268 (1969), p. 39–50; Adelardo Caballero Gordo, Efectos colaterales de los contraceptivos orales. Sus peligros y contraindicaciones, in: Acta Ginecologica 21/5 (1970), p. 341–354. I.e. Cónill Serra, La planificacion familiar (as in n. 45). Teresa Ortiz-Gómez, Agata Ignaciuk, The Fight for Family Planning in Spain During Late Francoism and the Transition to Democracy, 1965–1979, in: Journal of Women’s History 32/2 (2018) (forthcoming). Ignaciuk, The Contraceptive Pill (as in n. 40). Agata Ignaciuk, Publicidad farmacéutica y género: Anuncios de la ‘píldora’ en España (1964–1985), in: Medicina e Historia 1 (2014), p. 4–21.

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to new promotional narratives which skillfully blended suggestions of contraceptive properties with images that conveyed safety and potential use by young, single women. These adverts aimed to fulfill a double objective: to represent the emerging demands of women for the pill, and normalize prescription by encouraging doctors to meet these demands54 . Franco’s death in 1975 signified the beginning of the democratic transition in Spain. For the pill, it meant consolidation on the Spanish market. While some conservative magazines for women, such as “Telva”, whose publisher was owned by the ultraconservative Catholic organization Opus Dei, continued to attack oral contraceptives as dangerous and immoral55 , articles mushroomed in most opinion magazines, demanding the urgent revision of the anti-contraception law, criticized as disconnected from social reality56 . In some newly established titles, like the feminist magazine “Vindiaccción Feminista” and the popular liberal magazine for middle-class women “Dunia”, both founded in 1976, discussing the pill (alongside other contraceptive methods) became a pretext to bring into the spotlight new issues such as women’s sexuality and also the right to abortion57 . These topics were also raised in opinion magazines “Triunfo”, “Cuadernos para el Diálogo” and “Cambio 16”58 , such publications contributing to the further dissemination of knowledge about this and other contraceptive methods and consolidating their social acceptance. At the same time, activism in favor of the legalization of birth control grew and intensified in medical and emerging feminist circles, incarnated in a rising number of family planning clinics, including the feminist family planning center Federico Rubio in Madrid, founded around 1976, and new outpatient hospital clinics established in large Spanish towns beyond Madrid and Barcelona59 . Doctors who established and worked in these clinics increasingly reported their 54

55

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57 58 59

Lisa Malich, Standardization in French and Western German Marketing of Oral Contraceptives. Reducing Variability, Producing Variation in Drugs and Women (1961– 2006), in: Thoms, Gaudillière, The Development of Scientific Marketing (as in n. 26). I.e. Florinda Salinas, Cuestión polémica. La planificación familiar. ¿Solución o conflicto?, in: Telva 15 Dec (1977), p. 52–56; Dolores Lanzas, España hoy ¿Qué pasa con los anticonceptivos? La batalla de su despenalización, in: Telva 1 Jun (1978), p. 25; José López Navarro, En España la píldora de nuevo sobre el tapete, in: Telva 1 Nov (1978), p. 72f.; Florinda Salinas, Los efectos de la píldora, a uno a uno. Tres especialistas analizan las consecuencias de los anticonceptivos, in: Telva 15 May (1979), p. 30f. I.e. Juan I. Sáenz Diez, La demografía española en perspectiva, in: Cuadernos para el Diálogo 37 (1973), p. 98–103; Montserrat Roig, Julia Luzán, Anticoncepción. Mesa redonda, in: Triunfo 7 Aug (1976), p. 30–33; Trini de León Sotelo, Planificación familiar. Sólo los hijos deseados, in: Blanco y Negro 10 May (1978); Elisa Valero Maluenda, Las madres solteras, en España, in: ABC 9 Mar (1975), p. 158–161. Ignaciuk, Anticoncepción hormonal, p. 232. Ignaciuk, Anticoncepción hormonal, p. 232; p. 251. Ortiz-Gómez, Ignaciuk, The Family Planning Movement (as in n. 51).

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experience of prescribing the pill in professional journals, publicly defending contraception as a human right, especially after the decriminalization of contraceptive provision and propaganda became effective60 . Several years prior to the lifting of the legal ban, the consolidation of social and medical acceptance for contraception was reflected in medical advertising campaigns for the pill. As an illustration, Neo-Lyndiol, Organon’s star-anovulatory product was introduced onto the Spanish market in the mid-1970s. In 1976, it was advertised in the “Acta Ginecológica” journal for gynecology and obstetrics with the slogan “the pill of the day”61 . A year later, in the same journal, Neo-Lyndiol was promoted as “method of choice” for preventing pregnancy in women with health problems62 . In spring 1978, when the Spanish parliament had been discussing and eventually agreed to lift the ban on contraceptive propaganda, Organon’s new campaign for Neo-Lyndiol ceased to invoke health problems as a justification for using the pill, and simply referred to the drug as “contraceptive method of choice”63 .

A Wasted Chance: Circulation of the Pill in Poland The Polish trajectory of oral contraceptives can be divided into two phases: before and after the introduction of Femigen, the first local brand, onto the market in 1968–1969. The first phase may be called that of “high hopes” related to the new form of contraception and the second can be summarized as one of “problematic production”, when manufacturing and dissemination obstacles and little social interest in the pill began to be evident. Modern contraception failed to change a Polish couple’s preference for unmedicalized contraception, backed with legal abortion. Between 1972 and 1978, the percentage of Polish married women who used the pill increased only slightly, from 4.7% to 6.9%64 (compared to 17% in Spain in 197865 ). Domestic production of the pill in Poland in the period under examination never exceeded the peak of 1.700.000 million blister packs, reached in 197666 . The production’s growth, although systematic, was not as lineal as in the Spanish case and its peaks and drops reflected the difficulties experienced by the centrally planned pharmaceutical industry. 60 61 62 63 64 65 66

Jesús González Merlo et al., Nuestra experiencia sobre planificación familiar, in: Ginedips 10 (1979), p. 525–532. I.e. Organon, Neo-Lyndiol, in: Acta Ginecológica 28 (1978). Organon, Neo-Lyndiol, in: Acta Ginecológica 32–34 (1978). Schering, Microgynon, in: Acta Ginecológica 32–33 (1978). Zbigniew Smoliński (ed.), Dzietność kobiet w Polsce, Warszawa 1980, p. 160. Juan Diez Nicolás, Jesús M. de Miguel, Control de natalidad en España, Barcelona 1981, p. 241. Okólski, Abortion and Contraception (as in n. 1).

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Yet, when the pill appeared on the Polish market, the medical community and the media were optimistic about the new drug’s future success. As already mentioned, the first brands to appear in Poland in the early 1960s were essentially the same Western brands that circulated in Spain. Anovial, Enovid or Lyndiol entered the Polish market as donations from international manufacturers. Among the recipients of these donations were the Pharmaceutical Institute [Instytut Leków, a public organism responsible for drug research and testing], along with the most prestigious university clinics of obstetrics and gynecology (such as I and II Clinic of Obstetrics and Gynecology of Warsaw Medical University)67 . Also, public family planning clinics were offered large batches of pills for their distribution amongst clients. The Conscious Motherhood Clinic in Gdańsk, north Poland, for instance, received enough Anovlar to be used by 85 women over 10 months. The outcome of this experience was positive: one of the clinic’s doctors later praised Anovlar’s efficacy in an article published in 1968 in the Polish professional family planning journal, “Problemy Rodziny”68 . “Problemy Rodziny”, funded by the Society for Conscious Motherhood, an organization responsible for contraceptive propaganda, hosted regular contributions on the pill as a scientific novelty throughout the early 1960s69 . The family planning journal also frequently reported discussions about the new drug in Western European mainstream media in its permanent column “What is going on abroad”70 ; as did the general medical journal “Polski Tygodnik Lekarski”, in 67 68 69

70

Ignaciuk, “Clueless about Contraception”, p. 499. Irena Łukasik, Anovlar 21 – skuteczny środek antykoncepcyjny, in: Problemy Rodziny 43 (1968), p. 52–55. Jan Lesiński, Od estrogenow i progesteronu do Enovidu. Amerykańskie Sympozjum na temat doustnych środków antykoncepcyjnych, styczeń 1961, in: Problemy Rodziny 2 (1961), p. 31–36; Stanislaw Liebhart, O doustnych środkach antykoncepcyjnych, in: Problemy Rodziny 2 (1961), p. 26–30; W. Michałkiewicz, Jan Grzesiak, Marian Obara, Aktualny stan antykoncepcji w świecie i w Polsce, in: Problemy Rodziny 6 (1962). p. 45–51; Jan Lesiński, Czy gestageny hamuja rozrodczość, in: Problemy Rodziny 16 (1964), p. 11–18; Barbara Trębicka-Kwiatkowska, O doustnych środkach antykoncepcyjnych, in: Problemy Rodziny 20 (1964), p. 47–50; Adam Cekański, Doustne środki antykoncepcyjne cz. II, in: Problemy Rodziny 22 (1965), p. 3–11; Leokadia Grabowiecka, Na drodze walki z poronieniami, in: Problemy Rodziny 26 (1965), p. 42–46; Irena Łukasikowa, Skuteczność środków antykoncepcyjnych na podstawie materialow Wojewódziej Przychodni Świadomego Macierzyństwa w Gdańsku, in: Problemy Rodziny 23 (1965), p. 57–61. I.e. [Co słychać za granicą] Stany Zjednoczone: Zwiększony popyt na doustne środki antykoncepcyjne w Wielkiej Brytanii, in: Problemy Rodziny 13 (1963), p. 44f.; [Co słychać za granicą] Francja: Pigułka czy inne środki, in: Problemy Rodziny 15 (1964), p. 66; [Co słychać za granicą] Niemiecka Republika Federalna. Tabletki nie są rakotwórcze, in: Problemy Rodziny 23 (1965), p. 101; [Co słychać za granicą] Australia. Rekord spożycia tabletek antykoncepcyjnych, in: Problemy Rodziny 32 (1966), p. 70f.; [Co słychać za granicą] Holandia: Przedwczesne starzenie się na skutek tabletek?, in: Problemy Rodziny 38 (1967), p. 69; [Co słychać za granicą] Dania: Zastrzyki antykoncepcyjne, in: Problemy Rodziny

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its section dedicated to abstracts from international medical journals such as “The Lancet” or “The Journal of American Medical Association”71 . Information about contraception, including the pill, had also circulated widely in the Polish mass media, when the press, especially women’s magazines (such as “Przyjaciółka”, “Zwierciadło”, “Ty i Ja”), had become a vehicle for the State’s antinatalist population policy, which in the mid-1950s had substituted pronatalism of the early post-war years72 . In “Przyjaciółka”, an extremely popular magazine for rural and working-class women, the pill was presented to the readers as early as in 196073 . A report from a conference of International Planned Parenthood Federation in Hague praised the pill as an effective contraceptive which unfortunately was unavailable locally and too expensive for large-scale use. In the Catholic opinion magazines, such as “Tygodnik Powszechny” or “Więź”, the pill received limited if negative coverage, with authors focusing on side effects of the pill and praising the rhythm method74 . Opinion magazines both allied to (“Trybuna Ludu”) and critical of the regime (“Polityka”), reported on oral contraceptives being tried in Polish gynecological clinics and of the pharmaceutical industry preparing itself for launching local production, declared imminent in 1963 and again in 1965 and 196675 . While anticipating benefits (e.g. possible exporting of locally manufactured oral contraceptives to neighboring countries),

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39 (1968), p. 65; [Co słychać za granicą] Stany Zjednoczone: zastrzyk zamiast pigułki, in: Problemy Rodziny 45 (1969), p. 93. I.e. J. A. Loraine et al., Doustne środki antykoncepcyjne [summary of an article previously published in The Lancet], in: Polski Tygodnik Lekarski 7314 (1963), p. 902; Edward Tyler, 8-letnie doświadczenia z doustnymi środkami zapobiegającymi ciąży i stosowanie małych dawek noretisteronu [summary of an article previously published in British Medical Journal], in: Polski Tygodnik Lekarski 5431 (1964), p. 943; Marc G. Perlroht, Doustne środki antykoncepcyjne w leczeniu ostrej nawracającej porfiri [summary of an article previously published in The Journal of the American Medical Association], in: Polski Tygodnik Lekarski 194/1 (1965), p. 1037; Victor Wynn, John W. H. Doar, Niektóre skutki doustnych leków antykoncepcyjnych na metabolizm węglowodanów [summary of an article previously published in The Lancet], in: Polski Tygodnik Lekarski 7466 (1966), p. 71; Edward E. Wallach, Celso-Ramón García, Aspekty psychodynamiczne doustnego stosowania środków antykoncepcyjnych [summary of an article previously published in The Journal of the American Medical Association], in: Polski Tygodnik Lekarski 203/11 (1968), p. 927. Klich-Kluczewska, Making Up for the Losses of War (as in n 5); Fidelis, Women Astray. Debating Sexuality and Reproduction During the Thaw, in: Women, Communism, and Industrialization (as in n. 16), p, 170–202. Maria Karaś, Od naszego specjalnego wysłannika. Rodzinę trzeba planować, in: Przyjaciółka 5 May (1960), p. 5. I.e. Andrzej Bardecki, Problem regulacji urodzin, in: Tygodnik Powszechny 21 Apr (1968), p. 1f.; Karol Bednarski, W sprawie tzw pigułki, in: Więź 6 (1967), p. 83–88; Anzelm Hertz, Wokół encykliki, in: Tygodnik Powszechny 1 Sep (1968), p. 1f. Kor., Pigułki antykoncepcyjne, in: Trybuna Ludu, 14 Sep (1963); [Prasa krajowa pisze]. Co z tą tabletka u nas, in: Problemy Rodziny (quoting Trybuna Ludu) 31 (1966); Marek Koreywo, Żółte światło dla doustnej pigułki, in: Trybuna Ludu 31 Aug (1966).

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some authors were critical of the process of the pill’s local production excessively dilated in time, preventing the drug from circulating on a larger scale and being available to women across the country76 . Until 1967, the pill continued to be available in Poland through donations or “private drug import”, which meant individuals had pharmaceuticals sent from abroad by their relatives or friends, and could use them for their own consumption or sell them to the State, which distributed them in special “foreign drug pharmacies” which existed in the largest Polish cities77 . In 1967, the Ministry of Health launched small-scale official imports of some Western brands (Lyndiol and Stediril). Wider availability of the pill began only in 1968 with the introduction of Ovosiston, a pill brand initially imported from East Germany and later manufactured by the national pharmaceutical industry under the name of Femigen Forte, whose production began in its factory in Jelenia Góra in late 1968 before hitting pharmacies in early 1969. Contrary to Lyndiol and Stediril, both Ovosiston and Femigen Forte were available in regular pharmacies, which greatly improved women’s potential access to the pill; both were also ‘advertised’ in “Polski Tygodnik Lekarski”. The purpose of these adverts, or rather ‘notices of introduction’, was not to persuade doctors, but to announce the launching of the new product. Such a simple, schematic structure, communicating only the product’s name, composition, indications, counter-indications and possible side effects, was a commonplace among adverts of pharmaceutical products manufactured by the domestic pharmaceutical industry in Poland. The launching of Ovosiston and Femigen Forte in Poland was instantly noted in the media, especially in magazines for women, which began disseminating practical information about new drugs: their properties, side-effects and counterindications. A frequent journalistic strategy was to introduce the pill through the story of a satisfied user or to discuss it in agony columns dedicated to health and marital advice78 . Catholic magazines, on the other hand, remained critical of the pill and adhered to the Encyclical “Humanae Vitae”, reproduced and commented on extensively in “Tygodnik Powszechny”79 . The beginning of the 1970s, with Edward Gierek as the new leader of the Polish Unified Worker’s Party, brought another shift in the State’s population policy, and, towards the end of the decade, saw an intensifying economic crisis. Media discussions became dominated by the population decrease scare, for which 76 77 78 79

I.e. Jerzy Urban, Pigułka do przełknięcia, in: Polityka 27 Jan (1968), p. 3–9. Ignaciuk, Anticoncepción hormonal, p. 163. Ignaciuk, The contraceptive pill, 179–181. Andrzej Bardecki, Encyklika Humanae Vitae, in: Tygodnik Powszechny 25 Aug (1968), p. 1f.; Encyklika Papieża Pawła VI Humanae Vitae z zasadach moralnych w dziedzinie przekazywania życia ludzkiego, in: Tygodnik Powszechny. 19 Jan (1969); List Episkopatu o Encyklice Ojca Św. Pawla VI Humanae Viate, in: Tygodnik Powszechny 20 Apr (1969), p. 1f.

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unlimited access to abortion was blamed. In 1972, the government introduced its key pro-natalist measurement: women were allowed and, in fact, encouraged to take childcare leave which lasted up to three years per child. The policy removed surplus (female) workers from paid employment and solved shortages in (public) childcare services80 . In the same year that new childcare leave was announced, the Polish pharmaceutical industry launched the second Polish pill brand, Angravid (with an identical composition to Searle’s Ovulen), whose production and sales in the mid1970 was a fraction of that of Femigen’s81 . In the context of low-cost pro-natalism, the expansion of domestic pill brands was even less a priority in the 1970s than it was in the previous decade. Femigen and Angravid, together with small-scale official and private imports, continued to cater for the Polish oral contraceptive market. Yet, the pharmaceutical industry permanently struggled with a deficit of raw materials and outdated technology and suffered from deficient coordination between the manufacturer and CEFARM, the state drug distributing agency82 . Consistent maladjustments existed between planned and actual production of Femigen, and isolated attempts to improve the agreement by local production and the importing of contraceptives fell through83 . Permanent shortages of foreign currency obstructed drug imports in general and forced the Ministry of Health to prioritize other drugs, considered more essential than oral contraceptives84 . Despite the pronatalist shift of the official population policy, contraception, including the pill, continued to be discussed in Polish general interest and women’s magazines as well as medical journals during the 1970s. During this decade, media discussions of the pill continued to focus on providing practical information about the method and pointed to shortages of supplies of the pill and other contraceptives85 . Side effects of the pill, a recurrent topic in both general and professional titles, were frequently represented as a by-product of the limited variety of brands available in Poland and their relatively high doses86 . Key 80 81 82

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Heinen, Wator, Child Care in Poland (as in n. 17), p. 195. Ignaciuk, Anticoncepción hormonal, p. 159f. Polish Central Archives of Modern Records (hencefort PCAMR), Zjednoczenie Przemysłu Farmaceutycznego Polfa. Wydział Ekonomiczny, 963/16/77 Plan techniczno-ekonomiczny na rok 1974 Jeleniogórskich Zakładów Przemysłu Farmaceutycznego; PCAMR, Zjednoczenie Przemysłu Farmaceutycznego Polfa, Wydział Postępu Technicznego, 963/8/6 Andrzej Jaryczewski, Uwagi do programu rozwoju produkcji leków steroidowych w Polace w latach 1980–1985 (1980); PCAMR, Zjednoczenie Przemysłu Farmaceutycznego Polfa, Wydział Postępu Technicznego, 963-8-6, M. Czeszek, Notatka dotycząca współpracy z firmą Organon (1980). Ignaciuk, Anticoncepción hormonal, p. 167f. “Clueless about Contraception”, p. 498. I.e. Beata Dzięgielewska, Antykoncepcja bez koncepji, in: Zwierciadło 15 Dec (1977), p. 3–5; Anna Śpich, Antykoncepcja w powijakach, in: Przyjaciółka 6 Feb 1977, p. 10f. Janina Krocin-Karasek, [Zdaniem lekarza] Zapobieganie ciąży (1), in: Przyjaciółka 27 Nov

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Polish gynecologists defended the pill’s safety if used under medical control and repeatedly pleaded for the improvement of the variety of available pill brands in medical and general interest forums87 . Throughout the 1970s, professional journals such as “Ginekologia Polska”, “Problemy Rodziny” and “Terapia i Leki” offered contributions from doctors who tested local pill brands in terms of safety and tolerance. Most of these tests concluded that oral contraceptives were an attractive and safe alternative to repeated abortions88 .

Conclusions This chapter demonstrated the relatively limited impact of legal norms regarding contraception, whether prohibitive or permissive, on the pill’s consumption in Spain and Poland. The organization of pharmaceutical markets, the opportunities for pharmaceutical companies to set up in these markets, and the availability of other birth control methods, including abortion, had proven to be more decisive factors. The comparison of the pill’s trajectories in two ideologically opposite dictatorships between 1960 and 1970 makes it possible to conclude that the pill was one of the vectors that enhanced the transition of values attached to repro-

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(1974), p. 12; Janusz Okła, W sprawie unowocześnienia metod planowania rodziny, in: Biuletyn Instytutu Leków 20/3 (1973), p. 109–112; Janusz Okła, W sprawie unowocześnienia i popularyzacji aktualnych metod planowania rodziny w Polsce, in: Zdrowie Publiczne 85 (1974), p. 297–303; Zbigniew Sternadel, [Rozmowy intymne] Rozmowa 56, in: Przyjaciółka 5 Nov (1978). p. 14; Zbigniew Sternadel, [Rozmowy intymne] Rozmowa 57, in: Przyjaciółka 12 Nov (1978). p. 14; Zbigniew Sternadel, [Rozmowy intymne] Rozmowa 58, in: Przyjaciółka 19 Nov (1978). p. 14. I.e. Janusz Okła, W sprawie unowocześnienia (as in n. 86); Janina Krocin-Karasek, O nowych środkach zapobiegania ciąży, Warszawa 1969; Zbigniew Sternadel, ABC życia małżeńskiego, Warszawa 1969; Barbara Trębicka-Kwiatkowska, Świadome czy nieświadome macierzyństwo, Warszawa 1971; Krystyna Jordan, Antykoncepcja współczesna, Warszawa 1973; Barbara Trębicka-Kwiatkowska, Zapobieganie czy przerywanie ciąży, Warszawa 1974 Zbigniew Sternadel, Andrzej Łysikiewicz, Praktyczne metody regulacji urodzeń, Warszawa 1978. I.e. Małgorzata Bulska, Zbigniew Sternadel, Stosowanie Ovulenu w celch antykoncepcyjnych i innych stanach ginekologicznych, in: Problemy Rodziny 55 (1970), p. 38–42; Zbigniew Sternadel, Krystyna Jordan, Anna Pęksa, Maria Wójcik. Ocena kliniczna preparatu Angravid stosowanego w antykoncepcji, in: Terapia i Leki 3/25/2 (1975), p. 64–70; Eligiusz Wieczorek, Mieczyslaw Cisło, Preparat Angravid w antykoncepcji doustnej – uwagi kliniczne, in: Ginekologia Polska 46/9 (1975), p. 995–999; Mieczysław Cisło, Eligiusz Wieczorek, Ocena kliniczna preparatu antykoncepcyjnego Angravid, in: Terapia i Leki 4/24/1 (1977), p. 14–18; Zbigniew Sternadel, Anna Pęksa, Zapobieganie niepożądanej ciąży przy pomocy preparatu Yermonil, in: Ginekologia Polska 49/2 (1978), p. 139–142.

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duction and sexuality during the last years of Franco’s regime in Spain. Lively discussions about the pill in religious and medical circles and in the print media facilitated the shifting of reproductive models from ‘compulsory’ parenthood of large families, through ‘responsible parenthood’ in the Catholic family or prescribing anovulatorios to women with health problems, towards contraception as a choice and key for sexual pleasure. The 1960s pill controversy within the Catholic community legitimated the opening of the discussion about oral contraceptives in the Spanish general and medical press despite the ongoing ban of contraceptive propaganda. In the following decade, this discussion promoted normalization of contraception as a social practice in Spain, and offered a pretext for bringing themes such as female sexuality to public attention. Throughout the 1960s and until 1975, blurred boundaries of what “therapy” with the pill meant, offered safe space for doctors to explore and expand their implication in family planning provision, allowing physicians themselves to set the boundaries of what was therapeutic. While many doctors opposed contraception, the discussions about the pill in the Spanish medical press of the late 1960s and 1970s made those who considered it a human right increasingly visible. They also legitimized the transition of professional models for physicians, from a doctor as representing Catholic morals to the doctor-as-knowledgeable-advisor. Through their marketing campaigns for the pill, pharmaceutical companies also played an important role in popularizing contraception and legitimating doctors’ engagement in family planning. In contemporary Poland, in exchange, the pill only played a marginal role, failing to catalyze value transition a la española. While a Polish domestic pill was introduced when moderate anti-natalism was still the official population policy, the production of oral contraceptives was not given priority by the health and pharmaceutical authorities. Failing to invest in the improvement and expansion of the contraceptive methods on offer, the promotion of birth control under Gomułka remained on a discursive and declarative level, as it failed to dethrone coitus interruptus, the rhythm method and abortion as the most popular birth control resources in state-socialist Poland. For the State, abortion proved to be a low-cost birth control method, as it relied on existing medical infrastructure and did not require investment in pharmaceutical technology. This low-cost orientation, together with the problems of the pharmaceutical industry deriving from the difficulties of central planning, was the reason for the delayed introduction of the domestic contraceptive pill onto the market and its limited development. With abortion remaining legal and free of charge, the pill did not have the breakthrough potential to stimulate social debate as it did in Spain.

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Fiammetta Balestracci

The Influence of American Sexual Studies on the ‘Sexual Revolution’ of Italian Women Discussion of female sexuality in the West during the 20th century was usually centered on the aspects of maternity and reproduction. As the liberalization narrative in recent historiography has argued, female sexuality ceased to be tied to procreation and marriage sometime during the second half of the 20th century, partly due to the affirmation of a new form of sexuality more oriented towards experimentation and self-fulfillment. Female erotic experience started to be valued in itself and to serve the individualization of women. This development needs to be integrated with the theory of an unprecedented change in values in industrialized Western Europe towards post-materialism and individualism (Ronald Inglehart et al.). This intervention will explore the role played by American sexual studies in the redefinition of female sexuality in the second half of the 20th century and their reception in different sectors of Italian public discourse.

Introduction Historically the conception of human sexuality in the West has been characterized by a ‘double standard’. Furthermore, in Christian Europe the appreciation of the erotic desire of men and women was long influenced by the hypotheses formulated in the medical-philosophical fields regarding the mechanism of fertilization1 . The medical approach, attributed to Hippocrates and Galen, considered both the male and female orgasm as necessary for conception2 . The philosophical views were formulated by Aristotle and instead argued that male and female physiology were very different, and that male sperm was the only active substance in conception3 . This idea gained particular vigor from the end of the 18th century and played a leading role in the de-eroticization of female 1 2 3

On the question see Marzio Barbagli, Gianpiero Dalla Zuanna, Franco Garelli, La sessualità degli italiani, Bologna 2010. Jacques Jouanna (ed.), Greek Medicine from Hippocrates to Galen, Leiden, Boston 2012 and Ippocrate, Natura della donna, Milano 2000. Sarah George, Human Conception and Fetal Growth. A Study in the Development of Greek Thought from the Presocratics Through Aristotle, Ann Arbor 1982, p. 124–142.

https://doi.org/9783110524499-007

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sexuality4 . Over the following century this conviction became interwoven with the theories of Freud and other pioneers of ‘sexual reform’, who, notwithstanding their liberal orientation regarding the expression of human sexuality, also held pathologising views of the female erotic experience5 . Freud in particular sustained that in adult women the orgasm was of vaginal origin, while a clitoroidal orgasm was only experienced by young women. In adult women he considered this form of pleasure as a pathological symptom6 . These “false psychopathologies”7 as they were called a few decades later by the American biologist Alfred Kinsey, the most important innovator of the 20th century in this field, helped open a deep rift between women’s perception of their own sexuality and bodies, and society8 . Italian legislation was long inspired by a procreational matrimonial code, refusing to sanction divorce until 1970, the spread of contraceptives until 1971, and abortion until 19789 . Before these reforms, the Italian government tried to control the morality of their citizens mostly in alliance with the Catholic Church, in particular since the Concordat of 1929 between the Vatican and the Fascist regime10 . Starting with the Council of Trent, marriage was exalted in the Catholic Church as the only acceptable context for the expression of a sexuality whose purpose was to be exclusively reproductive11 . This was the origin for the condemnation of abortion and contraception by the Catholic Church, the latter explicitly formulated for the first time in 1930 in the Encyclical “Casti Connubi” [Chaste Wedlock], during a period of widespread availability of contraceptives in Italy and of the growing influence of Neo-Malthusian theory12 . The same

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Thomas W. Laqueur, L’identità sessuale dai Greci a Freud, Bari, Roma 1992 (1988). On the “sexual reformer” and the women see Kirsten Reinert, Frauen und Sexualreform 1897–1933, Herbolzheim 2000; Jeffrey Weeks, Sex, Politics and Society. The Regulation of Sexuality Since 1800, London 1989 and Luigi De Marchi, Sesso e civiltà. Dalla crisi della sessuofobia alla riforma sessuale, Bari 1959. Sigmund Freud, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, New York 1962 (1905). Alfred Kinsey et al., Il comportamento sessuale della donna, Milano 1955 (1953), p. 9. This is the opinion of Thomas W. Laqueur. See also Fiammetta Balestracci, “Mrs. Orgasmo? C’è una signora che aspetta”. La scoperta della sessualità femminile tra scienza e pensiero radicale, in: Snodi. Pubblico e privato nella storia contemporanea 2 (2016) and Margherita Pelaja, Lucetta Scaraffia, Due in una carne. Chiesa e sessualità nella storia, Bari, Roma 2008. On the introduction of divorce and abortion in Italy see Mark Seymour, Debating Divorce in Italy. Marriage and the Making of Modern Italians, 1860–1974, New York 2006 and Giambattista Sciré, L’aborto in Italia. Storia di una legge, Milano 2001. On the Italian question of “sexual reform” see Bruno Wanrooij, Storia del pudore. La questione sessuale in Italia 1860–1940, Venezia 1990. Cecilia Dau Novelli, Famiglia e modernizzazione in Italia tra le due guerre, Roma 1994. Together with Pelaja, Scaraffia, Due in una carne (as in n. 8) see also Arturo C. Jemolo, Il matrimonio nel diritto canonico. Dal Concilio di Trento al Codice del 1917, Torino 1953. Anna Treves, Le nascite e la politica nell’Italia del Novecento, Milano 2001.

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orientation had been adopted by the fascist penal code of the same year, in effect until the legislative reforms of the 1970s13 . During the 1970s and 1980s, the legislation of numerous Western European countries adapted to changes in habits that were by then quite extensive, raising the issue of the pursuit of autonomous sexuality as a right of women along with the expression of their personality outside the framework of marriage and conception14 . These changes in sexual and reproductive behavior, which could be defined as epochal, can be traced back in part to a long-term evolution, as demonstrated by the development of European demographic trends15 . A strong impulse certainly derived from the modern process of secularization that began towards the end of the 18th century, and effectively from the processes of industrialization and urbanization in the 19th century16 . In fact, even if during the 1800s and 1900s discourses regarding female sexuality in the West were centered on the maternal aspect, fertility started to be more deliberately controlled by abstention from marriage and sexual activity, abortion and the introduction of contraception17 . The world wars then oversaw a deep decline in population but also encouraged premarital sex as well as sexual promiscuity18 . It is a widely held opinion among demographers, historians and sociologists that after the baby boom period (1945–1965) there was an acceleration and a qualitative turn in this evolution19 . The introduction of the pill with the mass 13

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Emmanuel Betta, Note sulla storia dell’articolo 553 del Codice Penale Italiano, in: E. Betta, Daniela Luigia Caglioti, Elena Papadia (eds.), Forme del Politico tra Ottocento e Novecento. Studi di storia per Raffaele Romanelli, Roma 2012, p. 131–152 and Paolo Ungari, Storia del diritto di famiglia in Italia, 1796–1975, Bologna 2002. Dagmar Herzog, Sexuality in Europe. A Twentieth-Century History, Cambridge 2011 and Dagmar Herzog, Sexuality in the Postwar West, in: Journal of Modern History 78 (2006), p. 144–171. Jean-Claude Chesnais, The Demographic Transition. Stages, Patterns and Economic Implications. A Longitudinal Study of Sixty-Seven Countries Covering the Period 1720–1984, Oxford 1992; John R. Gillis, Louise A. Tilly, David Levine, The European Experience of Declining Fertility. The Quiet Revolution, Oxford 1992. Theo Engelen, Una transizione prolungata. Aspetti demografici della famiglia europea, in: Marzio Barbagli, David I. Kertzer (eds.), Storia della famiglia in Europa. Il Novecento, Roma–Bari 2003, p. 381–426. Marina D’Amelia (ed.), Storia della maternità, Roma, Bari 1997; Giovanna Fiume (ed.), Madri. Storia di un ruolo sociale, Venezia 1995; Carlo Flamigni, Il controllo della fertilità. Storia, problemi e metodi dall’antico Egitto a oggi, Torino 2006. See also Hera Cook, The Long Sexual Revolution. English Women, Sex and Contraception (1800–1975), Oxford 2004. Victoria Harris, Selling Sex in the Reich: Prostitutes in German Society 1914–1945, Oxford 2012; Silke Satjukow, “Besatzungskinder”. Nachkommen deutscher Frauen und allierter Soldaten seit 1945, in: Geschichte und Gesellschaft 4/11 (2011), p. 559–591 and Michela Ponzani, Figli del nemico. Le relazioni d’amore in tempo di guerra (1945–1948), Roma, Bari 2015. Among the first see Dirk J. Van De Kaa, Europe’s Second Demographic Transition, in:

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diffusion of contraception is certainly one of the most important factors for the autonomization of female sexuality from reproduction in this period20 . The centrality of the maternal aspect faltered and the pursuit of pleasure gained a new importance in Western discourses on female sexuality21 . A new definition emerged of sexuality as a form of experimentation and self-fulfillment or a “paradigmatic expression of individual and social affirmation”22 . Many studies in the history of sexuality interpreted the 1970s as a moment of deep moral change which, under the influence of collective memory, was qualified as a ‘sexual revolution’, involving in particular the younger generations and women23 . More recent historical research instead recognizes a progressive liberalization of norms as being the cause of this ethical change, while also

20

21 22 23

Population Bullettin 42 (1987), p. 1–57. For the sociological view, among many publications, see Chiara Saraceno, Mutamento della famiglia e politiche sociali in Italia, Bologna 1998. Among the latter see Herzog, Sexuality in Europe (as in n. 14); for Germany see Peter-Paul Bänzinger et al. (eds.), Sexuelle Revolution? Zur Geschichte der Sexualität im deutschsprachigen Raum seit den 60er Jahren, Bielefeld 2015; for France see Thamara Chaplin, Orgasm without Limits. May 1968 and the History of Sex Education in Modern France, in: Julian Jackson et al. (eds.), May 1968. Rethinking France’s Last Revolution, London 2011, p. 376–397; for the UK see Marcus Collins, Modern Love. An Intimate History of Men and Women in Twentieth Century Britain, London 2003 and for Italy see Liliana Ellena, Frontiere della liberazione e snazionalizzazione delle italiane, in: Maria Teresa Mori et al. (eds.), Di generazione in generazione. Le italiane dall’Unità a oggi, Roma 2014, p. 277–300; Maud Bracke, Women and the Reinvention of the Political. Feminism in Italy, 1968–1983, New York 2014; Stefania Voli, Quando il privato è diventato politico. Lotta Continua (1968–1976), Roma 2006. Eva-Marie Silies, Liebe, Lust und Last. Die Pille als weibliche Generationserfahrung in der Bundesrepublik (1960–1980), Goettingen 2010; Dagmar Herzog, Between Coitus and Commodification. Young West German Women and the Impact of the Pill, in: Axel Schildt, Detlev Siegfried (eds.), Between Marx and Coca Cola. Youth Cultures in Changing European Societies, 1960–1980, New York, Oxford 2006, p. 261–286 and Lesley Caldwell, Italian Family Matters. Women, Politics and Legal Reform, London 1991, p. 89–90. Maud Bracke, Women, “Wounded Emancipation” and the Crisis of Patriarchy (1945–1968), in: Bracke, Women and the Reinvention of the Political (as in n. 19), p. 33–63. Barbagli, Dalla Zuanna, Garelli, Sessualità (as in n. 1), p. 115. Herzog, Sexuality in Europe, p. 146–152. Particularly the rediscovery of the Austrian sexreformer, Freudian and Marxist Wilhelm Reich, author of “Die Funktion des Orgasmus. Zur Psychopathologie und zur Soziologie des Geschlechtslebens” (Vienna 1927) and of “Die Sexualität im Kulturkampf. Zur sozialistischen Umstrukturierung des Menschen” (Copenhagen 1936), translated in English as “The Sexual Revolution” in 1945, was an important factor in forming new sexual models among the young generation. Among women and women’s movements the concept of “sexual liberation” was also very important. The idea of “liberation” was centered on the research of women’s individuality, instead of that of “emancipation”, which had generally inspired the women’s movements of the nineteenth century and that was more centered on the research of equal rights between men and women. Anna Rossi-Doria, Dare forma al silenzio. Scritti di storia politica delle donne, Roma 2008.

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addressing the intrinsic ambiguity and contradiction of the process, which over these two decades was linked to a growing commercialization and politicization of female sexuality, with marked effects on generational and gender conflicts24 . Some historiography – at least in Italy and Germany – has recently shifted the focus to transformations in values and the typical processes of individualization and ethical pluralization within the cultural changes following the economic boom25 . This approach was inspired by the international sociological debate of the 1970s, and in particular by American social and political theorists insisting on the “coming of post-industrial society” and “a silent revolution” to describe the transformation of Western society towards a better educated, post-materialist culture more oriented towards individual self-realization than the acquisition of material goods26 . The evolution of female sexuality in the long 1970s seems to confirm this sociological theory, but from the point of view of cultural and social history, in order to understand this evolution, it still needs to be further differentiated in terms of gender and generations, and should be studied with regards to different national contexts. As a contribution to this approach, the present text will mainly explore the influence of American sexology after the Second World War on the public redefinition of female sexuality in Italy. It will highlight how the reception of American scientific discoveries during the 1970s and 1980s by the feminist movement and in sexual surveys among Italians (which during this decade became a popular channel for communication on this theme) contributed to transform public discourse on female sexuality and the underlying value orientations. The ‘sexual revolution’ of the 1970s, unlike previous ones, was characterized by a marked medicalization and scientification of discourse on female sexuality, in direct response to a demand for a detachment of sexuality from the procreative act, 24

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Sven Reichardt, Authentizität und Gemeinschaft. Linksalternatives Leben in den siebziger und frühen achtziger Jahren, Berlin 2014; Sandro Bellassai, L’invenzione della virilità. Politica e immaginario nell’Italia contemporanea, Roma 2011; Detlev Siegfried, Time is on my Side. Konsum und Politik in der westdeutschen Jugendkultur der 60er Jahre, Göttingen 2006. Christina von Hodenberg, Television’s Moment. Sitcom Audiences and the 1960s Cultural Revolution, Oxford, New York 2015; Bernhard Dietz, Christopher Neumaier, Andreas Rödder (eds.), Gab es den Wertewandel? Neue Forschungen zum gesellschaftlich-kulturellen Wandel seit den 60er Jahren, München 2014; Thomas Grossboelting, Massimiliano Livi, Carlo Spagnolo (eds.), Jenseits der Moderne? Die siebziger Jahre als Gegenstand der deutschen und italienischen Geschichtswissenschaft, Berlin 2014; Axel Schildt, Detlev Siegfried, Deutsche Kulturgeschichte. Die Bundesrepublik von 1945 bis zur Gegenwart, München 2009; Andreas Rödder, Wolfgang Elz (eds.), Alte Werte – Neue Werte. Schlaglichter des Wertewandels, Göttingen 2008. Daniel Bell, The Coming of Post-Industrial Society. A Venture in Social Forecasting, New York 1973 and Ronald Inglehart, The Silent Revolution. Changing Values and Political Styles Among Western Publics, Princeton, New York 1977.

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and the introduction of new contraceptives like the pill and the coil27 . Secondly, it was conditioned by the emergence of a new wave of feminism that took up the issue of female sexuality as one of its main areas of theoretical interest and political activity, enjoying significant social penetration in Italy28 . Parallel to this, the noisy entry of the theme of female pleasure into public discourse marked the popularization of a season of surveys and opinion polls into the lives and sex habits of Italians, also partly thanks to the establishment of a more transgressive form of journalism, detached from the traditional party cultures29 . An analysis of these surveys enables an assessment of how the new scientific views were received on a popular level. It is interesting to note how the popularization of the discussion of female sexuality and the emergence of female voices in this field in the 1970s removed the theme of maternity from its central position in the public discourse and imagination, probably with long term effects, but likewise also changed the public perception of male sexuality and virility, triggering new gender conflicts and reactions that acted contrary to the liberation of habits. Furthermore, the different reception of American scientific models in different sectors of Italian public opinion reflected an ambivalent attitude towards the national ‘sexual revolution’.

Kinsey’s Reception in Italy before the 1970s The main influence that revolutionized scientific perspectives on female sexuality in the second half of the 20th century was the research carried out by the American biologist Alfred Kinsey, published between 1948 and 1953, titled “Sexual Behavior in the Human Male” and “Sexual Behavior in The Human Female”. These studies were initiated in the 1930s at the University of Indiana and applied a method of collecting interviews and questionnaires of a biographical nature (5,940 female biographies) from different population samples30 . The collected data included 27

28 29

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On the scientification of social discourses see Lutz Raphael, Die Verwissenschaftlichung des Sozialen als methodische und konzeptionelle Herausforderung für eine Sozialgeschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts, in: Geschichte und Gesellschaft 2/22 (1996), p. 165–193 and Peter Conrad, The Medicalization of Society. On the Transformations of Human Conditions into Treatable Disorders, Baltimore 2007. Bracke, Women and the Reinvention of the Political. On popular surveys and sex in the second half of the 20th century see Liz Stanley, Sex surveyed 1949–1994. From mass observation’s Little Kinsey to the National Survey and the Hite Report, London 1995. On journalism and private life in Italy in the 1970s see Natalina Lodato, Il caso due più. Il giornale che rivoluzionò le relazioni e i sentimenti in Italia, Formigine, Modena 2014. Alfred Kinsey et al., Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, Philadelphia 1948 and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, Philadelphia 1953.

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accounts of experiences like masturbation, coitus, heterosexual and homosexual interactions, and sex with animals. The results achieved were highly innovative. It emerged that female sexuality did not have the sole purpose of procreation, and the mechanism of the female orgasm did not match the description proposed by Freud. The differentiated origin of female pleasure was certainly to be considered as possible and not as pathological in nature. Little more than a decade later, on the strength of Kinsey’s work, the research of the biologist William Masters and the psychiatrist Virginia Johnson, heads of the Reproductive Biology Research Foundation of Saint Louis in Missouri, impacted public morality to no lesser extent, in particular with experiments documented in their first volume “Human Sexual Response” from 1966, translated into Italian the following year31 . This research lasted eleven years and was based on direct observation of the sexual behavior of a group of male and female subjects selected arbitrarily, with a prevalence of more sexually active individuals from the higher social classes. This method made it possible to assess the human physiological reaction to sexual stimulation to a degree never before achieved in medicine. The work proposed a cycle of sexual response (excitement, plateau, orgasm, and resolution) that to this day remains the basis for medical studies into the functioning of human sexuality. Kinsey’s thesis of the clitoroidal origin of the female orgasm was confirmed by Masters and Johnson. The two biologists from Missouri, unlike Kinsey, affirmed that this was the only source of pleasure for women, even during coitus, thus definitively inverting Freud’s assessment. The findings earned the two researchers the reputation as the primary continuation in America of Kinsey’s work. The “Kinsey Report” was translated into numerous languages immediately after it appeared32 . An Italian translation was published in 1955 with a preface by Cesare Musatti, the founder of Italian psychoanalysis33 . In Italy the first response of the press was rather negative, largely justified by the aversion, quite widespread in Italian society after the war, to what was considered to be the presumably permissive style of American sexual habits, which numerous commentators set against the amorous style of the Italian ‘Latin lover’ and the greater moral virtue of Italian and European women34 . The most important journalistic surveys on sex among Italians after the impact of Kinsey, “Le italiane si confessano” 31

32 33 34

William Master, Virginia Johnson, Human Sexual Response, New York 1966 and the Italian edition L’atto sessuale nell’uomo e nella donna. Indagine sugli aspetti anatomici e fisiologici, Milano 1967. Dagmar Herzog, The Reception of the Kinsey Report in Europe, in: Sexuality and Culture 1/10 (2006), p. 39–48. Alfred Kinsey et al., Il comportamento sessuale dell’uomo, Milano 1955 and Il comportamento sessuale della donna, Milano 1955. Penelope Morris, “Let’s not Talk about Italian Sex”. The Reception of the Kinsey Reports in Italy, in: Journal of Modern Italian Studies 1/18 (2013), p. 17–32.

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[Italian Women Confess] by Gabriella Parca (1959) and “Comizi d’amore” [Love Meetings] by Pier Paolo Pasolini (1964), demonstrated that at that time, Italian morality was mostly still based on ‘double standards’ across every age, class, region and gender, and that in practice sexuality in Italy was still influenced by many taboos35 . There are no in-depth studies on the Italian reception of Kinsey in the scientific world. However, it has been reasonably sustained that the spread of Kinsey’s work in the scientific and medical Italian world was very limited, at least until the explosion of interest in sex and sexuality in the 1970s36 .

Fabris and Davis (1978): The Italian Kinseys The first scientifically based survey into the sexual behavior of Italians that adopted the methodological approach of Kinsey and his successors was realized in the second half of the 1970s by two sociologists, an Italian, Giampaolo Fabris, President of the Demoskopea public polling company, and a British researcher, Rowena Davis. Their research was published in 1978 and titled “The sex myth. A report on the sexual behavior of Italians”37 . Davis and Fabris had attended a study placement at the Saint Louis center directed by Masters and Johnson, and another at the Payne Whitney clinic in New York directed by the American psychologist Helen Kaplan, well known for her studies into sexual dysfunctions and for having formulated a three-phase sexual cycle model (desire, excitement, orgasm) as an alternative to that of Masters and Johnson, proposed in her publication, “The New Sex Therapy” [1974], translated into Italian in 197638 . Davis’ and Fabris’ research in Italy highlighted a profound difference in experience between men and women, and a widely held conception among Italians about women’s pleasure that was still considered “marginal and largely accessory” and accepted only as a component of the procreational purpose39 . As regards the issue of the female orgasm, they confirmed the results of Masters and Johnson about the “myth of the vaginal orgasm”. However, the two sociologists concluded 35

36 37 38 39

Gabriella Parca, Le italiane si confessano, Firenze 1959 and Pier Paolo Pasolini, Comizi d’amore, Rom Arco Film, 1965, 90 mm. See also Bracke, Women and the Reinvention of the Political, p. 41–42 and Penelope Morris, The Harem Exposed. Gabriella Parca’s “Le italiane si confessano”, in: Penelope Morris (ed.), Women in Italy 1945–1960. An Interdisciplinary Study, New York 2006, p. 109–130. Martina Cvajner, Dopo Kinsey. Sviluppi, limiti e prospettive negli studi empirici sulla sessualità umana, in: Polis 2 (2007), p. 295–321. Giampaolo Fabris, Rowena Davis, Il mito del sesso. Rapporto sul comportamento sessuale degli italiani, Milano 1978. Helen Kaplan, Nuove terapie sessuali, Milano 1976. Fabris, Davis, Mito (as in n. 37), p. 203.

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that the new observation of the American studies regarding the exclusive existence of clitoroidal orgasm could not be fully demonstrated. In their view this had to be set against the diverse reactions to pleasure of Italian women40 . The two sociologists also took into account the more recent wave of American studies dedicated to the female orgasm. The first among these was the study by Seymour Fisher in 1973, “The Female Orgasm. Psychology, Physiology and Fantasy”, translated into Italian in 197441 . Fisher’s research confirmed discoveries about the origin of the female orgasm, further stating that 30 percent of the women interviewed did not reach orgasm during coitus42 . The 1976 study by the American sociologist Shere Hite of Columbia University was also considered. “The Hite Report. A Nationwide Study of Female Sexuality”, was translated into Italian with great success in 197743 . Hite distributed four questionnaire surveys (a total of 100,000 copies) from 1972 onwards among women’s groups and sections of the National Organization of Women, groups for the right of abortion, female university centers, and female journals. She compared the results with the conceptual frameworks proposed by Kinsey, Masters and Johnson, Kaplan, Fisher and other American scientists and with the results of a previous survey (“Sexual Honesty by Women for Women”, 1974). She concluded, agreeing with Fisher, that many American women did not reach orgasm during coitus: “in other words, the majority of women do not experience orgasm regularly as a result of intercourse”44 . The research of Kinsey and Masters and Johnson had made it possible to revise the medical definition of female sexuality, detaching it from a conception and bringing its erotic function into the focus of discussion. The reception of this new approach in the survey of Fabris and Davis served to underline the state of ignorance in which many Italian women still lived, seemingly little interested in the pursuit of pleasure. The responsibility for Italian “backwardness”, according to the authors of the poll, was attributable to the Church, the religiousness of Italian women, and a morality dominated by bourgeois values45 . They also observed differences among different women’s generations46 . The change in behavior of younger women and their interests in sexual pleasure were the most significant changes, also with respect to Parca’s and Pasolini’s surveys. It is worth noting that the study was promoted by two sociologists, not two doctors, and that they were politically aligned with the culture of the Nuova 40 41 42 43 44 45 46

Fabris, Davis, Mito, p. 218–221. Seymour Fisher, L’orgasmo femminile. Psicologia, fisiologia, fantasie, Milano 1974. Ibid., p. 541. Shere Hite, The Hite Report. A Nationwide Study of Female Sexuality, New York 1976. The Italian translation was Shere Hite, Il rapporto Hite, Milano 1977. Hite, Hite Report (as in n. 43), p. 229. Fabris, Davis, Mito (as in n. 37), p. 146 and p. 211f. Ibid., p. 88f.

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Sinistra [New Left Wing], while their use of other theoretical references included the above mentioned Wilhelm Reich, precursor and most famous European exponent of the sex reform movement of the 1920s and 1930s, David Cooper, the founder of the antipsychiatry movement and author of “The Death of the Family” (1970), and the philosopher Herbert Marcuse, a reference point of the worldwide student movements of 1968 with his pamphlet “Eros and Civilization” (1955) on the liberation of the human instinct. This affiliation explains why the authors preferred to emphasize the delayed evolution of the Italian people rather than the changes.

Italian Feminists and the Discovery of Female Pleasure Meanwhile, within the Italian feminist discussion the research of Kinsey and the other innovators that followed him received a partially positive reception. Carla Lonzi, one of the most important theoreticians of Italian feminism, underlined in her writings the implicit “cultural violence” imbedded in a model of female sexuality based on the coincidence of pleasure and procreation, and on a vaginal model of pleasure suited to male desire. Moreover, her criticism of a sexual norm that interwove sex and violence, formulated in her well-known work “The clitoroidal woman and the vaginal woman” in 197447 , had a deep correlation with an article by the New York feminist Anne Koedt from 1970 – which had probably been circulating before as grey literature in radical and proto-feminist groups – about the “myth of the vaginal orgasm” that then broadly circulated in Europe48 . In this article, Koedt attempted to refute the Freudian theory of the vaginal orgasm, drawing explicitly on the research of Masters and Johnson. Lonzi’s text appears to be written as part of the women-only group Rivolta femminile, founded by Lonzi and others in Milano in 1970. It was written after a trip by Lonzi in USA with other Italian feminists, where she had probably discovered Koedt’s text. Both Koedt’s article and Lonzi’s writing were widely read among Italian and European feminists49 . In line with Kinsey’s results, the women’s movement in Italy had discovered a sexuality detached from conception, opening the way for a revaluation of the multiplicity of sexual needs of women and also as a gesture of autonomy from male desire. Some feminist magazines published articles on masturbation, sex 47 48 49

Carla Lonzi, Sputiamo su Hegel. La donna clitoridea e la donna vaginale, Milano 1974. See Bracke, Women and the Reinvention of the Political, p. 69. Anne Koedt, The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm, n. d., n. p., 1970. See Bracke, Women and the Reinvention of the Political, p. 16 and Michaela Wunderle, Politik der Subjektivität. Texte der italienischen Frauenbewegung, Frankfurt a. M. 1977.

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during pregnancy, sex during the menstrual cycle, about “love between women”, sexuality during the different stages of life and numerous surveys into the pursuit of pleasure. “Don’t worry it won’t harm the baby”, “in a normal pregnancy there is no obstacle to sexual activity”50 , “And the envious man decreed ‘you will give birth in pain’”51 are just a few of the affirmations that introduced discussions about sex during pregnancy. There was also no lack of discussion about the contradictions of the ‘sexual revolution’. The surveys published in feminist magazines revealed what had already been noted by Hite and later by Davis and Fabris, namely the risk of creating a new “myth of the orgasm” in place of the old myth of the vaginal orgasm: “Virginity,” it was stated in “Quotidiano Donna” in March 1980, “has become an inverse myth with an obligation-duty [sic] for young female students to fuck around, otherwise they would be unfulfilled, the choice no longer being free and ending up back in the same place”52 . The following statements from women published in 1979 show the Italian feminist attempt to represent an autonomous female sexuality, detached from male sexuality and often in conflict with it: “The issue of the clitoroidal orgasm and the calling into question of penetration was an important transition for me because it meant reappropriating my sexuality and starting again, no longer with the sensation of not being normal [. . . ].” “[. . . ] and his orgasm always came before mine – I felt used, owned, dispossessed, an angry spectator to a pleasure that he denied me. [. . . ].” “Alone and without a true picture of themselves, women had to endure the mutilating consequences of the schism between reproduction and orgasm, devote and trustful of their aggressor-legislator and those like myself, who had not fully experienced this schism, were in any case alone in face of an experience that, lacking definition, they could not recognize. [. . . ].” “[. . . ] but in reality, the male universe is not as pleasure filled as they would like us to believe. Are we sure that ejaculation coincides with pleasure or is it perhaps just a mechanical expulsion? We are not so naive to believe that males attain erotic pleasure simply by ejaculating, his presumed erotic pleasure is only an affirmation of self. [. . . ].” “With his sole possibility of ejaculation-orgasm, he is bound to a primitive sexual practice that is rapid, urgent, anxious, aimed at profit, production intensive: essentially forced labor53 .”

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Non avere paura al bambino non fa male – liberiamoci dai tabù e dalle paure. Se la gravidanza è normale non c’è alcun ostacolo all’attività sessuale. Ce ne parla Grazia, ginecologa a Roma, in: Quotidiano Donna (from now QD), 27 June 1979. Qualche parola sul nostro piacere, in: QD, 19 May 1979. Sette studentesse aprono il dibattito sulla sessualità delle più giovani, in: QD, 5 March 1980. Qualche parola.

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In these accounts the issue of maternity was not just demoted to second place, but disappeared entirely. The discovery of female pleasure was perceived as a right to a different form of sexuality, open to experimentation, as an affirmation of a sexuality denied to men, and as a refutation of male sexuality. An article in “Quotidiano Donna” in 1978 was titled: “Sex in need of treatment: that of men”54 . Pursuit of pleasure, discovery of the body, and acknowledgement of endured violence comprised the main orientations of feminist thought regarding sexuality. In this discourse the most recent results of American science served to deconstruct the Freudian procreative and de-sensualized model of sexuality. The information campaigns published in the feminist press regularly made reference to the theories of Masters and Johnson55 . This took concrete expression in the creation of groups for women’s health and medicine and the establishment of sexual education courses in various Italian cities from 1975 in collaboration with the family consultants instituted with law 405 of 1975 on the Institution of family counseling (Istituzione dei consultori familiari)56 . The American psychiatrist Helen Kaplan was invited to Milan in 1979 to hold a seminar on the latest scientific orientations, including psychoanalysis and new therapies57 . American authors could be criticized by feminists for their therapeutic motivations, but not for their conceptual frameworks, which could be combined with feminist intention to rediscover female sexuality as having more than a mere reproductive function. The feminist movement reserved a particularly warm response for the survey of Shere Hite, who had centered her research on the real experience of women and proposed calling a halt to efforts to treat women who did not reach orgasm58 . 54 55

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Un sesso da curare: quello del maschio, in: QD, 4 November 1978, p. 24. Signor Freud: via il mio piacere! [Mister Freud: leave “my” pleasure], in: QD, 5 May 1979, p. 6, the fourth of seven lessons held by the gynecologist Grazia Mereu and published from 7 April to 26 May 1979. Law 29 July 1975 n. 405, Istituzione dei consultori familiari, in: Gazzetta Ufficiale, 27 August 1975, n. 227. A few months before, in March 1975 was abolished the fascist structure Opera Nazionale Maternità e Infanzia (National Work Maternity and Childhood, ONMI), the only national public body finalized for the assistance of mothers and children. The National Health System was instituted in 1978 (Law 23 December 1978 n. 883, in: Gazzetta Ufficiale, 28 December 1978, n. 360). Caterina Arcidiacono, Laura Magliano, Nuove terapie sessuali. Papà psicoanalisi autorizza a fare l’amore nel buio dell’inconscio, in: Effe, July/August 1979. Hite participated in the 3rd World Congress of Medicine and Sexuality of Rome (25– 28 October 1978). According to the Italian feminist press she defended there the women’s right not to be treated. See Caterina Arcidiacono, Convegno sessuologia, nonostante tutto. . . , in: Effe, December 1978, p. 10–12 and Ingrid, Un sesso da curare. Quello del maschio, in: QD, 24 November 1978, p. 6. On the congress see Romano Forleo, Willy Pasini (eds.), Sessualità e medicina. Materiali del Terzo Congresso mondiale di sessuologia medica, Milano 1980.

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Apart from ideological declarations criticizing medical science, recent results of American medical research were used by Italian feminists selectively to demystify the old European medical approach. The intention was to legitimize a form of female sexuality that common morality in Italy had not yet fully accepted. As showed by the previous quoted sentences, in this new view the maternal aspect assumed a secondary position.

A Growing Public Interest in Female Sexuality: Italian News Magazines and the “Polling Fever” The theme of sex, and in particular female sex, was also the main interest of surveys and polls of the period published in popular news magazines like “Panorama” and “L’Espresso”. Kinsey, Masters and Johnson, and Shere Hite were the most frequently cited authors. The research results of these authors constituted an interpretive model for the first national surveys conducted by these periodicals on Italian women’s sexuality. Frequently they were commissioned from polling companies by newspapers and conducted in collaboration with Italian universities. Particularly in the second half of the 1970s, probably due to the growing public interest in female sexuality during the debate about the abortion law59 , the release of the novel “Porci con le ali” [“Pigs with Wings”] by Marco Lombardo Radice and Lidia Ravera in 1976 regarding the sexuality of the young60 , the translation of Hite’s survey of American women in 1977, and the publication of the first study into the sexuality of Italians in 1978, Fabris’ and Davis’ book, considerably increased the attention of the popular press to this means of communication. In 1977 the book “Beyond the male myth” by the American Psychiatrist Anthony Pietropinto and the journalist Jaqueline Simenauer was published, and then translated into Italian in 197861 . This study was intended as an answer to Hite’s report: as observed by the press, American men were depicted as being disoriented by the ‘sexual revolution’ of the women and were still searching for love and more sensitive women62 . 59

60 61

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Law 22 May 1978, n. 194, Norme per la tutela sociale della maternità e sull’interruzione volontaria della gravidanza, in: Gazzetta Ufficiale, 22 May 1978, n. 140. See also Sciré, L’aborto in Italia (as in n. 9) and Bracke, Women and the Reinvention of the Political. Marco Lombardo Radice, Lidia Ravera, Porci con le ali, Roma 1976. Anthony Pietropinto, Jacqueline Simenauer, Beyond the Male Myth. What Women Want to Know about Men’s Sexuality. A Nationwide Survey, New York 1977; Italian edition: Id., Al di là del mito maschile, Milano 1978. The survey was based on 40 different questionnaires among 4,000 people of different ages, social conditions and ethnicities. S. Giancesare Flesca, Mi piace di più così, in: L’Espresso (49) 1977, p. 62–66; Oliviero Spinelli, Tutte le inibizioni del povero maschio, in: La Repubblica, 4–5 December 1977.

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In the subjects treated in these polls and surveys published by Italian news magazines, the last of which dates back to 1985, a growing emphasis can be observed on the specific Italian context, a sort of national attitude to sex, depicted as a model of backwardness in sexual behavior, while at the same time, different moral codes, varying by age or generation, level of education, and degree of religious conviction were identified. The release of Hite’s study was accompanied by the publication of a survey by “Cosmopolitan”, republished by “L’Espresso”, into the sexual behavior of Italian women, conducted by applying the same mixed criteria as those adopted by Hite, in other words talking to women and considering the research hypotheses proposed by American science63 . According to this survey the majority of women did not reach orgasm during penetration, as already underlined for American women by Hite, and also partially by Fisher. Consequently, these journalists judged the conclusions reached by Masters and Johnson in their experiments to be incorrect. According to a survey in 1976 by the Sociopraxis polling company on behalf of “Panorama”, in collaboration with the sociology faculties of Rome, Naples, and Milan, many Italian women did not even know what an orgasm was64 . The survey stated that they abstained from sex out of fear of becoming pregnant. On the other hand, it was observed that the development of a view of female sexuality detached from conception had led to an increase in the number of cases of male impotence, due to a refusal of penetration by women. Another survey by “Panorama” the following year pointed out that the development of autonomous sexual behavior among young women had generated “various taboos”, in which procreation, love, desire, time and limits were replaced by need and the “illusion to feel free from any limit”. Virginity had disappeared as a taboo only with reference to the self (85 percent among 500 women), but not in relation to one’s children (30 percent)65 . In a large new survey published in three parts in “Panorama” in 1978 to accompany the release of the study by Fabris and Davis, it emerged that many women still sustained the myth of virginity before marriage and that one out of two faked orgasm so as not to insult the virility of their partners66 . The majority of Italian women sustained a sexophobic morality and Italian men were far from 63

64 65 66

Mrs. Orgasmo? C’è una signora che aspetta, in: L’Espresso n. d. (1977); Foundation Historical Museum of Trento, Archive Mauro Rostagno, Section Moavero, Sexuality. The survey was conducted among 3,000 women by the radical activist Laura Bonaparte and the psychologist Franca Marzi-Hellbach. Chiara Beria, La prima volta [The first time], in: Panorama, 21 December 1976, p. 92–107. Emilia Granzotto, La nuova morale. Inchiesta [The New Morality. Survey], in: Panorama, 9 August 1977, p. 49–54. Valeria Gandus, Luca Grandori, Al momento buono, quanti tabù. Il primo completo rapporto scientifico sul sesso in Italia, in: Panorama 618, 15 February 1978; L’altra faccia dell’amore, in: Panorama 620, 1 March 1978.

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fulfilling the myth of the ‘Latin lover’67 . According to a survey commissioned again in 1978 by “L’Espresso” from Doxa, the first Italian polling company, coitus interruptus still represented the most widespread method of contraception among young couples in Italy.68 Later that year an article in the same magazine appeared commenting on the release of a television survey by the director Luigi Comencini called “Italians and love”, based on 80 interviews and transmitted in five episodes on the first national channel69 . Although Comencini’s survey depicted an Italian sexual style definitely more modern and various than the one represented in Pasolini’s “Comizi d’amore” of 1964, the article observed how the burden of conformism in sexual relations had induced an imitation of American behavior, for which the Italians were considered to be “not yet ready”. This was considered a cause of the emergence of a new sexual confusion, with the young being the main victims, while women appeared mostly disappointed and men disconcerted70 . From these examples it appears that the models arriving from the United States were treated with a profound ambivalence in Italian public discourse: while on the one hand, as we have seen, the American example served to highlight and to criticize Italian “backwardness”, the USA were also frequently depicted as a place suffering the worst outcome of the ‘sexual revolution’, where women had sex outside of marriage, men were often disoriented, gender relations were overturned and medical treatments for sexual therapies had become a norm71 . Some observers claimed that imitation of these models in Italy had contributed to increasing general disorientation and new social oppression72 . A general criticism was directed towards the trend for the normalization and biologization of Eros induced by science, which had helped create a new social imperative in particular among the young73 . The reference to the American context served also to depict the inadequacy of Italians in relation to the changes that had come about and to underline the “betrayed sexual revolution”74 . Italy was once again the country of the “failed revolution”, as with the Risorgimento in the 1800s, then with the “betrayed Re67 68

69 70 71 72

73 74

Latin lover, addio!, in: Panorama 619, 22 February 1978. Manlio Maradei, Mille scene di matrimonio italiano, in: L’Espresso 43 (1978), p. 22–28 and Manlio Maradei, Amore mio, sposiamoci di fatto [My love, let’s get de facto married], in: L’Espresso 44 (1978). Gli Italiani e l’amore, RAI-TV, 1978. Lina Coletti, Amore o disamore. Un’indagine di Luigi Comencini preparata per la tv rivela ansie e paure delle vecchie e nuove generazioni nella vita a due, in: L’Espresso 42 (1978). Riccardo Giachetti, Doppia coppia con fante, in: L’Espresso, 18 July 1971; O. Spinelli, Inibizioni (as in n. 62); Gianni Riotta, Nove modi di essere sposati, in: L’Espresso 51 (1979). Silvia Garambois, L’amore non è sempre una cosa meravigliosa, in: L’Unità, 23 November 1980; Franco Prattico, Italia, giugno ’82. Nascono gli “ingegneri” dell’amore, in: La Repubblica, 12 December 1981. Marisa Rusconi, Io non ti amo, e tu? [I don’t love you, and you?], in: L’Espresso 39 (1978). The expression is used in Rusconi, Io non ti amo, e tu? (as in n. 73).

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sistenza” of the Second World War, now with the failure of the ‘sexual revolution’ of the 1960s and the 1970s. By the end of the decade, the theme of the “betrayed sexual revolution” or the backwardness of Italians in their sexual behavior had become common and also indirectly affected the representation of female sexuality. The already mentioned Espresso-Doxa survey in 1978 on young couples75 identified a shift increasingly in favor of sexuality expressed outside of marriage, especially among the young, but with the widespread conviction that the sexual liberation of women had increased men’s fears and male chauvinism, resulting in many men resorting to prostitution, in other words the commodification of the female body76 . According to this survey, sexuality was ever more frequently associated with consumption, morbidity, mechanical functions, and violence, while at the same time science and sexual education at school acted to de-eroticize the discussion of sexuality. The emphasis on orgasm and pleasure was considered to have produced distortions, with the genitalization of pleasure and the polysexualization of the female body77 . The alternatives open to women were either to adapt themselves to a society regulated by male desire, or to psychologize themselves and sexualize all relationships, increasing the uneasiness of males, who perceived the sexual freedom of women as a threat to their role78 . A survey conducted at the start of the 1980s by Doxa in collaboration with two psychologists of the University of Genoa on behalf of the magazine “Duepiù”, revealed that while the age of the first sexual experience had declined over recent years, romantic love still remained the most widely held ideal among Italian women and there was still a lot of ignorance about sex among many Italian women79 . This was confirmed by the sexual assistance telephone service created by the Italian Association for Demographic Education (Associazione Italiana per l’Educazione Demografica, AIED), the first body in Italy to propose the need for updated legislation regarding sexuality in the mid-1950s. In 1985 the 12,000 telephone calls received from men and women of all ages again revealed the great ignorance of Italians regarding the mechanisms of conception, contraception, and orgasm80 .

75 76 77 78 79

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Manlio Maradei, Mille scene di matrimonio italiano, in: L’Espresso 43 (1978), p. 22–28. For a similar assessment see also Coppie chiuse, coppie aperte. Apertissime. . . scoppiate, ed. by Valeria Fieramente, in: La Repubblica, 7–8 January 1979. See the comments in Tra scandali e sequestri. Educazione sessuale in Italia, ed. by Valeria Gandus and Silvana Bevione, in: Panorama, 27 February 1979, p. 73–75. See the explanation in Lidia Campagnano, La strada dell’agio è piena di spine. Chi è il nemico nella cultura del post femminismo?, in: Il Manifesto, 21 January 1983. Una grande inchiesta. I fidanzati. Viaggio-inchiesta, ed. by Cipriana Dall’Orto and Carlo Verdelli, in: Duepiù, n.d (probably 1980), p. 23–31, Foundation Historical Museum of Trento, Archive Mauro Rostagno, Section Moavero, Sexuality. Pierluigi Ficoneri, Pronto. Vorrei fare l’amore, in: L’Espresso, 27 January 1985, p. 48–54.

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Conclusion As has been demonstrated, the influence of the new American sexual studies contributed to the ‘discovery’ of female pleasure in the Italian public discourse of the 1970s. Authors like Kinsey, Masters and Johnson and Hite served as methodological and interpretative models for the first scientific survey into the sexuality of Italian women. Among left-wing intellectuals, the comparison with the American results was used to highlight the differences in the approach of Italian women to sexuality, and to underline their “backwardness” rather than their “moral virtue”. Especially for Italian feminist groups, the American scientific message could represent the possibility of a new morality, more oriented towards the liberalization of female sexuality, i.e. an instrument that in accordance with feminist thought could help to demystify the European – Freudian – theory of female sexuality. From the late 1970s on, a growing interest in female sexuality in Italy can be observed. Many surveys and polls were commissioned and published by the country’s most popular news magazines. Their results reflect the ambivalent reaction of the Italians to the ‘sexual revolution’: on the one hand, the still dominant traditional conception of female sexuality, confined to marriage and procreation was considered to be an inadequate response by Italian women to the call for change from society. But on the other hand, the observed value changes among the younger generation (young women were more interested in the search for pleasure and the construction of a couple’s or family’s life outside marriage than the previous generation81 ) were considered problematic. Here, the reference to the American context served to highlight the long-term contradictions and ambivalences deriving from the “sexual liberation” (disorientation among the young, new taboos and over-sexualization of women, negative effects on male sexuality, etc.) and the role of science as the cause of a new trend towards a normalization (and de-romantization) of sexuality. Moreover, the discovery of female pleasure by the younger generations was thus represented by public discourse as a threat to national identity: following the American example would cause the disappearance of the myth of the ‘Latin Lover’ and of the central values of motherhood and pre-marital virginity that were considered to be typically Italian.

81

Maradei, Mille scene di un matrimonio italiano (as in n. 68).

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Discourses on Abortion and their Impact on Institutions in Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic in the Second Half of the 20th Century (1950–2003) Abortion was first legalized in Czechoslovakia at a relatively early date – in 1957. However, unlike in Western Europe, this did not occur as a result of pressure from civil society and the feminist movement. While attempting to explain the continuity and change of abortion institutions in the former Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic, the article focuses on the framing of the debates that preceded the changes in abortion legislation in the Czech Republic since the 1950s. Discourse analysis of media and expert articles, parliamentary debates, and other documents shows that abortion in the Czech Republic was framed as a medical issue since the 1950s, not as an issue of women’s rights or bodily citizenship. The change in the abortion policies has not been a result of broad value changes, but rather of political (and other external) circumstances, as well as of the development of new medical technologies. Although the policies and institutions changed, values remained quite conservative, especially those pertaining to motherhood. This can be explained by the absence of a feminist movement and its framing, and also by the prevalence and continuity of medical framing of the issue of abortion. Motherhood has remained the main value background of the debates and resulting policies concerning abortion in Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic all through the second half of the 20th century.

Introduction The right to legal and safe abortion was without doubt one of the key points in the campaigns of women’s movements in the 1960s and 1970s. The possibility to make decisions about one’s body was an important demand of second wave feminism in Western Europe and the United States, and these debates and conflicts over women’s access to abortion led to a redefinition of women’s autonomy and freedom, reproductive rights, and motherhood1 . 1

See for example: Ilse Lenz (ed.), Die Neue Frauenbewegung in Deutschland. Abschied vom kleinen Unterschied. Eine Quellensammlung, Wiesbaden 2010; Dawn Keetley, John Pettegrew (eds.), Public Women, Public Words. A Documentary History of American

https://doi.org/9783110524499-008

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In the Central and Eastern European bloc (and in the USSR), the history of “abortion politics” followed a different path. Since the first debates preceding the legalization of abortion on social grounds in 1957, abortion was framed in different terms in Czechoslovakia, although some similarities with other European countries can be found. Below, I intend to analyze the framing of the debates that preceded the changes in abortion legislation since the 1950s, in order to explain the continuity and change of abortion institutions in the former Czechoslovakia and what is now the Czech Republic. My paper aims to contribute to the existing literature on the politics, discourses and practices of abortion in the countries of Eastern and Central Europe – described by some as countries that have an “abortion culture” in the second half of the 20th century2 . While literature on some countries – namely Poland, where the situation has always been rather specific – exists3 , little has been researched and written on others, including Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic. I am interested, from the historic-sociological point of view, in the ways in which abortion was constructed in the public (media, expert and political) discourse and how it was framed by different actors, and how this construction subsequently influenced institutional change and also further thought and discussion of abortion. Therefore, my paper aims to contribute to the current debate on the role of the values, ideas and discourses in the process of change that institutions undergo4 . I first introduce the analytic framework of discursive institutionalism and the theory of discourse as a locus of the constitution of knowledge, inescapably tied to power relations. I then describe the methodology of discourse analysis that I am using in my research, before I present three important debates on abortion that since 1955 have taken place in the former Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic to show how the frames that were used are mirrored in the current situation and in subsequent discussions.

2 3

4

Feminism, vol. 2, 1900 to 1960, Lanham et al. 2002; Dorothy McBride Stetson (ed.), Abortion Politics, Women’s Movements and the Democratic State. A Comparative Study of State Feminism, Oxford, New York 2001. Cornelia Mureşan, Impact of Induced Abortion on Fertility in Romania, in: European Journal of Population 24 (2008), p. 425–446. Jacqueline Heinen, Anna Matuchniak-Krasuska, Abortion in Poland. A Vicious Circle or a Good Use of Rhetoric, in: Women’s Studies International Forum 18/1 (1995), p. 27– 33; Malgorzata Fuszara, Between Feminism and Catholic Church. Women’s Movement in Poland, in: Czech Sociological Review 41 (2005), p. 1057–1076. Bo Rothstein, Social Traps and the Problem of Trust, Cambridge 2005; Teresa Kulawik, Staking the Frame of a Feminist Discursive Institutionalism, in: Politics & Gender 5 (2009), p. 262–271; Vivien A. Schmidt, Taking Ideas and Discourse Seriously. Explaining change through discursive institutionalism as the fourth “new Institutionalism”, in: European Political Science Review 2 (2010), p. 1–25.

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Theory Historical institutionalism, a social science approach that analyzes institutions in order to find sequences of social, political, and economic behavior across time and is widely used in political science and sociology, has been criticized as being incapable of adequately accounting for change5 . According to Vivien Schmidt6 , this method has been better at explaining continuity than change. Discursive institutionalism, a new analytic framework, aims to overcome this limitation by introducing the role of ideas and/or discourse in explanations of institutional change. Institutions should not be treated as neutral structures of incentives “but, rather, as the carriers of ideas which make them objects of trust or mistrust and changeable over time as actors’ ideas and discourse about them change.”7 “How ideas are generated among policy actors and communicated to the public by political actors through discourse is the key to explaining institutional change (and continuity).”8 Moreover, expert knowledge plays a special role in the national discourses of all modern states9 . Thus, it makes sense to focus on the discourses and framing of abortion when attempting to explain the continuity and change of abortion institutions in the former Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic. I define discourse as a social dialogue that takes place through and across societal institutions, among individuals as well as groups, organizations and political institutions10 . Critical discourse analysis is then concerned with discourse as the instrument of the social construction of reality11 . All people define situations as real, but when powerful people define situations as real, they are real for everybody involved in their consequences12 . The reproduction of power relations and dominance also depends on the structures of discourse: who is allowed (or obliged) to speak or listen to whom, how, about what, when and where and with what consequences13 .

5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

B. Guy Peters, Jon Pierre, Desmond S. King, The Politics of Path Dependency. Political Conflict in Historical Institutionalism, in: The Journal of Politics 67 (2005), p. 1275–1300. Schmidt, Taking Ideas and Discourse Seriously (as in n. 4), p. 2. Rothstein, Social Traps (as in n. 4), p. 168–198. Schmidt, Taking Ideas and Discourse Seriously, p. 15. Kulawik, Staking the Frame (as in n. 4), p. 268f. See Michel Foucault, L’ordre du discours, Paris 1971; Norman Fairclough, Introduction, in: Norman Fairclough, Critical Language Awareness, London 1992, p. 1–29. Theo Van Leeuwen, Genre and Field in Critical Discourse Analysis, in: Discourse and Society 4 (1993), p. 193. Hugh Mehan, Oracular Reasoning in a Psychiatric Exam, in: Adam Jaworski, Nikolas Coupland, The Discourse Reader, London 1999, p. 537. Teun A. van Dijk, Discourse and Cognition in Society, in: David Crowley, David Mitchell, Communication Theory Today, Oxford 1993, p. 110.

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Data and information in a discourse are grouped together under the heading of one subsuming category, a larger ‘frame’ which provides them with a recognisable structure and meaning14 . Policy debates emerge out of certain discourses and thus they have certain frames; these can be identified and described. Social movements have their own frames that can correspond or not to the frames of policymakers. According to Snow and Bedford15 , movements are carriers of beliefs and ideologies. In the research on abortion policies in Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic, I analyze both the policy frames and the social movement frames, as both groups of actors took part in constituting abortion policies.

Methodology My aim here is to reveal the discourse that has accompanied the process of abortion legalization in Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic since 1955 and to show how abortion – and the women requesting an abortion – was framed in this discourse and what impact this framing had on the actual politics of abortion. In order to do this, I use the approach described by Paolo R. Donati16 as political discourse analysis (inspired also by Snow and Bedford’s framing analysis). I analyzed documents relating to abortion, with a special focus on three main public debates (1957, 1986 and 2003). I focus on the period from the mid-1950s (when abortion on other than health grounds was legalized for the first time) to the turn of the century. These specific debates are significant because they mark moments of important legislation change, or an attempt at such change, in the post-war history of the Czech Republic. The documents I gathered were: laws and legal regulations, parliamentary debates, newspaper and journal articles, expert interviews, social science articles (demographic, sociological, and psychological), gynecologists’ materials and articles, material from feminist and women’s groups and from anti-abortion groups. In order to capture the public (media) discourse, I analyzed in detail the women’s magazine “Vlasta” (the contents of issues published between 1948 and 1973 and between 1983 and 1986), and I collected all articles dealing with the issue of abortion. I also included a debate that took place in the pages of “Literární 14 15

16

Robert M. Entman, Framing. Toward Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm, in: Journal of Communication 43 (1993), p. 52. David A. Snow, Robert D. Benford, Ideology, Frame Resonance and Participant Mobilization, in: Bert Klandermans, Hanspeter Kriesi, Sidney Tarrow (eds.), From Structure to Action: Comparing Social Movement Research Across Cultures, London 1988, p. 197–217. Paolo R. Donati, Political Discourse Analysis, in: Mario Diani, Ron Eyerman (eds.), Studying Collective Action, London 1992, p. 136–167.

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noviny” (“Literary News”, a weekly periodical focusing on cultural events and philosophical issues) in July–September 1957 after mention of the intention to legalize abortion was published there. For expert articles, I analyzed the journal “Československá gynekologie” (“Czechoslovak Gynecology”), the leading gynecology and obstetrics journal published in the period of state-socialism (I analyzed issues published in 1956–1958 and 1970–1986), and some scholarly monographs. I also analyzed the journal “Demografie”, the leading journal on demography in the country (I analyzed issues published between 1957–2009). Parliamentary debates were analyzed in detail using the digitized and on-line database of the Parliament of the Czech Republic. Limitations to this approach stem from the fact that (in the state-socialist period) public discussion was mediated by official propaganda – i.e. not all the voices that may have existed were allowed to be expressed. For this reason, I supplemented the analysis of pre-1989 documents with secondary (mainly historical) literature published after 1989 and with interviews conducted with witnesses and contemporaries of the analyzed events. With the assistance of the computer program Atlas.ti, I identified the individual arguments used in the texts, then coded and grouped them into categories through comparisons on multiple levels (intratextual and intertextual comparisons, comparisons of different families of texts, comparisons of texts by different authors, etc.), until several ‘systems’ of argumentation emerged. After having identified the frames, I specified each respective frame’s main characteristics and arguments, focusing special attention on the place of women in the discourse. I explained who used the frame and what means were employed to present and communicate the frame.

Abortion Policies in Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic in the Second Half of the 20th Century In comparison to European countries in the West, abortion was legalized in Czechoslovakia early, almost as soon as the situation in the stormy years after the Second World War more or less calmed down. Unlike Western Europe, however, this did not occur as a result of pressure from civil society and the feminist movement, but was instead a bureaucratic decision that arose out of macro-social and political circumstances. In 1955 abortion on demand was legalized in the USSR and also in the following year in other Eastern European countries – Bulgaria, Hungary and Poland17 . 17

United Nations, Abortion policies. Global Review, URL: http://www.un.org/esa/population/ publications/abortion/profiles.htm [Accessed 24.5.2016].

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According to some indications, the legalization of abortion in Czechoslovakia in 1957 was part of a wider project inspired by a political decision made in the USSR. The authorities were undoubtedly inspired by this wave of legalization. Nevertheless, other social and political circumstances also played a role18 . The socioeconomic situation in Czechoslovakia at the end of the 1950s was not very good and a shortage of basic products had persisted since the end of the war. The inability to improve this situation proved to be one of the first signs of the inefficiency of the planned economy. In this context, access to abortion was viewed by government actors as another form of welfare policy19 . Conversely, the demographic situation of the country was rather good and was characterized by population growth. Until 1957, abortion was illegal in the Czech Republic. The penal code adopted in 1950 allowed for medical abortion under certain conditions, but otherwise any abortion was qualified as the killing of a human foetus punishable by imprisonment. In 1957 the Act on the Artificial Termination of Pregnancy 68/195720 was passed. The text of the law was prepared by a group of experts, including lawyers and gynecologists. The new act legalized abortion under specific conditions (special commissions decided whether to authorize an abortion requested by a pregnant woman, either for health reasons or for ‘other important reasons’, including social indications). The decision to terminate an unwanted pregnancy was thus not placed directly in the hands of women, but rather was subject to authorization from official commissions. These commissions did not function just as advisory bodies, offering women assistance and support; they had the power to make the final decision about the reproductive rights of each individual woman. Over the next 30 years the legislation did not change significantly, although it was repeatedly amended by orders and regulations issued by the Ministry of Health, according to the demographic and economic situation of the country. The period of building socialism and early collectivist ideas drew to a close at the start of the 1960s. After years of economic stagnation and decline, a project of economic reform was developed. In the sphere of ideas, room opened up for the exchange of ideas through the media and public discussions on various themes got under way. The years 1968 and 1969 were a period of important upheaval in civil society, including for the women’s movement. The reform process that was partly initiated by Communist Party representatives’ attempts to build “socialism with a human face” led to a more relaxed atmosphere in every sphere of social life, but this came to a halt with the invasion of Warsaw Pact troops in August 1968. 18 19 20

Jakob Rákosník, Radka Šustrová, Rodina v zájmu státu, Prague 2016, p. 169. According to the demographer Vladimír Kučera in an interview dated 8 June 2009. Law on Artificial Termination of Pregnancy 68/1957, passed on the 19 December 1957 (68/1957 Zákon ze dne 19. prosince 1957, o umělém přerušení těhotenství).

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Although civil society tried to resist the imposed return of the totalitarian regime, by June 1969 the personnel of all important institutions had been replaced with new people compliant with the new orientation of the Party and all media were again censored21 . The regulation of abortion was tightened in 197322 to conform both to the stricter atmosphere of the “normalization” period (as the time after the tumultuous events of 1968 was known) and to the application of several pro-natalist measures that were introduced23 . The new political establishment after 1969 tried to provide some compensation and especially to win over the younger generation. A social programme that was prepared by experts back in 196624 was used for this purpose. Key features were care for families and assistance to young newlyweds. Recommendations were issued that abortion commissions be stricter in their decisions, especially in the case of women without children or with just one child and requests for abortion for social reasons25 . This move was substantiated in the media as a measure to improve population development and population quality, which was in the interest of “the Party and the government”26 . Stricter abortion regulation and (more) social benefits for parents led to an increase of the birth rate and simultaneously to a decrease in the abortion rate (from 71 893 induced abortions in 1970 in Czech Republic27 to 55 511 in 1975). Nonetheless, at the end of the 1970s the abortion rate began to rise again. Contraception was not widely available and often ineffective28 . In the 1980s discussion of possible reform arose. As we shall see below, the debate was 21 22

23

24

25 26 27 28

Lenka Kalinová, K sociálním dějinám Československa v letech 1969–1989, Prague 1999, p. 15. The Edict of the Ministry of Health of the Czech Socialist Republic 71/1973 from 16 May 1973 stated that the abortion commissions should be more responsible (i.e. stricter) in their decisions. Married women with no or only one child could be granted the abortion for social reasons only exceptionally, and the abortion for other than health reasons could not be granted to foreign women who did not have permanent resident status in CR. The interval between two abortions that a woman could undergo was prolonged from 6 to 12 months. (See 71/1973 Vyhláška ministerstva zdravotnictví České socialistické republiky ze dne 16. května 1973.) Kalinová, K sociálním dějinám Československa v letech 1969–1989, (as in n. 21); Hana Hašková, Zuzana Uhde, Women and Social Citizenship in Czech Society. Continuity and Change, Prague 2009. See Sharon L. Wolchik, Reproductive Policies in the Czech and Slovak Republic, in: Susan Gal, Gail Kligman, Reproducing Gender. Politics, Publics and Everyday Life after Socialism, New Jersey 2000, p. 63f. Edict of the Ministry of Health of the Czech Socialist Republic 71/1973 from 16 May 1973 (as in n. 22). Karel Zajíček, Přes sto tisíc zmařených životů. Jaké změny v povolování interrupcí?, in: Vlasta 27 (1973), p. 20. UZIS 2008, data splitted for the Czech and the Slovak Republic. Rákosník, Šustrová, Rodina v zájmu státu, (as in n. 18), p. 170.

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led mainly by experts in the field of gynecology and obstetrics, psychology and psychiatry, and demography. An important role was played by the Governmental Population Commission. The commission consisted of deputy ministers and representatives of organizations in society – union organizations, the Union of Youth, or the Union of Women. It also included experts from research institutes. The task of the commission was to provide the government with material, make policy recommendations, and oversee their implementation29 . The Population Commission collaborated closely with abortion commissions and was supposed to issue recommendations concerning abortion policies. Its position on abortion regulation was quite liberal, and together with the Social and Health Committee of Parliament and the Ministry of Health it was the main actor that advocated for the new legislation to pass. It still took several years to prepare the legislative amendment and a few more before it was passed. According to the demographer Ludmila Fialová30 the amendment was ready in 1982, but had to wait until it gained the support of all the authorities, specifically the Slovak part of Parliament. The costs of the changes included in the law also represented a problem – contraception and mini-abortions were to be provided for free and covered by the National Health Insurance. Nevertheless, the consensus that the law must be changed and the abortion commissions abolished finally prevailed. As a result of these debates, Act No. 66/1986 Coll. on the induced termination of pregnancy took effect on July 198731 . Since the implementation of this act, abortion was granted on the written demand of the pregnant woman, if the duration of the pregnancy did not exceed 12 weeks. This legislation still applies today. The period since 1989 has been marked by recurring discussions on the moral acceptability or unacceptability of abortion. On one hand, opponents of free choice regard the current abortion law as a communist law and unrestricted access to abortion as a negative remnant from the communist regime. While before 1989 Christian-minded Members of Parliament32 could not openly present their opinion, and were not allowed to vote against the laws proposed in Parliament (in practice they would leave the hall of Parliament when such laws were voted for), after 1989 they started to form a serious political power. On the other hand, some experts and representatives of the feminist movement claim that Act No. 66/1986 should be amended because it has several shortcomings owing to the absence of 29 30 31 32

Alena Heitlinger, Reproduction, Medicine and the Socialist State, London, 1987. According to an interview conducted 16 December 2008. Zákon 66/1986 Sb. České národní rady ze dne 20. října 1986 o umělém přerušení těhotenství. It mainly concerns the Roman-Catholics, as the Protestant denominations took a more compromising position towards artificial abortion (Kučera, in an interview dated 8 June 2009).

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democratic discussion in the period when the law was being prepared. In 2003, a group of conservative Members of Parliament proposed a law that would make abortion illegal33 . This bill was rejected in the first reading (30 March 2004)34 , but the discussion that accompanied it in Parliament and in the media showed the disagreement and conflicting opinions of different actors on the issue. Below, I will present the debates that preceded the respective legislative changes in 1957 and 1986 and the debates that took place in the post-communist period. I will show the main frames of the dominant public discourse and each frame’s main characteristics and arguments, placing special attention on the place of women in the discourse.

The 1957 Debate: “Legal Abortion as a Way to Healthier Motherhood” In the pre-war period, women MPs active in the first wave of the women’s movement managed to introduce the framing of women’s right to choose in the Parliamentary debates on abortion. However, by then the main arguments for the liberalization of abortion already consisted of the poverty of the families and the eugenic reasons for abortion35 . After the communist coup d’état, feminist groups were dismantled and could not play the role of agenda-setter. In the public discussion leading up to the adoption of Act No. 1957/68 on Induced Termination of Pregnancy, the main actors were doctors, primarily gynecologists, and mostly medical arguments were used. The frame that they asserted and that became dominant in the subsequent debate can be named “Legal abortion as way to healthier motherhood”. The premise was that the number of abortions was highly regardless of the restrictive law and the abortions were being performed by unskilled people in inappropriate conditions. Poor hygiene and the absence of professional expertise meant that abortions had very negative consequences for women’s health, ranging from immediate symptoms (bleeding, inflammation) 33

34

35

Parliamentary Print Nr. 376. Amendment to the Law on Artificial Termination of Pregnancy. Authors: Jiří Karas, Jan Kasal and Petr Pleva. (Sněmovní tisk 376. Novela zákona o umělém přeruš. těhotenství.), URL: http://www.psp.cz/sqw/tisky.sqw?O=4&T=376 [Accessed 15.4.2011]. Resolution of the Chamber of Deputies of the Parliament of the Czech Republic no. 998 on the draft of deputies Jiri Karas, Jan Kasal and Petr Pleva for a Law repealing the Czech National Council Law no. 66/1986 Coll. – First reading 30 March 2004 (Usnesení PS č. 998 k návrhu poslanců Jiřího Karase, Jana Kasala a Petra Plevy na vydání zákona, kterým se zrušuje zákon České národní rady č. 66/1986 Sb. – prvé čtení 30. března 2004), URL: http://www.psp.cz/sqw/text/tiskt.sqw?o=4&v=US&ct=998 [Accessed 15.4.2011]. Rákosník, Šustrová, Rodina v zájmu státu, p. 168f.

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that had to be cured in public hospitals, to long-term effects, typically infertility (in 75% of cases36 ). From the start of the discussions, it was made clear that hospital abortions presented a serious risk as well, but still much less so than illegal ones. This served as the reason for not liberalising abortion completely. As (some) women could abuse the legalization of abortion and ignore the still existing health risks, it was argued, there must be some control mechanism that could judge the legitimacy of the demand and limit the final number of performed abortions. This mechanism was to be constituted by the abortion commission37 . Were we to believe the media from this period, the typical woman who underwent an illegal abortion was a mother of five, with an alcoholic husband who did not support the family sufficiently and forced the woman to have sex. Here are examples for how these women were presented in articles in “Literární noviny” in 1957: “A few weeks ago, the People’s Court in Prague dealt with this case: A mother of five children decided to terminate her pregnancy. Her husband was a drunkard; he did not care for the children. An angel-maker performed the surgery. Unprofessionally, violating all the basic hygiene rules, and the woman got sepsis and died a few days later.”38 “Men usually do not care for their illegitimate children. There are cases of men who have more than one of illegitimate children. Women struggle to obtain some alimony for their children. All the difficulties of care and support of children thus are borne by women.”39

These women, according to the articles published in Czech journals in the late 1950s, should be given the option to terminate their pregnancy – but should not decide just by themselves. Seeking an abortion was still sometimes considered “a display of egoism, frivolousness and a misunderstanding of life”40 on the part of women. Even though later articles assumed that these cases of “selfish requests for abortion may be just the minority”41 , they still agreed on the fact that women had to be subject to the decisions taken by abortion commissions. With some exceptions, women were usually portrayed as unselfish individuals sacrificing their own well-being (i.e. having a baby) for the well-being of the others (other children, family) or as victims of unscrupulous men (and sometimes 36 37 38 39 40 41

Rudolf Slunský, Proč škodí potrat?, in: Vlasta 11 (1957), p. 9. i.e. Jan Birgus, Několik připomínek k interrupčnímu zákonu novelizovanému v roce 1973, in: Československá Gynekologie 5 (1977), p. 338–341. Senta Radvanová, Jiří Nezkusil, Oto Novotný, Pro zdraví žen, in: Literární Noviny 6 (1957), p. 9. Translated by the author. Vladimír Mikule, Hovoříme o společenských vztazích, in: Literární Noviny 6 (1957), p. 9. Translanted by the author. Radvanová, Nezkusil, Novotný, Pro zdraví žen (as in n. 38), p. 9. Kol.aut., Na závěr diskuse, in: Literární Noviny, 6 (1957), p. 9.

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both simultaneously). Those women who asked for an abortion for ‘selfish’ reasons were to be educated and their morals improved42 . Experts and authorities thus took this patronising view of all women without exception, seeing them as either irresponsible or extremely vulnerable, and called on their responsibilities towards their family and to socialist society. The fact that men might also have some role in the act of conception was mentioned only by the few opponents of the legalization for abortion43 . The legalization of abortion was paradoxically interpreted as a pro-population measure: the reproductive health of women would be saved by hospital-performed abortions, so those women would be able to have children later in life. It was assumed that the number of legal abortions would not exceed the number of illegal abortions performed, and that in the course of time the reasons that led women to opt for an abortion would disappear as the state would be able to react to and provide support for mothers and children44 . Legal and safe abortion was thus considered to be legitimate for women in difficult social situations that prevented them from caring properly for their children. Women could get an abortion not to avoid becoming mothers, but in order to be better mothers45 . From the start of the discussions, it was somehow assumed that women could ‘abuse’ the new law. They were therefore repeatedly reminded that even a hospital abortion could have negative health consequences: that by undergoing an abortion, they were running the important risk of not being able to have children in the future46 . “Legal abortion as way to healthier motherhood” was the frame first of all used by gynecologists and other doctors. The role of medical experts in the public and political debates was also crucial in the issue’s subsequent development. In fact, throughout the communist period gynecologists were the most visible advocates of legal abortion in public. They set the agenda, they pushed the issue forward, and at the same time they kept control over the issue. The attitudes of individual doctors were of course not homogenous. There were “progressive” 42 43

44 45 46

Radvanová, Nezkusil, Novotný, Pro zdraví žen, p. 9. Hearing of the Chamber of the Deputies of the Parliament of the Czech Republic, 19 December 1957, 10:53m URL: http://www.psp.cz/eknih/1954ns/stenprot/023schuz/ s023003.html [Accessed 15.4.2011]; Radvanová, Nezkusil, Novotný, Pro zdraví žen, p. 9; Hovoříme o problémech přítomné doby, in: Literární Noviny 6 (1957), p. 9. Hearing of the Chamber of the Deputies of the Parliament of the Czech Republic (as in n. 43). E.g. Mikule, Hovoříme o společenských vztazích (as in 39), p. 9; Pavel Voda, Dvě rovnice, in: Literární Noviny 6 (1957), p. 9. Ladislav Hnátek, Pro zdraví žen, in: Literární Noviny 6 (1957), p. 9; Slunský, Proč škodí potrat? (as in 36); Edict of the Ministry of Health 104/1961 Sb. from 13 September 1961 that specifies the law 68/1957 Coll. (Vyhláška ministerstva zdravotnictví ze dne 13. září 1961, kterou se provádí zákon 68/1957 Sb. o umělém přerušení těhotenství); Hearing of the Chamber of the Deputies of the Parliament of the Czech Republic.

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doctors who advocated for legalization, with the cooperation and support of leading authorities of the Party (such as Miroslav Vojta, editor of “Československá gynekologie”, and the state’s main expert on gynecology and obstetrics), and who also maximized their efforts to make effective contraception widely accessible (like Ladislav Hnátek, who in 1957 opened the first planned parenthood advisory office in Prague). There were also more conservative doctors (possibly from a Catholic background) who doubted the benefits of legal abortion and sometimes refused to perform an abortion after the law came into effect. The debate was carried on in medical terms, using the health of women as the main argument on both sides47 . Gynecologists spoke from the position of authority and knowledge, while women who asked for an abortion were to be judged by a commission, educated, and helped. The medical discourse was then adopted by lawmakers. The authors of an article that appeared in “Literární noviny” in July 1957, lawyers Senta Radvanová, Jiří Nezkusil and Oto Novotný (who were participating in the writing of the law), argued: “Every abortion poses some risks for the woman. We must take this into account. The aim is to find a solution that will do as little damage as possible.”48 This article then initiated a discussion in the pages of “Literární noviny”. The frame of “healthier motherhood” was also used by speakers in the parliamentary debate over law no. 68/1957: “. . . criminal law [. . . ] drives pregnant women in the hands of bunglers and horse doctors, who by force of unskilled and unhygienic interventions induce serious injuries on the health of our women”49 . The “healthier motherhood” frame resonated strongly with other frames that our analysis identified in the contemporary media, in particular the “population discourse” advanced by demographers, planners, and politicians. This discourse was present in the media and its arguments backed up the arguments of the “healthier motherhood” frame. In the process, the two frames aligned and merged, stressing the importance of the legalization of abortion in order to have healthier mothers, healthier children, and, as a consequence, a healthier population. The “population discourse” encompassed concerns both about quantity and quality. It was assumed that if the law was correctly interpreted and applied, not only would it improve the quality of the population (as women would only have those children they would be able to care for properly), but in the end it would also lead to further population growth, as safe abortions would improve the reproductive health of women50 . 47 48 49 50

Jiří Štěpánek, Hovoříme o společenských vztazích, in: Literární Noviny 6 (1957), p. 9; Hnátek, Pro zdraví žen (as in n. 46), p. 9. Radvanová, Nezkusil, Novotný, Pro zdraví žen (as in n. 38), p. 9. Hearing of the Chamber of the Deputies of the Parliament of the Czech Republic. Hearing of the Chamber of the Deputies of the Parliament of the Czech Republic; Edict of the Ministry of Health of the Czech Socialist Republic 71/1973 from 16 May 1973.

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The argument that is central to the later discourse of “anti-pro-choice” groups – the argument of the immoral killing of the “unborn child” – appeared in the newspapers only once and was cited by Jiří Štěpánek in his article opposing the proposed legalization of abortion51 . This might be due to the fact that communist censorship did everything to prevent any such ideas appearing in the media52 . It is no surprise that the “discussion” was limited to the canvassing of “progressive” opinion by the Party-state authorities among professionals known to be in favor of legalizing abortion. Some opponents were allowed to express their opinion, but since the public debates, and possibly also “private” ones among professionals, were controlled and censored, we have no way of knowing how rare views opposed to the legalization of abortion actually were. The position of the Catholic Church in state-socialist Czechoslovakia was very weak53 (especially in comparison to Poland) and its influence on public events was only indirect (e.g. through some experts or journalists who were members of the “underground” Church). The Czech population’s relationship with the church was rather ambiguous even before the onset of state socialism, and in the second half of the 20th century public indifference towards church religion was deepened by the communist regime’s anti-religious propaganda and persecution (of the church). The framing of abortion in terms of “killing an unborn baby”, which is a frame peculiar to the groups and actors that oppose a woman’s right to abortion, such as the Catholic Church and different “pro-life” organizations54 , did not appear in public texts. As a consequence, the legalization of abortion was not constructed as a controversial moral issue, putting the rights of the mother against the rights of the foetus, as occurred in other countries. The dominant discourse of abortion in Czechoslovakia in the late 1950s, that is, when the first law to legalize abortion was being developed and was passed, was in fact the discourse of motherhood. The proclaimed aim of the abortion legalization was to enable women to be better mothers: to protect their reproductive health, which could be harmed by an illegal abortion or many successive births, and allow them to be better able to choose the time to have children so that they have the necessary material and psychological resources to be a mother, and thus to produce a better-quality population55 . Women seeking 51 52 53 54

55

Štěpánek, Hovoříme o společenských vztazích, p. 9. see Karel Kaplan, O cenzuře v Československu v letech 1945–1956, Sešity Úřadu dokumentace a vyšetřování zločinů komunismu PČR, Prague 1994. Zdeněk R. Nešpor, Příliš slábi ve víře, Prague 2010; David Václavík, Náboženství a moderní česká společnost, Prague 2009. Glen A. Halva-Neubauer, Sara L.Zeigler, Promoting Fetal Personhood. The Rhetorical and Legislative Strategies of the Pro-Life Movement after Planned Parenthood v. Casey, in: Feminist Formations 2 (2010), p. 101–123. First article of law 68/1957 stated the purpose of the new law: “In the interest of furthering of the care for the healthy development of the family, jeopardized by damage to the health

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abortions were portrayed as mothers: typically, such a woman was already the mother of several children, whose well-being would be threatened if another child were born56 . Abortion was therefore not presented as a means of women’s emancipation (even though some minor voices tried to put it this way); it served rather to tighten the link between womanhood and motherhood and bound women even more strongly to their ‘natural vocation’ of mothering57 .

The Debates 1979–1986: Safer Abortion and the Suffering of Unwanted Children In the 1980s the practice of the abortion commissions became untenable and possible reforms started to be discussed. By the end of the 1970s the commissions were already facing a considerable amount of criticism. This was due to two important events: 1) the invention and diffusion in Czechoslovakia of the method of early abortion (or “menstrual regulation”) known as the “mini-abortion”; and 2) a psychological study of unwanted children by Dytrych et al.58 revealing the psychological damage of unwanted pregnancy on children born from these pregnancies. As a consequence, there were two main frames in the debates that preceded the approval of Act No. 66/1986. Although they came from different backgrounds and their arguments were different, they influenced and reinforced each other.

56 57

58

and lives of women caused by artificial interruption of pregnancy, performed by negligent persons outside of clinics, this law regulates the artificial interruption of pregnancy.” (translated by the author). The frame of “healthier motherhood” was also used by the speakers during the parliamentary debate about the law 68/1957: “[. . . ] criminal law [. . . ] drives pregnant women in the hands of bunglers and horse doctors, who by force of unskilled and unhygienic interventions induce serious injuries on the health of our women.” (translated by the author): Hearing of the Chamber of the Deputies of the Parliament of the Czech Republic. Radvanová, Nezkusil, Novotný, Pro zdraví žen, p. 9; Zdenka Konopiská, Řešíme problémy přítomné doby, in: Literární Noviny 6 (1957), p. 9. See also Malgorzata Fidelis, A nation strenght lies not in numbers. Destalinization, pronatalism and the Abortion Law of 1956 in Poland, in: Claudia Kraft (ed.), Geschlechterbeziehungen in Ostmitteleuropa nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg. Soziale Praxis und Konstruktionen von Geschlechterbildern, Oldenbourg 2008, p. 203–216. Zdeněk Dytrych, Zdeněk Matějček, Vratislav Schülle, Nechtěné děti. Závěrečná zpráva dílčího úkolu st. plánu badatelského výzkumu čís. VII-3-7/2.2, Praha 1975.

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The ‘Wanted Children – Quality Population’ Frame After a study conducted in Prague by researchers at the Research Institute of Psychiatry59 revealed the negative psychological consequences of unwanted pregnancy on the well-being of children born from these pregnancies, abortion was considered the best solution in the case of an unwanted pregnancy. It was therefore argued that it would be better for unwanted children not to be born and abortion was in their best interest, as well as in the best interest of the state. The results of the research were published in the Slovak journal “Psychologia a patopsychologia dietata” (“Child Psychology and Pathopsychology”) and “Demografie” in 1974–1976 and were widely popularized (e.g. they were the topic of a programme on Czech Television channel 2 on 19 May 197860 ). The interest of these children was presented together with the best interest of society (which was now equated with a healthy and quality population). For example, in an article published in 1979, Jan Birgus (who in 1977 was still advocating that commissions be stricter about abortion) considered abortion the preferred solution for avoiding the “risk of pathological personality development in the unwanted child and the threat that represents to the quality of our population”61 . The best interest of society was also extensively cited by the psychologist Drahomíra Fukalová62 . She stated that the decision-making of the abortion commissions had to follow the interest of society as a whole. It is in the best interest of the state and society to terminate some pregnancies – those where the 59

60 61 62

H. P. David, Zdeněk Dytrych, Zdeněk Matějček, Jaké šance na úspěch mají nechtěné děti?/What chances for success do unwanted children have?, in: Psychologie Dnes 2003, p. 28–30. The study was a unique project that influenced the thinking about abortion in the former Czechoslovakia but also across its borders. Since applications for abortion in the former Czechoslovakia were not automatically approved, it was possible to study a group of children born to mothers who had been denied abortions for the same foetus on two separate occasions – first at the district abortion commission and then after the appeal by the mother to the regional abortion commission. The researchers Zdeněk Matějček and Joseph Langmaier who started the study in 1970 gained (though possibly not totally legally) access to addresses of women in Prague who were denied abortion twice. Social workers working for the study then visited the women and interviewed them. It was discovered that a significantly high proportion of these pregnancies ended with a spontaneous abortion anyway and some of the pregnancies disappeared without any official record. The 220 children that were born were observed repeatedly during their life-course. The control group consisted of mothers who unequivocally wanted their child. Matched pairs were based on same sex, birth order, social class, etc. The study was double blind so neither the parents, children nor researchers knew which group was being interviewed. See also: Ján Birgus, Několik připomínek porodníka k problému nechtěných těhotenství, in: Československá Gynekologie 44 (1979), p. 71. Birgus, Několik připomínek porodníka (as in n. 60), p. 70. Dana Fukalová, Znovu k problematice interrupčních komisí, in: Československá Gynekologie 44 (1979), p. 752–754.

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mother would not accept the child and the child would suffer from being born as unwanted. From her perspective as a psychologist, she attempted to show that the prevailing assumption that the mother would always finally accept and love her child once it was born was just a part of the taboo of negative maternal conduct and that that did not happen in most cases: “(. . . ) it is very problematic to expect that a mother will fulfill her role if she has been forced into the pregnancy.”63

The ‘Safer Abortions for Women’s Health’ Frame The main argument of this frame, used mainly by Czech gynecologists, was that there were several accessible means of harmless contraception, but if those failed, women must have access to safe and legal abortion, and by “safe” they meant with as few negative health side effects as possible. The way to ensure this was with the “mini-abortion” or early vacuum aspiration method. The proponents of this abortion method cited its merits: fewer direct complications, fewer longterm negative effects, no risks from total anaesthesia, the ability to perform the abortion on an out-patient basis, fewer personnel required, and shorter period of sickness leave64 . The only obstacle (after special disposable aspiration curettes started to be produced in Czechoslovakia in 1981) to the use of this method was in the 1957 abortion law. The proceedings of the abortion commissions were so timeconsuming that the operation was often postponed until it was no longer possible to perform a “mini-abortion”. The solution proposed at the beginning of the 1980s was either to waive commission approval for “mini-abortions” or to dissolve the commissions completely65 . In the course of 1981, several authors called for an amendment to the 1957/68 law, in most cases so that abortion commissions would be maintained only for abortions after 6–7 weeks of pregnancy66 . As one contemporary author noted, “the complicated, time-consuming, and bureaucratic procedure [of the Abortion Commissions] leads only in a very small number of cases to an ultimate rejection of the request for an abortion. [. . . ] [An important proportion of those refused] ended anyway in an illegal abortion. 63 64

65 66

Fukalová, Znovu k problematice interrupčních komisí (as in n. 62), p. 752. František Havránek, Význam mini-interrupce (regulace menstruace) jako metody regulace porodnosti, in: Československá Gynekologie 46 (1981), p. 481–485; Jan Štěpán, K právním aspektům výzkumu a praxe na úseku porodnosti, in: Československá Gynekologie 46 (1981), p. 493–495. Ibid. Dana Fukalová, Přednosti regulace menstruace z psychologického hlediska, in: Československá Gynekologie 46 (1981), p. 490–492; Havránek, Význam mini-interrupce (regulace menstruace) (as in n. 64); Štěpán, K právním aspektům (as in n. 64).

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Moreover, our psychiatrists have demonstrated the socially deviant development of ‘unwanted’ children. From this perspective, the effects of the Commissions on the improvement of our population seems problematic. For this reason we recommend (in the name of Czechoslovak Gynecological Association) limiting the activity of these Commissions just to abortions in the late first trimester or to repealing them altogether.”67 From the texts dating from 1985 onwards it is clear that the new legislation proposed abandoning the abortion commissions. In the Memorandum68 accompanying the legislation it was stated that: in practice, the commissions granted more than 95% of the requests from applicants; the commission proceedings are time consuming and their organization is too demanding; the commissions do not give women in such a situation any practical assistance; and the new method of mini-abortion requires that the decision-making process be shortened. In the discourse of gynecologists and psychologists, women were present once again only as objects of care, decision-making, and control, not as subjects. In the expert articles published in “Čs. Gynekologie” it was not assumed or even mentioned that a woman should have the last word in the decision about her pregnancy, nor was any space given to the consequences that an unwanted pregnancy can have for the woman (except in a case study by Hrádek and Petr69 ). Expert discourse nevertheless evolved from the total “objectification” and disciplining of women to the belief that women must first accept their pregnancy if later they are to care for the child properly, so they must not be forced into continuing the pregnancy70 . Nonetheless, in the expert articles we find no mention of a woman’s rights or interests. At most, women were treated as patients whose health and well-being must be protected by doctors. The argument of the “irresponsible woman” was used again in the discourse, but this time it was turned on its head by psychology experts. The fact that some women are irresponsible, unstable, or promiscuous was not a reason why they should not be given the right to decide; on the contrary, it was a reason for making abortion even more accessible to them, as they would not make proper mothers anyway. As Dana Fukalová stated: “They have little predisposition to become a good mother so we should welcome the fact that they are asking for an abortion, as opposed to women who judge abortion to be damaging to their

67 68

69 70

František Havránek, Význam mini-interrupce (regulace menstruace). Memorandum of the Law 66/1986 of the Czech National Council from 20 October 1986 on Artificial Termination of Abortion (Důvodová zpráva k zákonu 66/1986 Sb. České národní rady ze dne 20. října 1986 o umělém přerušení těhotenství), Prague 4.3.1986. D. Hrádek, J. Petr, Příspěvek k diskusi na téma Problematika činnosti interrupčních komisí, in: Československá Gynekologie 46 (1981). See mainly Fukalová, Přednosti regulace menstruace z psychologického hlediska (as in n. 66), p. 490–492; Fukalová, Znovu k problematice interrupčních komisí, p. 752–754.

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own health and carelessly breed one child after another without any notion of what the role of a mother involves.”71 One important success of Fukalová’s writings and the publication of the results of the Prague study was that they dismantled the myth that maternal love always comes naturally as soon as the child is born. It was shown that not all women are happy about becoming mothers and not all unwanted children are finally accepted with love and sacrifice72 . While some gynecology experts focused their efforts on modernising the existing abortion law, others continued to produce texts endorsing the discourse of the danger of abortion for women’s health. This was in fact the most powerful counter-discourse challenging the overwhelming pro-choice orientation of society. The health risks of induced abortions had been accentuated by doctors in the media since the first abortion law in 195773 . It was maintained that abortion had many immediate and long-term negative effects; it could result in problems in subsequent pregnancies and above all cause infertility. The negative effects were demonstrated in follow-up studies that were carried out after the legalization of abortion in 1957. The negative consequences of abortion (including those less serious) were estimated by Czechoslovak experts to range between 15–70% of the cases, from which infertility formed between 1.3 and 7.4%74 . The Memorandum accompanying the bill of 1986 mentioned 20–30% of cases of negative consequences of artificial abortion75 . Since 1957 the fact of having an abortion was automatically linked to the risk of not being able to have other children76 . In the 1980s, authors believed the risk to be lower, especially when the “mini-abortion” method was used, but it was still emphasized that every abortion presented a risk77 . Even today, the argument of the risk of subsequent infertility is widely used by the opponents of legal abortion and makes up part of a widely shared belief in the Czech Republic78 .

71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78

Fukalová, Znovu k problematice interrupčních komisí, p. 752. Fukalová, Přednosti regulace menstruace z psychologického hlediska, p. 490–492; Fukalová, Znovu k problematice interrupčních komisí, p. 752–754. See e.g. Hnátek, Pro zdraví žen, p. 9; Slunský, Proč škodí potrat? Alfred Kotásek, Vladislav Fuchs, Umělé přerušení těhotenství a morbidita žen, in: Československá Gynekologie 41 (1976), p. 32. Memorandum of the Law 66/1986 of the Czech National Council (as in n. 68), part I. Jiří Houdek, Rodičům do notesu. Znalosti o antikoncepci, in: Vlasta 27 (1973), p. 19; Miroslav Vojta, Nechtěné mateřství, in: Vlasta 11 (1957), p. 12. Zdena Štěpánková, Antikoncepce – ano či ne? in: Vlasta 5 (1984), p. 10; Tomáš Novák, Snubní prsten na ruce a mléko na bradě, in: Vlasta 11 (1984), p. 11. See e.g. Interrupce: Jak vysoké je riziko za život bez dítěte?, URL: www.babinet.cz [Accessed 15.3.2011]; Potrat může být riziko pro budoucí těhotenství, Ulékaře.cz, URL: http:// www.ulekare.cz/clanek/potrat-muze-byt-riziko-pro-budouci-tehotenstvi-10919 [Accessed 22.11.2016].

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The discourse of the dangers of abortion was developed and used mainly by conservatively-oriented experts (presumably from a Catholic background) such as Alfred Kotásek79 . Their argumentation proved counter-productive for them in the 1981–1986 discussions, as they could not object to the effort to perform as many abortions as possible using the method of early vacuum-extraction, given that this method was proven to have fewer negative consequences for the reproductive health of women. Any frames articulated by feminists or women themselves did not appear openly in the press or scientific journals. Nonetheless, we have reason to assume that among women themselves the opinion that a “woman has the right to make decisions about her own pregnancy” started to gain in significance. Women were frustrated by having to expose private matters in front of members of the abortion commission (who were sometimes also their neighbors, employers, former teachers, etc.): “I was in front of an abortion commission once and I do not want to have to go through it ever again. [. . . ] It is appalling to have to explain and confide such sensitive problems to complete strangers”, said a reader named J. Š. on the pages of “Vlasta” in 196980 . A shift in the discourse can be observed in the Memorandum that accompanied the bill of 1986 and the transcripts of the parliamentary debate over it81 . While in the expert and popular articles dating from the period preceding the approval of the law there were few remarks that touched on a woman’s right to choose, in the official text of the law and its Memorandum we find many direct references to women’s reproductive rights. For example: “The bill is establishing a new principle that respects a woman’s will, whether to end her pregnancy by birth or by induced abortion. The bill gives a woman the right to terminate her pregnancy, and the woman does not have to justify her request.”82 During the process of preparing the text of the legislation, some of its authors accentuated the frame of a woman’s right to choose and surprisingly even favored this frame in their arguments and explanations of the content of the bill83 . We can only guess what exactly lay behind this shift in the discourse. First, it may have been a resurgence of the Marxist tradition that originally framed abortion as a woman’s right. This frame must have been familiar to women politicians, who had undoubtedly read the work of Marx and Engels. Another hypothesis is that it resulted from the migration of ideas, as the borders were not as tightly shut in 79 80 81 82 83

Kotásek, Fuchs, Umělé přerušení těhotenství a morbidita žen (as in n. 74). J.Š., K anketě o interrupcích, in: Vlasta 23 (1969), p. 24. Hearing of the Czech National Council, 20.10.1986, 14:00, URL: http://www.psp.cz/eknih/ 1986cnr/stenprot/003schuz/s003006.html [Accessed 3.10.2010]. Memorandum of the Law 66/1986 of the Czech National Council, Special part, K § 4. “The main benefits of the law consist in the moral sphere as it represents the final realization of the woman’s right to decide over the number of her children and the timing of its births.” Memorandum of the Law 66/1986 of the Czech National Council, Part II.

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the 1980s as in previous periods. Some ideas from the women’s movement could have slipped through and found resonance among certain actors. Nevertheless, the third hypothesis is probably the most plausible one: it was women themselves who developed the new discourse. Many of them had had some form of unpleasant experience with the abortion commissions’ proceedings, while all of them were almost solely responsible for childcare and household chores in their own lives and at the same time were empowered by the economic independence they derived from full-time employment. The frame of a “woman’s right to choose” finally made its way to Parliament and was interpreted in a way that chimed with contemporary ideology. Nevertheless, it was not reflected in the media discourse, which remained dominated by experts who stuck to the medical abortion frames.

The Debates After 1989 Since 1989, with the emergence of civil society and democratic discussion, new debates on abortion surfaced in Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic. Space opened up not just for constructing/framing abortion in feminist discourse as a basic right for women, but also for the rejection of abortion on moral and religious grounds and the renewal of attempts to dispossess women of this right. In 1991, a group of medical experts headed by Jiří Šráček started to work on a new wording of the abortion law84 . These experts were dissatisfied with some features of the 1986 act. They saw this as an opportunity to correct shortcomings in the act that were caused partly by the lack of democratic discussion in the period when the legislation was being prepared. Nevertheless, this new bill (expanding the right to abortion) was never submitted to the Government85 . Already in 1991–1993, the authors of the unsuccessful law proposal were aware of the possible influence that the Roman Catholic Church and the political representatives of Christian Democrat party KDU-ČSL might exercise on the abortion issue86 . Although KDU-ČSL obtained a repeatedly rather low proportion of votes in the post-1989 democratic elections (6–9%), in the periods 1992–1998 and 2002–2009 the party was present in the government coalitions 84

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Jiří Šráček, Ladislav Pilka et al., Návrh zásad zákona Parlamentu o umělém ukončení těhotenství. (Draft of the Principles of the Parliament Bill on Artificial Termination of Pregnancy), 1993, unpublished material. This decision might have been a result of a coalition deal between the leading ODS (Civil Democrat Party) and the coalition conservative Christian-Democratic party KDU-ČSL, according to the interview with Jiří Šráček, a gynecologist and obstetrician, chief of the gynecologic-obstetric department of the Ostrava hospital in 1972, 19.6.2009. Interview with Jiří Šráček (as in n. 84).

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and thus formed a serious political power. In 2003, several Members of Parliament (Christian-Democrats Jiří Karas and Jan Kasal, and right-wing Petr Pleva) proposed a law that would make abortion illegal87 . A large debate followed in the media with major participation by women’s and feminist groups, who claimed abortion as a basic human right. The law proposal was refused in the first reading88 . The main arguments employed by Catholic-oriented MPs in the Parliamentary debate and in presentations of their position in the media reflected the Catholic Church’s official stance; sometimes they were underpinned by a “scientific approach” to embryonic development89 . They did not significantly differ from the anti-abortion arguments used in debates in other countries. The arguments they used concerning women’s motivations and decisions deserve more attention here. In these “anti-pro-choice” arguments the woman is portrayed as irresponsible, unable to decide for herself, fragile and manipulated by others90 . She is first and foremost a mother – an abortion could prevent her from being a mother in the future – and given the choice and ideal conditions she would always choose to have the child: “And also it is very common for pregnant women to pay a high price for the abortion – she never experiences the joy of motherhood. And in many cases, she deeply regrets her decision, often made under pressure” (a statement by MP Jiří Karas in the Parliamentary debate on 26 March 2004)91 . If she requests abortion for “selfish reasons”, such as not wanting to compromise her career by having a child, her choice is ethically invalid92 . But as a mother she is 87

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Sněmovní tisk/0. Novela zákona o umělém přerušení těhotenství. (Parliamentary Print 376/0. Amendment of the Law on the Artificial Termination of Pregnancy). Digital Repository of the Parliament of the Czech Republic, URL: http://www.psp.cz/sqw/text/tiskt.sqw? o=4&ct=376&ct1=0 [Accessed 14.11.2010]. The first reading took place on the 26 and 30 March 2004 at the 30th meeting of the Chamber of Deputies of the Parliament of the Czech Republic. The bill was rejected (vote no. 125, resolution no. 998). Digital Repository of the Parliament of the Czech Republic, URL: http://www.psp.cz/sqw/historie.sqw?T=376&O=4 [Accessed 14.11.2010]. Stenographic Record of the 30th Meeting of the Chamber of Deputies of the Parliament of the Czech Republic, 30.3.2004, 14:08. Digital Repository of the Parliament of the Czech Republic, URL: http://www.psp.cz/eknih/2002ps/stenprot/030schuz/30-5.html#445 [Accessed 14.11.2010]. “And very often there are cases where a pregnant woman pays a high price for an abortion – she will never live to see the joy of parenthood. And in many cases, she bitterly regrets her decision, often taken under pressure of others.” MP Jiří Karas, Stenographic Record of the 30th Meeting of the Chamber of Deputies of the Parliament of the Czech Republic, 26.3.2004, 14:50. Digital Repository of the Parliament of the Czech Republic, URL: http: //www.psp.cz/eknih/2002ps/stenprot/030schuz/s030134.htm#r3 [Accessed 14.11.2010]. Stenographic Record of the 30th Meeting of the Chamber of Deputies of the Parliament of the Czech Republic, 26.3.2004 (as in n. 89). Jan Kasal, in: Stenographic Record of the 30th Meeting of the Chamber of Deputies of the Parliament of the Czech Republic, 26.3.2004, 15:30.

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assigned a passive role – that of a vessel carrying a child that is perfect and almost independent from the very beginning, or that of an educator, accepting the child unconditionally and regardless of its health or mental state93 . These arguments thus build on the abortion frames of the communist period, identifying women as mothers and questioning their ability to decide and the legitimacy of their decision, and doing so using medical arguments about the risk of infertility. Czech feminist NGOs, in particular the organization Gender Studies o.p.s., reacted quickly to the proposed restrictive legislation of 2003. The activists started lobbying and making presentations in the media. In a very short time, they prepared a statement that was disseminated via the internet and published on the pages of the main Czech newspapers94 . Surprisingly, the text of the statement did not use any feminist arguments. It pointed out the risks of making abortion illegal (the health risks of illegal abortions, high prices) and the fact that abortion would not disappear even if it were prohibited. The authors also argued that the prohibition of abortions would not lead to a higher fertility rate, and noted that the abortion rate had decreased sharply in the last ten years. They suggested alternative solutions: educating the young generation on reproductive rights and responsibilities and introducing effective policies of family support and work-life balance policies. The absence of a feminist frame and women’s rights terminology in the petition can be explained as part of the general “discursive strategy” employed by women’s and feminist groups in the Czech Republic. The success of their lobbying was (at least in the eyes of most activists) dependent on the strategic use of some socially sensitive terms, and above all the term “feminism” had to disappear from its vocabulary95 . Activists preferred to use more neutral words, such as “equal opportunities” or “gender mainstreaming”. There are two reasons for the discrediting of feminist terminology in Czech public discourse. First, some terms were abused during the communist regime. The use of women’s issues during the communist period and the Marxist-Leninist approach to women’s equality turned “women’s emancipation”, “women’s equality”, and the “women’s movement” into pejorative concepts for the Czech public96 . “Anything to do with women’s emancipation was negatively associated with the

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Jan Kasal, in: Stenographic Record of the 30th Meeting of the Chamber of Deputies of the Parliament of the Czech Republic, 26.3.2004, 15:10. See http://www.feminismus.cz/fulltext.shtml?x=162657 [Accessed 18.6.2012]. See Mirek Vodrážka, Aktivismus bez hnutí nebo protohnutí? Ženské organizace a skupiny v ČR v letech 1989–2006, in: Hana Hašková, Alena Křížková, Marcela Linková, Mnohohlasem. Vyjednávání ženských prostorů po roce 1989, Prague 2006, p. 62–65. Alena Heitlinger, Framing Feminism in Post-Communist Czech Republic, in: Communist and Post-Communist Studies 29 (1996), p. 82.

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discredited old regime and this association extended to feminism, seen as just another -ism.”97 The second reason for the discrediting of feminism and the women’s movement was the way in which Western feminism was presented by the Czech media in the first half of the 1990s. Articles that appeared, for example, in “Respekt” (a prestigious weekly magazine) introduced the feminist movement as a foreign (American) ideology that distorts the relationship between men and women.98 The organizations that defined themselves overtly as “feminist” on their websites or in personal contact then chose deliberately to avoid using the term or directly referred to specific women’s claims when they entered the public discourse. This strategic naming game was even more accentuated in the case of the abortion issue, where the vocabulary is extremely sensitive. The fear of using any kind of overtly feminist arguments is palpable in the text of the statement. Not even the word “woman” was used in the text. As Linda Sokačová, one of the authors of the petition, explained to me in an interview: “We really pay attention to the vocabulary – we try to formulate things in a way that is acceptable to everybody. Why use the word ‘feminism’, if you can put through a feminist idea without it? The proclamation in 2004 had a special purpose, very neutral vocabulary. We were careful that nobody could say that we promote abortions.”99 It is necessary to note here that this “utilitarian” framing of abortion in mostly medical terms is not specific to the Czech Republic/Czechoslovakia and has been used by advocates of a woman’s right to abortion in other countries (including democratic ones), such as Italy or the UK, where the conflicts and controversies surrounding abortion rights resulted in similar terms of debate to those seen under state socialism in the Czech Republic, with pro-choice advocates similarly using medicalized language and rationales to justify the liberalization of abortion100 . But unlike in Czechoslovakia, this frame was accompanied by the claim of the “right of women to control their bodies and their fertility”101 . The very fact that abortion was not criminalized in the Czech Republic in the post-communist period (unlike Poland) suggests the greater relative power of pro-choice groups in this country and the greater public resonance of their 97 98

99 100

101

Georgina Waylen, Engendering Transitions. Women’s Mobilization, Institutions, and Gender Outcomes, Oxford 2007. See Petra Jedličková, Nevidět, neslyšet a nedotýkat se! Feminismus jako součást demokratizačního procesu v ČR v letech 1989–2004 – reflexe médií, in: Hana Hašková, Alena Křížková, Marcela Linková (eds.), Mnohohlasem. Vyjednávání ženských prostorů po roce 1989, Prague 2006, p. 106f. Interview with Linda Sokačová, an Activist, Gender Studies o.p.s., 29.2.2009. See e.g. Colin Francome, Abortion Freedom, Winchester 1984, p. 83–85; Maria Calloni, Debates and Controversies on Abortion in Italy, in: McBride Stetson (ed.), Abortion Politics (as in n. 1), p. 181–204. McBride Stetson (ed.), Abortion Politics, p. 140.

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framing. This reveals the political utility of framing abortion in medical terms as a woman’s health issue, in order to avoid the morally controversial discussion of the “beginning of human life” or the “rights of unborn children”. The framing of abortion in medical terms helped to attain goals similar to those of the pro-choice actors and groups. Strikingly, in the state-socialist period, the medical frame was also used by the opponents of women’s free choice, pointing to the health risks of abortion and the resulting need to control the number of abortions granted. The secular political elites in the post-socialist period also found the medical frame appealing102 . Given the controversial nature of the issue and the difficulty of obtaining a democratic compromise, pragmatic politicians usually prefer not to open the debate at all. “In a parliamentary system which is dependent on coalition cabinets to govern, abortion is too disruptive issue to keep recurring on the agenda. Because it cuts across the prevailing left-right spectrum, it makes for continual tension in the inevitable negotiations and compromises required for coalition rule.”103 Hence the current abortion legislation in the Czech Republic is essentially the same as the legislation adopted in 1986. This continuity of framing might have been useful for most of the “progressive” actors, but it has some serious pitfalls, especially in connection with the need to extend rights and entitlements to groups who were previously excluded, such as immigrant women without a long-term visa. As the political elites have tried to avoid the issue because of it being too controversial, the extension of abortion rights to immigrants has so far proven impossible.

Conclusion The overview of the development of the discourses and policies of abortion that took place in Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic in the second half of the 20th century leads to the conclusion that the change in the abortion policies has not been a result of broad value changes, but rather of political (and other external) causes. Although the policies and institutions changed, the values underlying the discourse remained quite conservative, especially those pertaining to motherhood. This can be explained by the absence of a feminist movement and its framing, and also by the prevalence and continuity of medical framing of the issue of abortion. 102

103

See e.g. (Proposal of the law on the specific health services), paragraph 11.5, URL: http://www.mzcr.cz/Odbornik/file.aspx?id=273&name=Z%C3%A1kon+o+spe cifick%C3%BDch+zdravotnick%C3%BDch+slu%C5%BEb%C3%A1ch.pdf. [Accessed 11.2.2009]. Joyce Outshoorn, Policy-Making on Abortion. Arenas, Actors and Arguments in the Netherlands, in: McBride Stetson (ed.), Abortion Politics, p. 220.

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While the legalization of abortion in 1957 was a result of a political decision made in the USSR, the development of new medical technologies played a crucial role in the liberalization of abortion law in 1986. Since its legalization in 1957, abortion was framed in medical terms. The invention of new medical procedures such as the early abortion that made abortion safer led to a change in the policies – the abortion commissions were abolished and women did not need their permission any longer, because the procedure was too long and the early abortion could not otherwise have been carried out. This change was supported by the medical arguments, not by the arguments underpinning the right of women to choose or to decide over their reproduction. A certain value change within public discourse was however triggered by another scientific discovery, realized in the field of psychological science: the study of “unwanted children”, born after their mothers were twice denied abortion. First psychological experts, then medical experts accepted the idea that in order to be a good mother, a woman must not be forced into motherhood. They spread this idea via popular media, and the expert framing thus started to resonate with the larger belief system of potential participants and to correspond with their real world and life experiences104 . But the intrinsic change of values probably came from below – from the experiences of women who bore all the responsibility for childcare, worked full-time, amid a situation of unequal gender distribution of roles and tasks105 . They found it natural that they should assume the responsibility for reproduction, timing and number of their children. Abortion was used as an accessible means of contraception, in the absence of a debate over its moral or ethical consequences. Further research would however be needed in order to corroborate this hypothesis. Nonetheless, motherhood has remained the main value background of the debates, and resulting policies, concerning abortion in Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic all through the second half of the 20th century. In 1957, legal abortion was framed as a way to “healthier motherhood”. In fact, women could get an abortion not in order not to become mothers, but in order to be better mothers. Abortion was considered to be legitimate only for women in difficult social situations that hindered them from caring properly for the children they already had. Abortion was not presented as a means of emancipation for women; it served to tighten the connection between womanhood and motherhood. Legal abortion was meant to facilitate the task of mothering, not to give women freedom to decide over their bodies. Expert discourse evolved from the total “objectification” and disciplining of women to the idea that women must first accept their pregnancy if later they are to care for the child properly, so they should not be forced into continuing with an 104 105

Snow, Benford, Ideology (as in n. 15), p. 197–217. See Hašková, Uhde, Women and Social Citizenship in Czech Society (as in n. 23).

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unwanted pregnancy. This “motherhood” framing of abortion aligned with the pronatalist framing on quantity and the eugenic framing on quality of population, is present in the discourse all through the studied period. Legal abortion was framed as a way to improve the health of women and the nation, as well as reducing illegal abortions which could damage women’s fertility. The medical framing of abortion, the accent put on the health of women/mothers, combined with the focus on the quality and quantity of the population, still prevails in the current political debates concerning abortion in the Czech Republic. The medicalized discourse on abortion helped fabricate a specific knowledge about abortion, a specific truth that now in the Czech context is taken for granted. The right of every woman to choose freely or make decisions about her own body is not really part of this knowledge. Abortion is primarily defined as a health issue, not a human rights or a political issue.

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Narratives about Contraception and Abortion in the GDR (1972–1990) Caught between a Liberal Law, Normative Ways of Living and the Individualization of Family Planning A posteriori descriptions of gender relations in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) reach from “mythologization” to “demonization” of women’s realities of life at the time. The high employment of women and the socio-political measures for childcare are either interpreted as a sign of gender equality and women’s emancipation or as a double burden of occupation and family forced upon women. The legalization of abortion in 1972, the increasing supply of certain contraceptives and the mentioned childcare opportunities led to an individualization of family planning. According to their generation, their milieu contexts and their individual biographies, the women interviewed for the present study dealt in a specific way with the framing conditions given by social value changes that referred to family life and family planning and changing legal terms in this realm. Therefore, this text focuses on the ambivalences and contradictions in the opportunities in life women were afforded during the 40-year-history of the GDR and their way of using and refusing these opportunities.

The Legalization of Abortion in 1972 On 9th March 1972, the “Gesetz über die Unterbrechung der Schwangerschaft”1 was issued. This law introduced a Fristenregelung, a provision permitting abortion within the first three months of pregnancy at the request of the pregnant woman2 . I thank the interviewees for their time and huge candidness. I thank Franziska Reiniger for her great help in translation and Ralf Fischinger and Katinka Meyer for critical comments and valuable discussions. 1 Gesetz über die Unterbrechung der Schwangerschaft vom 9. März 1972, printed in Kirsten Thietz, Ende der Selbstverständlichkeit? Die Abschaffung des § 218 in der DDR, Berlin 1992, p. 163f. 2 The right to a self-determined abortion was given only to citizens of the GDR. Pregnant contract workers were deported or sought church asylum or were compelled to have abortions in order to be allowed to stay in the GDR. Many women also tried to induce a miscarriage. https://doi.org/9783110524499-009

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According to the law, it was the woman’s sole responsibility to decide about the termination of her pregnancy. “In addition to the existing possibilities of contraception”, the law was supposed to enable women to determine the number, timing and spacing of her deliveries3 . Women were encouraged to shape their reproductive behavior in a well-planned, conscious and responsible way and thereby avoid “biological coincidences”4 . There are several approaches on different levels that seek to explain why the Socialist Unity Party (SED) introduced the right to abortion. On the one hand, the problem concerning health consequences caused by illegal abortions and the different decision-making practices of the regional commissions responsible for applications for abortions till 1972 should both be diminished5 . On the other hand, liberal abortion laws in several other East European socialist countries6 put the GDR under pressure to catch up. In addition, a few years previously, visa regulations to Poland and the ČSSR were liberalized and an increase in abortion tourism to these states was suspected7 . Furthermore, at the beginning of the 1970s, there was a strong women’s movement in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) that fought for abortion legalization8 . In times of the Cold War, by legalising abortion the SED could present the GDR as the more progressive state compared to the FRG9 . The implementation of the Fristenregelung can also be interpreted as a measure to counteract the increasing part-time employment of women, which occurred inter alia because women were still mainly responsible for childcare and house-

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7 8

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Cf. Almut Zwengel, Die “Gastarbeiter” der DDR. Politischer Kontext und Lebenswelt, Berlin 2011 (Studien zur DDR-Gesellschaft), p. 264. § 1 (1), Gesetz über die Unterbrechung der Schwangerschaft (as in n. 1). All translations are my own. Ludwig Mecklinger, Begründung des Gesetzes über die Unterbrechung der Schwangerschaft vor der Volkskammer am 9. März 1972 durch den Minister für Gesundheitswesen, Prof. Dr. Ludwig Mecklinger, in: Hans Harmsen (ed.), Das Gesetz über die Unterbrechung der Schwangerschaft vom 9. März 1972 der DDR und flankierende Maßnahmen zur Förderung der Geburtenentwicklung, der berufstätigen Mutter und junger Ehen, Hamburg 1972, p. 29. Lykke Aresin, Schwangerschaftsabbruch in der DDR, in: Gisela Staupe, Lisa Vieth (ed.), Unter anderen Umständen. Zur Geschichte der Abtreibung, Dresden, Dortmund, 1996, p. 91; Helge Pross, Dieter Voigt, Abtreibung. Motive und Bedenken, Stuttgart 1971, p. 101. In the 1950s and 1960s abortion was legalized, e.g. in the Soviet Union (1955), Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland (1956), the ČSSR (1957) and Yugoslavia (1960). Voigt, Abtreibung (as in n. 5), p. 82. Konstantin Pritzel, Überlegungen zur Motivierung der gesetzlichen Neuregelung der DDR, in: Harmsen (ed.), Gesetz über die Unterbrechung der Schwangerschaft (as in n. 4), p. 60. The self-incrimination campaign “Wir haben abgetrieben” (“We had abortions”) is the most popular example. In this campaign over 370 women admitted that they had had an abortion at least once in their life. Alice Schwarzer, Wir haben abgetrieben, in: Stern 24 (1971), p. 16–23. Pritzel, Überlegungen (as in n. 7), p. 58.

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work10 . Last but not least, the decision by the Party was also prompted by the numerous protest letters from especially young and well-educated women who demanded a right to self-determined birth control and often complained about rejections of their applications for abortions by the commissions responsible. In a certain way, the letters can be seen as a surrogate for the absence of a women’s movement in the GDR. The subsequent legalization could be interpreted as a suitable means for enlarging the basis of legitimacy of the SED in the population11 . In addition, young women functionaries in justice and health policy departments were particularly engaged in promoting liberalization and were supported by elder women functionaries in the Politbüro of the SED12 . The Fristenregelung led to a massive increase in the number of legal abortions as illegal ones were replaced by legal ones13 . In 1972, there were 599 abortions for every 1000 births, which meant 114,000 abortions in total14 . Mortality and suicides caused by abortions declined by over 80 percent15 . From 1973 onwards, the number of terminations began to decrease, inter alia because of better options regarding pregnancy prevention16 . Until German reunification the annual number of abortions in the GDR levelled out at about 25 abortions per 100 pregnancies17 .

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11 12 13

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15 16

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Katharina von Ankum, Political Bodies. Women and Re/Production in the GDR, in: Women in German Yearbook 9 (1994), p. 134; Daphne Hahn, Modernisierung und Biopolitik. Sterilisation und Schwangerschaftsabbruch in Deutschland nach 1945, Frankfurt a. M. 2000, p. 271; similar also Pritzel, Überlegungen, p. 61; Heike Trappe, Emanzipation oder Zwang? Frauen in der DDR zwischen Beruf, Familie und Sozialpolitik, Berlin 1995, p. 123; Hildegard-Maria Nickel, Geschlechtertrennung durch Arbeitsteilung. Berufs- und Familienarbeit in der DDR, in: Feministische Studien 8 (1990), p. 16f. Pritzel, Überlegungen, p. 60. Annette Leo, Christian König, Die “Wunschkindpille”. Weibliche Erfahrung und staatliche Geburtenpolitik in der DDR, Göttingen 2015, p. 179f. Before 1972, about 70 to 80 women per year died from illegal abortions. Therefore, it is estimated that about 70,000 to 80,000 illegal abortions per year were performed before legalization. Voigt, Abtreibung, p. 102–105. Sabine Perthold, Deutschland Ost. Fristenmodell. Rechtlicher Anspruch auf Schwangerschaftsabbruch, in: Marianne Enigl, Sabine Perthold (eds.), Der Weibliche Körper als Schlachtfeld. Neue Beiträge zur Abtreibungsdiskussion, Wien 1993, p. 188. Voigt, Abtreibung, p. 102f. Perthold, Deutschland Ost (as in n. 14), p. 188; Gert Henning, Kinderwunsch = Wunschkind? Weltanschaulich-ethische Aspekte der Geburtenregelung in der DDR, Berlin 1984, p. 21. In absolute numbers that comes to about 80,000 abortions per 320,000 pregnancies a year. Heike Walter, Abgebrochen. Frauen aus der DDR berichten, Berlin 2010, p. 11.

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The Extension of Access to Contraception In 1962, hormonal contraception methods became available to a limited circle of women. They were prescribed in particular to women for whom a pregnancy would be a danger of their physical health or to those women who had already had more than one abortion18 . Between 1965 and 1971, 22 to 35 percent of women were prescribed contraception after an abortion19 . With the beginning of the domestic production of the pill Ovosiston in 1965, the dispensing practice became more and more liberalized. In addition to the existent target groups, women with more children or physical complaints were also given prescriptions for the pill20 . Contemporaneously with the implementation of the new abortion law in 1972, the birth control pill was being provided for free to all women above the age of 16. IUDs were also available for free while condoms had to be paid for. Subsequently contraceptive use increased significantly21 . Since the 1970s, oral ovulation inhibitors and IUDs became the most commonly used methods of contraception. Almost 40 percent of all women of childbearing age took the pill and between 12 and 14 percent used an IUD22 . But many women took temporary breaks from using the pill because of serious side effects like libido loss, weight gain, nausea, vertigo, permanent bleeding and so on23 . Despite its wide spread, trust in the pill was more likely to be low among many women24 . The selective state financing of contraception methods used by women manifested a female responsibility for contraception25 . The extension of access to contraceptive methods was less motivated by the recognition of sexual self-determination of women than by the imperative to plan reproductive biographies autonomously and “medically sensibly” and, according to that, to put these plans successfully into practice26 . This imperative is referred to here as “the imperative of predictability”. The provision of contraception was not only supposed to ensure the health of children and mothers but it was also supposed to secure a preferably uninterrupted employment history. Women’s employment was officially the fundamental requirement for their emancipation 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

26

Hahn, Modernisierung und Biopolitik (as in n. 10), p. 246. Christa Mahrad, Schwangerschaftsabbruch in der DDR. Gesellschaftliche, ethische und demographische Aspekte, Frankfurt a. M. 1987 (Europäische Hochschulschriften 11), p. 150. Hahn, Modernisierung und Biopolitik, p. 246. Mahrad, Schwangerschaftsabbruch (as in n. 19), p. 150. Aresin, Schwangerschaftsabbruch in der DDR (as in n. 5), p. 90f. Ibid., p. 151. Mahrad, Schwangerschaftsabbruch, p. 150f.; Leo, König, Wunschkindpille, p. 16. Ibid., p. 282f. IUDs were primarily used by older women, because of medical aspects and the so-called Pillenmüdigkeit (tiredness at taking the pill) increased with age. Mahrad, Schwangerschaftsabbruch, p. 150. Hahn, Modernisierung und Biopolitik, p. 245.

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and thereby for gender equality27 . Nevertheless in the 1960s and 1970s, the opportunities for preventing unwanted pregnancies expanded.

The Individualization of Family Planning The establishment of contraceptive methods was supposed to contribute to the realization of the foundations of socialist family planning – which were the “wish for a child”, a “rational parenthood” and the “fight against abortion”. Every child was supposed to be a planned child28 . Karl-Heinz Mehlan, leader of the Institute for Social Hygiene at the University of Rostock and an internationally acknowledged expert on birth control, had a significant impact on the principles of the family planning and population policy of the SED. Therefore from the 1970s onwards his statements can be read as pioneering in leading the state doctrine of the GDR in these realms. In his programmatic book on family planning29 , Mehlan advocated it as a means of bringing the development of national economy and political structure into agreement with the ways of thinking and behavior of the population30 . He rejected a moral obligation for families to have a certain number of children in order to ensure the reproduction of the population31 . Instead he expected that “every healthy woman in complete physical, psychological and social well-being originally has an inner wish for a child [. . . ] and that’s the reason, although not the only reason, why she wants to get married”32 . Mehlan naturalized women’s wish for a child and a family and was of the opinion that socialist family policy had to create favorable conditions for the compatibility of children and work. He propagated education about a “responsible partnership”, which meant an equal and permanent relationship between a man and a woman including sexuality after a certain point of time33 . In his opinion, early sex education should be provided about contraception in order to prevent pregnancies at a young age, because these would hinder or complicate vocational education. In addition, he stated that becoming pregnant 27 28

29 30 31 32 33

Arnd Bauerkämper, Die Sozialgeschichte der DDR. München 2005 (Enzyklopädie deutscher Geschichte 76), p. 11. Karl-Heinz Mehlan, Wunschkinder? Familienplanung, Antikonzeption und Abortbekämpfung in unserer Zeit, Berlin 1972, p. 215; Mecklinger, Begründung (as in n. 4), p. 33; Hahn, Modernisierung und Biopolitik, p. 270. Mehlan, Wunschkinder (as in n. 28). Ibid., p. 207. Ibid., p. 209. Ibid., p. 209–211. Ibid., p. 220–221.

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too early would lead to premature marriages pushed by the fear of stigmatization because of an illegitimate child34 . However, the early foundation of a family could have been also a step towards independence, because married couples were entitled to their own apartment and were therefore able to leave parental home35 . Furthermore, Mehlan promoted the concept of “rational parenthood”36 : The couple should choose the right point of time for child birth which should focus on the question of when the “mental and social requirements for parenthood are given and the couple is able to take responsibility for the later life of the child”37 . He proposed a birth spacing of two years to assure the health of mother and child. An “extremely high” number of children should be avoided as well as late birth of the first child38 . Sexuality should not just serve either for reproduction or for pure pleasure, but should be “shaped by moral standards”39 . Mehlan had many normative assumptions about reproductive biographies and sexuality, arguing that these would favor social interest in a “harmonic and healthy family”40 . At the same time, he individualized the responsibility for a planned and rational reproduction – i.e. the realization of those normative models. As a result of legal changes and modern discourses on family planning, during the 1960s and 1970s a change of reproductive practices occurred in the GDR which focused more and more on predictability and voluntariness in the reproductive realm41 .

Pro-Natalist Policies in the GDR At the same time socio-political measures were encouraging women to have children. During the 1950s and 1960s more and more women took part in the labor market and the birth rate declined. Despite state support of qualification measures particularly for women, they often worked in occupations which required fewer qualifications and which were paid less42 . This was inter alia a reason 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42

Ibid., p. 211. Trappe, Emanzipation oder Zwang (as in n. 10), p. 106. Ibid., p. 212. Ibid., p. 215. Ibid., p. 218. Ibid., p. 220. Ibid., p. 217. Hahn, Modernisierung und Biopolitik, p. 275. Trappe, Emanzipation oder Zwang, p. 116; Nickel, Geschlechtertrennung durch Arbeitsteilung (as in n. 10), p. 11; Ina Merkel, Leitbilder und Lebensweisen von Frauen in der DDR, in: Hartmut Kaelble, Jürgen Kocka, Hartmut Zwahr (ed.), Sozialgeschichte der DDR, Stuttgart 1994, p. 372; Irene Dölling, Zum Verhältnis von modernen und traditionalen Aspekten im Lebenszusammenhang von Frauen in der DDR, in: Unter Hammer und

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why women earned 25 to 30 percent less than men43 . From the 1960s onwards, women often changed into part-time employment because they still took the main responsibility for childcare44 . As a reaction to that, at the beginning of the 1970s socio-political measures focused on the compatibility of women’s full-time employment and childcare. The SED introduced the Babyjahr45 and one fully paid housework day per month, expanded public childcare46 and reduced the full-time work time for mothers with more than one child. For each newborn child couples who took an interest-free Ehekredit received a reduction of a certain amount in their redemption fee47 . However, these measures were not very successful, as the part-time employment of women did not decrease significantly and the birth rate more or less stagnated48 . Although women were appreciated and also deemed necessary as workers they were predominantly addressed as mothers. As objects of a mother-centered family policy women did not have a lot of alternatives to the hegemonic familycentered model of living49 . In addition, moralising appeals in state publications criticized “sexual instability” and resulting abortions. Childlessness was also criticized as bourgeois50 and the reproductive work of women was declared a patriotic task and deemed a sign of commitment to socialism51 . A negative image of childless women was increasingly established which led to a normative pressure regarding marriage and children.

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45 46

47 48

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50 51

Zirkel. Frauenbiographien vor dem Hintergrund ostdeutscher Sozialisationserfahrungen, ed. by Zentrum für Interdisziplinäre Frauenforschung der Humboldt-Universität Berlin, Pfaffenweiler 1995, p. 27. Nickel, Geschlechtertrennung durch Arbeitsteilung, p. 19; Ute Gerhard, Die staatlich institutionalisierte “Lösung” der Frauenfrage. Zur Geschichte der Geschlechterverhältnisse in der DDR, in: Kaelble, Kocka, Zwahr (eds.), Sozialgeschichte (as in n. 42), p. 394. According to Trappe, from 1960 to 1970 the share of part-time employees of all working women doubled from 15 to 30 percent and stayed on this level until 1989. Trappe, Emanzipation oder Zwang, p. 144f. One fully paid year for taking care of a newborn child. In 1978 there were nursery places for two thirds of all children and places in a kindergarten for almost 100 percent. 75 percent of pupils were in day-care facilities and more than 85 percent had school meals. Perthold, Deutschland Ost, p. 189. Klaus-Dieter Stamm (ed.), Stichworte von A bis Z. Zu Bildung, Jugend und Gesellschaft in der DDR 1949–1990, Norderstedt 1 2010, p. 40. Trappe, Emanzipation oder Zwang, p. 116; Nickel, Geschlechtertrennung durch Arbeitsteilung, p. 11; Merkel, Leitbilder und Lebensweisen (as in n. 42), p. 372; Dölling, Lebenszusammenhang (as in n. 42), p. 27. Dorothea Dornhof, Vom Mythos der Emanzipation zur “neuen Weiblichkeit”, in: Barbara Geiling-Maul, Hildegard Macha, Heidi Schrutka-Rechtenstamm et al. (eds.), Frauenalltag. Weibliche Lebenskultur in beiden Teilen Deutschlands, Köln 1992, p. 169; also Merkel, Leitbilder und Lebensweisen, p. 373. Enigl, Perthold (eds.), Der weibliche Körper (as in n. 14), p. 188. Ankum, Political Bodies (as in n. 10), p. 129.

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With different intermittent prioritizations these policies ranged from the enforcement of the idea of a family with many children and the compatibility of motherhood and work. In the 40-year history of the GDR there were contradictory socio-political developments and ambitions regarding the compatibility of family and work. Nevertheless, generally a pro-natalist policy prevailed. The social policy of the GDR has to be understood as a corrective, which served to cushion but not overcome structural inequalities and which addressed women primarily as working mothers. From the 1970s onwards, with the increasing differentiation of the socio-political measures, the adjustment of reproductive biographies strengthened. The nuclear family dominated as the standardized way of life until the end of the GDR.

Objectives and State of Research In summary, there was a certain tension between the imperative of planning individually and the given socio-political structures, which were strongly shaping reproductive behavior. Exposure to these conflicting demands meant women developed both similar and at the same time different individual ways of dealing with abortion and contraception by affirming and resisting these demands. Therefore, a question raised in this study is which conflicts women faced before the background outlined here and how they dealt with these conflicts. In particular the focus is on contraception and family values in order to address the following questions: How did the conditions regarding the supply of contraception and its application influence decision-making relating to family planning among the interviewees? How did they perceive the reactions of their social environment towards these decisions? How did social norms and values influence their decisions, perceptions and their narratives? Until now there has been no qualitative study dealing with the experiences of women who had abortions in the GDR. As such the present text addresses an academic void. In the GDR itself mostly medicinal and jurisprudential journals published articles about quantitative studies on different aspects of abortion52 . Before reunification, analyses and reviews of official documents in the GDR relating to abortion were published in the FRG53 . After reunification a study by Daphne Hahn was published which focused on biopolitical implications regard52

53

For example, there are numerous publications that deal with the motives and reasons for abortions, moral questions, the different practices of the Kreiskommissionen (disctrict comissions) or socio-medicinal aspects. For example, see Harmsen, Gesetz über die Unterbrechung der Schwangerschaft (1972) or Mahrad, Schwangerschaftsabbruch (1987).

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ing sterilization and abortion in Germany after 1945 and in this context also dealt with discourses on family planning in the GDR54 . In 1992 Kirsten Thietz collected substantial material about the abolition of § 218 in the GDR, including parliamentary speeches, newspaper and magazine articles, and the wording of law and factional documents of the SED55 . Each of these publications only engaged parenthetically with the subjective experiences of women. Regarding these dimensions of abortion, there are qualitative studies outside the GDR-context. Probably the largest one is “The Foetal Condition: A Sociology of Engendering and Abortion” by the French sociologist Luc Boltanski, who conducted more than 100 interviews with women about their personal experiences with abortion and developed a theory about the symbolic order that gave pregnancy, birth and abortion their social rules56 . Moreover, Rita Seitz wrote a monograph on the concept of women’s autonomy and its realization through abortion in 199357 . More recently Annette Leo and Christian König published their research into experiences with the pill, which was mostly based on biographic-narrative interviews and which also contains a chapter on abortion58 .

Oral History as a Research Method This study deals with narratives on abortion and contraception in the GDR in the context of individual references to life, as every-day-experience and on the level of social value propositions. It is based on oral history interviews, one advantage of which is that it makes knowledge reproducible which otherwise only exists in oral form59 . This can include knowledge which is not considered important enough to be written down. For the present research five biographicalnarrative interviews were conducted and three of them were analyzed. The small number of cases does not allow the results to claim representativeness, but this kind of qualitative research is the only possible method of gaining access to

54 55 56 57 58 59

Hahn, Modernisierung und Biopolitik. Thietz, Ende der Selbstverständlichkeit (as in n. 1). Luc Boltanski, Soziologie der Abtreibung. Zur Lage des fötalen Lebens, Frankfurt a. M. 1 2007. Rita Seitz, Mein Bauch gehört mir? Schwangerschaftsabbruch als Möglichkeit weiblicher Autonomie, Pfaffenweiler 1993. Leo, König, Wunschkindpille. Ulrike Jureit, Erinnerungsmuster. Zur Methodik lebensgeschichtlicher Interviews mit Überlebenden der Konzentrations- und Vernichtungslager. Hamburg 1999, p. 27; also Ronald J. Grele, Ziellose Bewegung. Methodologische und theoretische Probleme der Oral History, in: Rutz Niethammer, Werner Trapp (eds.), Lebenserfahrung und kollektives Gedächtnis. Die Praxis der Oral History, Frankfurt a. M. 1985, p. 202.

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the individual decision-making processes of women in their specific biographic contexts. A biographical-narrative interview starts with an open invitation for the interviewee to tell his or her life story. The following impromptu narration allows (and forces) the interviewees to set their own topics, priorities and dimensions. In this way it is possible to learn which aspects regarding their experiences and their narratives are relevant to them, without these aspects being limited by the researcher from the outset. It is necessary to distinguish between experience and narrative, because they are not identical. Developing an autobiographical narrative is a constructive process located in the present. These narratives change through subsequent life experiences and are shaped by psychological processes, hegemonic ideologies and collective forms of memory. Therefore they are influenced by social discourses. That impact has to be extrapolated through interpretation and analysis because it is no longer transparent in the source itself60 . The narratives of this research were influenced by collective remembrance discourses regarding the GDR and the Wende (German reunification). Recent individualizing discourses on family planning also had an impact on their telling.

Interview Analyses Interview A: Paula

Paula61 was born in 1945 and grew up in a small town in what is now known as Saxony-Anhalt. In the GDR she was politically engaged within the left-wing oppositional spectrum. Today she is active in the Pirate Party. She has lived in a lot of different places in the GDR and had several apprenticeships. Paula has been married and divorced three times. Paula gave a detailed description of her early sex education provided by her mother and stated that she already knew “everything” before first having sexual intercourse. For her, that is why her first time appeared to her to be something she had done a lot of times before. Paula seems to see herself as a modern, educated woman. She underlined her self-image by the description of her early sex education: “I read already as a young girl, so I had a very clever mother. She didn’t want to talk with us about it and she practically got literature of all kinds – pure educational books and also fiction, in which things came quite straight to the point. ‘Die Göttinnen’ from Mann or ‘Nana’ or, no matter what, my mother provided all of these books and in this 60 61

Jureit, Erinnerungsmuster (as in n. 59), p. 27. The names of all interviewees have been changed and all references to places removed.

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sense it was a literary education. Actually I have to say, I knew at the age of four where children come from.”62

It can be presumed, that her self-image is one reason why she narrated in great detail about her contraceptive history. Paula admitted that she had her first child at the age of 17 although she and her partner were already sexually educated. She stated: “We knew everything already, right. And, of course, that didn’t protect us, I mean me, from pregnancy (laughs), because actually I wanted to stay together with that man and I wanted to marry him and that was big love and, [. . . ] yes.”63

Paula contrasted the emotional bonding to her partner with adequate contraception. Her statement suggests that her wish to stay with her partner led to insufficient use of contraception. Furthermore she implied that because of her sex education she would have known that an early pregnancy should be avoided and how it could be avoided. In this extract she also expressed the idea that on the individual level there is no necessary connection between being sexually educated and conscious planning. Six years later (in 1968) she became pregnant again and terminated this pregnancy illegally with the help of a metal spiral. Paula gave a detailed description of how her first unwanted pregnancy came about: “So I have to say, I got pregnant by having intercourse during my period. That was a very common method of contraception, that you had intercourse during the period if the man didn’t mind. Everyone thought this would be completely safe.”64

When in her last sentence she says that everyone thought that they were being completely safe sounds almost apologetic. This passage can be interpreted as a

62

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64

In the following, I will provide the original german interview citations in the footnotes. “Ich habe mich belesen, schon als ganz junges Mädchen, also ich hatte eine ganz clevere Mutter, die mochte mit uns nicht darüber sprechen und die hat praktisch Literatur besorgt, jeglicher Couleur, in der Hinsicht, das waren reine Aufklärungsbücher teilweise und das war auch Belletristik, in der es relativ (..) direkt zur Sache gegangen ist, also so ‘Die Göttin’ von Mann oder ‘Nana’ oder, egal was, also das hatte meine Mutter alles praktisch zur Verfügung gestellt und das war also eine literarische Aufklärung in dem Sinne. Und eigentlich muss ich dazu sagen, ich wusste schon mit vier Jahren, wo die Kinder herkommen.” Follow-up interview with Paula, par. 46. See also interview with Paula, par. 17–19. “Wir wussten dann schon alles, nich. Und das hatte uns natürlich, also mich, natürlich nicht vor früher Schwangerschaft geschützt (lacht), weil ich eigentlich mit diesem Mann zusammen bleiben wollte und wollte ihn auch heiraten und das war große Liebe und [. . . ] ja.” Interview with Paula, par. 17. “Also muss ich dazu sagen, ich bin schwanger geworden, als ich Verkehr hatte unter der Regel. Das war auch eine beliebte Methode zur Schwangerschaftsverhütung, dass wenn dem Mann das nichts ausgemacht hat, dass man während der Regel Verkehr gehabt hat. Da dachte man, man wäre völlig sicher.” Interview with Paula, par. 39f.

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defence against anticipated accusations of having an unwanted pregnancy before they are even articulated. At the same time Paula’s marriage was in crisis. When asked about her reasons for terminating the pregnancy, she answered: “Because one sexual intercourse during my menstruation, got pregnant, with somebody, that was totally impossible (laughs). That was totally impossible. Firstly, he was five years younger than me. (. . . ) Was he five years younger? Or so. And because I was also only at the beginning of my 20s, he was almost a schoolchild.”65

Her relationship with the biological father was no closer; in addition, he was much younger. Apparently, she thought of him as an incompetent father, probably because of his age (“he was almost a schoolchild”); that’s at least what she might have been referring to by her wording “that was totally impossible”. The sentence could also refer to their relationship, which made it impossible for her to keep the pregnancy and have the child together with him. In the beginning of the 1970s, she wanted to divorce her second husband, because he became repeatedly violent towards her, but the fear of moral judgment in her small-town context initially discouraged her: “I shrank back from a divorce, because in such a small town, being divorced twice. Oh my god, oh my god. And anyway I had been pregnant before the first marriage. Oh my god, oh my god. And at that time I thought a lot, because my parents were living in the same place. ‘No, you don’t get divorced here so quickly.’ Although this marriage was pretty much a disaster.”66

At this point Paula mentioned two deviations: On the one hand, the second divorce seemed to be a problem. That appeals to the social norm of a lifelong marriage. On the other hand, Paula refers to her illegitimate child. Although the official doctrine in the 1970s did not involve sexual abstinence until marriage anymore, Paula felt a social prejudice against women with children born out of wedlock. Furthermore Paula thought about her parents who were living in the same place and probably also worried about their reputation in this small town. At the end of the 1970s, Paula had a legal abortion. She described again in a self-justifying way how her second unwanted pregnancy came about: 65

66

“Na weil ein einziger Verkehr in der Regel, schwanger geworden, mit jemanden, das ging gar nicht (lacht). Das ging gar nicht. Erst mal war der fünf Jahre jünger als ich (..) War der fünf Jahre jünger? Oder so. Und da ich ja auch erst Anfang zwanzig war, der war ja fast noch ein Schulkind.” Follow-up interview with Paula, par. 38. “Ich habe aber vor einer Scheidung zurückgeschreckt, weil in so einer Kleinstadt zweimal geschieden. Oh Gott, oh Gott. Und sowieso schon vor der ersten Ehe schwanger gewesen. Oh Gott, oh Gott. Und damals habe ich mir noch sehr viele Gedanken gemacht, weil meine Eltern ja im gleichen Ort wohnten. ‘Nein, du lässt dich so schnell hier nicht scheiden.’ Obwohl das ein ziemliches Desaster war, diese Ehe.” Interview with Paula, par. 67.

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“And so in these days we shuttled between our two apartments and I forgot my pill somewhere. And I remember that it was a Sunday and I went to the doctor’s home, to the gynecologist’s home, you could do that, if you knew him. And he said: ‘So anyway, you can’t buy anything today, but I have pills lying here. If you pay for them, I can give them to you.’ And they weren’t expensive. 3.50 or so, and so then I did pay for them, but this was another sort of pill. And then I got pregnant. So, only one or two days of pausing the pill and taking another sort, this was enough to cause a pregnancy.”67

It seems that she wants to give the impression that she did everything she could to successfully use contraception and to ‘compensate’ for the ‘mistake’ of forgetting the pill. The wording that she missed taking the pill for “only one or two days” is supposed to make her ‘mistake’ seem negligible. In a difference from her first unwanted pregnancy, the begetter of this pregnancy was her third husband and they already had one child together: “And I spoke to the father, thus with the potential father of the child, and he said then that he leaves the decision solely to me, he doesn’t want to be involved in the decision. And with that I was overwhelmed. Then I thought to myself: ‘You don’t do it when the father reacts so strangely from the start.’ And then I went for an official abortion for the first time.”68

Upon request Paula stated that she would have continued the pregnancy if the father had supported her69 . She interpreted the indifferent attitude of the father as the breaking point. In 1980, Paula had her second and last child. She commented on this in the following way: “Well, that is (..), as I said, both children I got, they are really, I must say, that’s alright, I have reproduced twice, and that’s enough.”70 67

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“Und wir haben also zwischen diesen Wohnungen gependelt und ich hatte meine Pille vergessen irgendwo. Und ich weiß, dass das an einem Sonntag gewesen ist und ich bin zum Arzt nach Hause gegangen, zum Frauenarzt nach Hause gegangen, das konnte man machen, wenn man den gekannt hat. Und der hat gesagt ‘Ja, heute kriegen sie ja sowieso nichts mehr, aber ich habe hier noch Pillen liegen. Wenn sie mir die bezahlen, dann gebe ich ihnen die.’ Und die waren nicht teuer, 3,50 oder so, und die habe ich dann auch bezahlt, und das war aber eine andere Sorte. Und dann war ich schwanger. Also schon die ein, zwei Tage aussetzen und dann noch eine andere Sorte, das hat dann schon die Schwangerschaft bewirkt.” Follow-up interview with Paula, par. 84. “Und ich hab dann mit dem Vater, also mit dem potentiellen Vater des Kindes, gesprochen, und der hat dann gesagt, er überlässt mir diese Entscheidung ganz allein, er möchte darin nicht involviert sein. Also in die Entscheidung. Und damit war ich dann überfordert. Da habe ich mir dann gedacht ‘Das machst du nicht, wenn der Vater also von vornherein schon so komisch reagiert’. Und dann bin ich das erste Mal offiziell zu einer Abtreibung gegangen.” Interview with Paula, par. 5. Follow-up interview with Paula, par. 62–64. “Ja, das ist (..) wie gesagt die beiden Kinder, die ich gekriegt habe, die sind wirklich, muss ich sagen, das ist in Ordnung, da habe ich mich reproduziert, zweifach, und das reicht.” Interview with Paula, par. 38.

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Here, Paula referred to a demographic discourse: Her statement can be aimed at justifying her two abortions by the fact that she fulfilled the expectation of reproduction by having two children. After the delivery of her second child, Paula tried all the contraceptive possibilities available in the 1980s in the GDR. Paula reported that she got a “horrible nettle rash” after taking the pill in the previous years which did not disappear until she stopped taking it. Afterwards she had an IUD inserted, which came out several times, so she also could not use it. Finally she came to the conclusion that none of them were working satisfactorily for her: “I have to say in addition, so [. . . ] with 45 there was the Wende. And the whole time before that, approximately eight to ten years I didn’t use contraception at all. If at all I tried to comply with my fertile and infertile days. The use of condoms wasn’t possible, because probably my vagina is too solid and it pulled the condom off my partner. So if it is always gone and I have to fumble it out, then it is idiotic anyway. So I think I tried it three times in my life and it didn’t work at all. These suppositories for insertion made a terrible mess and were so counterproductive that there was nothing, no feeling anymore, nothing, so this also didn’t work. Therefore I didn’t use any contraception method, I also didn’t take the pill.”71

For Paula, besides medical and emotional criteria, a decisive factor in using contraceptives was also the issue of being comfortable during sexual intercourse: Condoms often burst or slipped off and contraceptive vaginal suppositories always made “a terrible mess”. Interview B: Margarete

Margarete was born in 1948 and grew up in a small town close to Berlin. Her father was a party official and her mother was a housewife. Margarete studied in Saxony and afterwards moved to a bigger city in Thuringia, where she is still living with her husband. She became a party member of the SED at 18. Today she is active in the successor party of the SED, Die Linke (The Left). In 1985 she terminated a pregnancy. At that time she already had three children. 71

“Ich muss dann dazu sagen, so [. . . ] mit 45 war die Wende. Und diese ganze Zeit davor, ungefähr so acht, zehn Jahre davor habe ich überhaupt nicht verhütet. Ich habe, wenn überhaupt, mich versucht nach den fruchtbaren und unfruchtbaren Tagen zu richten. Mit Präservativ ging es nicht bei mir. Weil wahrscheinlich meine Scheide so fest ist, dass sie dem Partner das Präservativ abzieht. Also wenn das immer weg ist und ich muss das dann raus fummeln, dann ist das sowieso Schwachsinn sowas zu machen. Also ich hab das glaube ich in meinem Leben dreimal versucht und es hat überhaupt nicht geklappt, es ging überhaupt nicht. Diese Zäpfchen zum Einführen, die es bei uns auch gab, die machten fürchterliche Schweinerei und waren dann so, so kontraproduktiv, dass dann überhaupt nichts mehr, keinerlei Empfinden, keine, es ging auch nicht so richtig. Also ich habe gar nicht verhütet, habe auch keine Pille genommen.” Interview with Paula, par. 53.

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As a response to a question about what sex education she had had Margarete related the following: “No. My mother was even raped during the war. And I was always wondering why I was educated so prudishly. She could hardly say the words, let alone that she would have wanted to explain something to me. And so I said to myself, if she would have told me at least at the age of 18 or so what happened, then I would have understood her. And I could have derived from this that I have to live my own life. [. . . ] my unselfconsciousness wasn’t as developed as it could have been according to the age.”72

Margarete broached the issue of her lack of self-consciousness and that she would have lived her own life had she not known about the rape of her mother, which Margarete sees as the reason why her mother educated her so prudishly. From this passage Margarete’s self-image can be described as sexually timid and unsure. Before her first child, Margarete only used the rhythm method as a form of contraception: “But in contrast to my mother I had soon noticed when my unfertile days happened, by the way without any education by my parents or friends. Now, as we met up the usual times, I knew, that it could go wrong. But it didn’t matter to me.”73

Margarete described how a pregnancy would have been something “wrong” to her. But nevertheless she did not care about whether she got pregnant and had unprotected sex during her fertile days. Apparently she seemed to be proud of the knowledge she gained regarding her reproductive cycle which she acquired without anybody’s help. After the birth of her first child Margarete took the pill and suffered from some side effects. She did not give details about it, but explained these side effects as being from the high dosage of hormones in the first pills74 . Margarete justified taking the pill despite the side effects and refused other contraceptive methods based on her discomfort using them:

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“Nee. Meine Mutter hat sogar noch das Erlebnis, dass sie im Krieg vergewaltigt wurde. Und ich hab mich immer gewandert warum ich so prüde erzogen wurde. Sie konnte kaum die Worte in den Mund nehmen, geschweige denn wenn sie mir irgendwas hätte erklären wollen oder so. Und da habe ich mir nur gesagt, wenn sie mir später wenigstens mal so als 18-Jährige gesagt hätte, was da mal passiert ist, dann hätte ich sie verstanden. Und daraus ableiten können, dass ich jetzt mein eigenes Leben mache. [. . . ] diese Unbefangenheit war bei mir lange nicht so ausgeprägt wie sie hätte sein können entsprechend des Alters.” Interview with Margarete, par. 143. “Aber im Gegensatz zu meiner Mutter hatte ich bald gemerkt, wann meine unfruchtbaren Tage waren, im Übrigen ohne jegliche Aufklärung von Eltern oder Freunden. Nun, als wir uns außerhalb üblicher Zeiten trafen, wusste ich, dass es danebengehen konnte. Aber es war mir egal.” Follow-up interview with Margarete, par. 25. Interview with Margarete, par. 25f. Side effects of the pill are a big topic in the narrations of women from the GDR. Leo, König, Wunschkindpille, p. 161–166.

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“I wasn’t interested in other methods of contraception, because I could combine work and my wish for a child and moreover have relaxed sex only by taking the pill.”75

By mentioning “relaxed sex” as criteria for using a special contraceptive method, she is probably referring to condoms, because IUDs do not have an impact on sex. That implies that for her, condoms made sex uncomfortable. Furthermore, in this sentence Margarete described how she could not combine work and her wish for a child using other methods. At this point she is probably referring to IUDs, because they were inserted for a couple of years. In her imagination only the pill made her able to time her pregnancies according to her working requirements. Margarete had two more children in the following years. In 1985 she got pregnant again and decided to have an abortion. Referring to the recent situation in Germany, where a counselling interview is obligatory for women before an abortion, she explained: “I must say honestly that I would feel, how should I say, discriminated, if I had three children and I decided that I don’t want to have the 4th one. And be blamed by someone like, well, why didn’t you use contraception or something. Well, maybe I didn’t use contraception because I don’t tolerate the pill anymore. And because with anything else I am feeling uncomfortable. So. But I already have the three of them anyway. Or I reached a certain age saying ‘No, it doesn’t have to be another one’.”76

A possible interpretation of this passage is that Margarete seemed to feel an accusation levelled against her: She answered the imaginary accusation of not having using contraception and thereby not preventing the unwanted pregnancy by imitating an imagined dialogue. Besides age and her intolerance of the pill she argued within that dialogue that she already had three children. Here she possibly referred to the aforementioned social expectation towards women of only having a certain number of children. Margarete described the reaction of her husband to her unwanted pregnancy as follows: “And actually my husband gave me plenty of rope, based on the motto ‘It doesn’t matter to me’. And actually that was one of the reasons why I said ‘If it doesn’t matter to him, than you will do it’. So there also wasn’t any excessive joy of having a child and, and this

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“An anderen Verhütungsmitteln hatte ich kein Interesse, denn nur mit der Pille konnte ich sicher Beruf und Kinderwunsch in Einklang bringen und außerdem unbelasteten Sex haben.” Interview with Margarete, par. 25f. “Ich muss ehrlich sagen, ich würde auch heute, wie soll ich sagen, mir diskriminiert vorkommen, wenn ich drei Kinder habe und jetzt entscheide das vierte magst du nicht mehr. Und mir vielleicht vorwerfen lassen, ja warum hast du nicht verhütet oder irgendwas. Na ich hab vielleicht nicht verhütet, weil ich die Pille nicht mehr vertrage. Und alles andere mir unangenehm ist. So. Aber dass ich drei sowieso schon hab. Oder ein bestimmtes Alter erreicht habe, wo ich sage ‘Nee, es muss nicht mehr sein’.” Interview with Margarete, par. 58.

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It-doesn’t-matter, that was too much for me. I was then, how old was I? 37. And this was really too much for me. (. . . ) That, that was then, getting a no-matter-child with a no-matter-husband, so this was too much for me.”77

For her it was “too much”, after her husband “gave her plenty of rope”. Her wording pointedly illustrates the area of tension in which abortions are considered: the fact that she felt “no excessive joy” at the prospect of a further child, but at the same time implies that she would have kept the pregnancy had the attitude of her partner been more caring. Referring to the acceptance of abortions in relation to the disapproval of illegitimate children, Margarete said: “So it [having abortions] was already quite normal at that time. Therefore I didn’t understand [why women were scared to be condemned because of an abortion], because it was still more an extension of getting a child out of wedlock. And even this was no problem anymore in this time, but more than having an abortion. Because who would find out about that?”78

At this point Margarete estimated the disapproval of having illegitimate children to be higher than abortions, even though those children were “no problem anymore in this time”. She also mentioned that in contrast to having a child, abortions could be kept secret (“Because who would find out about that?”). That implies that she didn’t believe in the social acceptance of abortions. The women were protected by the fact that abortions could take place secretly and therefore nobody would find out about it. Interview C: Karla

Karla was born in 1967 and grew up in a village close to the Polish border in a worker’s family. She did not express a clear position towards the GDR. After school she started an apprenticeship as a staff nurse but did not finish it. Later she became a nursery nurse and worked as such until she was diagnosed as bipolar at the beginning of the 2000s. 77

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“Und mein Mann hat mir eigentlich vollkommen freie Hand gelassen, so nach dem Motto ‘Mir ist das egal.’ Und das war eigentlich schon mit ein Grund, dass ich sage, wenn es ihm egal ist, dann machst du es. Also die übertriebene Freude auf irgendein Kind war da auch nicht da und, und dieses Egal-Sein, das war mir dann zu viel. Ich war dann, wie alt war ich da? 37. Und das war mir dann echt zu viel. (. . . ) Das, das war dann, also mit einem Egal-Mann dann ein Egal-Kind zu kriegen, also das war mir dann zu viel.” Interview with Margarete, par. 103. “Also, es ist schon ganz normal gewesen um die Zeit. Deshalb habe ich es nicht verstanden, weil es war immer noch eher ein Anhängsel, unehelich irgendwie ein Kind zu kriegen. Und selbst das war kein Problem mehr in der Zeit, wie einen Schwangerschaftsabbruch dann zu haben. Denn wer hat davon erfahren?” Interview with Margarete, par. 59.

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Karla explained how she got pregnant for the first time in 1986: “Once I had an ovary infection and I don’t know what else. But I didn’t undergo surgery or something and then she [Karla’s gynecologist] only told me that it would be very difficult to impossible to have children, she said. With these infections. Well, but you did, you did accept it like that. You don’t think about it. Then it is like that. And that’s why I was so astonished that I got pregnant with Z. [her first child] so quickly. So you probably didn’t take the pill that regularly and wham. Oh, I thought, so this statement also wasn’t right.”79

Karla seems to express in a self-justificatory way that she did not think sufficiently about contraception and that she accepted her gynecologist’s diagnosis of her as being infertile. In retrospect, she felt responsible for not questioning the diagnosis and accordingly for not using contraception more reliably. It is also questionable why she took the pill at all when she was diagnosed as infertile. Eventually she took it because of other aspects like skin problems or an irregular cycle. Karla explained that generally it was very easy to get a prescription for the pill. Furthermore she stated that she knew about sterilization as the only possibility beside the pill, but that she did not know if it was easily accessible. Additionally she said: “But now my question would be: Was there no alternative or wasn’t it provided? This would have been the question. Was there really no contraceptive coil or anything, which could have been provided to women in the GDR? Or did they just have these two kinds of pills? And as far as I know, many women didn’t get along with these pills.”80

Here Karla shows a lack of knowledge about different methods of contraception. She did not know about IUDs and did not mention condoms. This corresponds with the fact that condoms were not widely used as they were not the same quality as condoms today. The material was much thicker and therefore less sensitive and a lot of people saw them as old-fashioned81 . Additionally, it 79

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“Ich hatte mal einen entzündeten Eierstock und ich weiß nicht was noch war. Aber war nie jetzt zur Operation oder irgendwas und da hat sie [Frauenärztin von Karla] bloß zu mir gesagt, also, das wird sehr schwer – unmöglich, dass ich mal Kinder bekomme, sagt sie. Bei den Entzündungen. Naja, das hast du damals aber, das nimmst du so an, wie es ist. Da machst du dir keine Gedanken. Dann ist das so. Und deswegen war ich ja auch so erstaunt, dass ich mit Z. so schnell schwanger war. Dann hast du die Pille ja doch wahrscheinlich nicht immer regelmäßig genommen und bumms. Oh, hab ich gedacht, hat die Aussage ja auch nicht gestimmt.” Interview with Karla, par. 200. “Aber jetzt ist, wäre meine Frage: Gab es keine Alternativen, oder wurden sie nicht angeboten? Ne, das wäre die Frage gewesen. Gab es zu DDR-Zeiten wirklich noch keine Spirale oder irgendwas, was man hätte den Frauen ja anbieten können oder hat man eben nur die zwei Sorten Pillen gehabt. Wo viele Frauen, was ich weiß, gar nicht zurechtgekommen sind.” Interview with Karla, par. 198. Gabriele Grafenhorst, Abbruch-Tabu. Lebensgeschichten nach Tonbandprotokollen, Berlin 1990, p. 53.

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is remarkable that Karla only considered what could have been “provided to women”. After the birth of Karla’s son, the child’s father split up with her. Shortly afterwards she met her current husband, became pregnant and had an abortion. Next to her cramped living conditions and her non-completed apprenticeship Karla also mentioned the very short relationship with her partner as a reason for her abortion: “And then the relationship to J. wasn’t very solid, yet. Where I still say, yes, what is if he also leaves?”82

She did not see the relationship as being strong enough to have a child together. She was scared of becoming a single mother of two children after experiencing how her first partner left shortly after the birth. Karla also explained her decision to have an abortion based on a fear of social disapproval: “Then you sit there with two kids. During the times of the GDR, maybe it is like today, two kids of different fathers, then you were written off in society. This would be added. Then you would be nothing, nothing in society anymore.”83

Karla talked about the deviation from a traditional sexual morality. Women who were intimate with different men objected to social expectations of monogamy and marriage. Karla unintentionally became pregnant with her new partner only a few months after her former partner, with whom she already had a child, split up with her. Her decision to terminate the pregnancy was framed by her perception that she would be “written off ” after having a second child by another man. That she also was not married would have made it even more complicated. Elsewhere Karla underlined how she would have wanted more kids with “the right man”: “I would have liked to have it. I would have liked to have it. I have always thought ‘If you got the right man, four, five children’, I would have liked to have that. (. . . ) And then I decided against it.”84

Here she describes children as a project of two people – mother and father. But because she did not get “the right man”, she could not fulfill her wish for more children. 82 83

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“Und dann war die Bindung zu J. auch noch nicht so fest. Wo ich immer noch sage, ja, was ist wenn der auch geht?” Interview with Karla, par. 164. “Dann sitzt du mit zwei Kindern da. Und zu DDR-Zeiten, ist vielleicht auch wie heute, zwei Kinder von unterschiedlichen Männern, na da warst du doch abgeschrieben. Das kommt doch mit dazu. Da warst du doch, da warst du ein Nichts mehr in der Gesellschaft.” Interview with Karla, par. 166. “Ich hätte es gerne gehabt. Ich hätte es gerne gehabt. Ich hab ja immer so gedacht ‘Wenn du den richtigen Mann kriegst, so vier, fünf Kinder’, das hätte ich gerne gehabt. (. . . ) Und habe mich dann dagegen entschieden.” Interview with Karla, par. 18.

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Comparing Analysis Contraception

During the 1960s, the phase of restrictive regulations aimed at a quantitative growth of the population ended. Instead, a health policy change in favor of modern regulations took place. These modern regulations included material and immaterial promotion of certain behavior with the premise that individuals take active responsibility for family planning85 . After a more or less restrictive practice of dispensing contraception until the late 1960s, new possibilities and options for women regarding their way of living emerged. In addition to the standardising effects caused by socio-political measures a greater individual scope for action was primarily available to women. Whether or not they made use of these new choices depended on their individual background86 . Most of the women born in the 1940s did not take the pill immediately after its introduction. A lot of them were sceptical of it due to the intake of hormones87 . Only at a later point and often after they had tried different methods did they use the pill, often with longer breaks that they decided upon88 . As opposed to this, for Karla’s generation the pill had already become a natural part of women’s every-day-life89 . The narrative of Karla reflects this. She even asked if there was no alternative to the pill. The responsibility to remember the daily intake as well as the uncertainty about being pregnant or not were both taken more or less for granted90 . The main difference between the two generations with regard to taking the pill concerns timing. While those of Karla’s generation took the pill at the beginning of their reproductive phase and later started questioning this because of the physical consequences, Paula and Margarete’s generation had a tendency towards scepticism at the beginning, by refusing the pill in the first years and deciding to take it when they were older. Margarete reported that she used the rhythm method in her younger years and then took the pill between her pregnancies until she suffered side effects. Paula also took the pill for some years, but because she forgot it for one or two days she unintentionally became pregnant. Both generations share the fact that taking the pill consistently and planning life and family without leaving room for coincidences was an exception91 . This can also be seen in the narratives offered by the interviewees involved in this research. 85 86 87 88 89 90 91

Hahn, Modernisierung und Biopolitik, p. 238. See also Leo, König, Wunschkindpille, p. 156. Ibid., p. 107. Ibid., p. 111. Ibid., p. 151–153. Ibid., p. 155. Ibid., p. 160f.

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The statements of the interviewees featured here show that there was a plurality of medical, practical and other problems which were limiting the use of contraception. All three of them reported on side effects of the pill and difficulties in finding another suitable method. Karla showed a lack of knowledge about which alternative methods existed. She belongs to a younger generation than Paula and Margarete as Karla was 23 years old during German reunification. IUDs were provided in particular to older women who already had children. Therefore, an IUD wasn’t considered to be a form of contraception to Karla and it certainly was not recommended to her by her gynecologist. This may be a reason why Karla did not know about IUDs or why she could not remember it being an option. One other reason could be that Karla grew up in a worker’s family in a small village, while Margarete and Paula grew up in a more educated milieu and lived in bigger cities at a certain age. Women from an intellectual middle-class were better informed about contraception and used it more reliably, thus more often avoiding unwanted pregnancies92 . Margarete expressed reluctance towards experimenting with other contraceptive methods, while Paula went into detail about her experiences with all kinds of contraception. That fits their different self-images implied in their narratives about their respective experience of sex education. For the generation of Paula and Margarete, the taboo of sex education in school as well as in families is typical93 . Therefore, the provision of books with sexual content by Paula’s mother can be seen as a progressive act in the context of the time. That corresponds to the fact that Paula sees herself as a modern, sexually well-educated woman. Different to Paula, Margarete perceived herself as kind of old-fashioned. She described her lack of sex education as a deficiency that genuinely affected her sexual life. She expressed how she was not as casual about sex as she would have wanted to be and therefore missed certain opportunities. Margarete refers to the later development, in which sex education became more common and sexual life more liberated in general. Both interviewees refer to the typical social values of their generation before the background of their individual experiences. The difficulties mentioned regarding finding an acceptable method of contraception could even lead to an abandonment of contraception altogether even in cases where there was no wish for a child. Both Margarete and Paula reported having more or less consciously taken the risk of having an unwanted pregnancy. In his qualitative study of the sociology of abortion, Luc Boltanski comes to the conclusion that at most one third of abortions were caused by contraceptive failure94 . In this context the failure of procreation seems more important to him. 92 93 94

Henning, Kinderwunsch, (as in n. 16), p. 213f. Leo, König, Wunschkindpille, p. 101–106. Luc Boltanski, Soziologie der Abtreibung (as in n. 56), p. 211. In a recent study, the BzGA

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He describes a form of ambivalent behavior in which not everything is done to avoid becoming pregnant and at the same time not everything is done to become pregnant. Boltanski distinguishes between the wish to become pregnant and the wish to have a child95 . This kind of ambivalent behavior kept the possibility of pregnancy open and included the possibility of having an abortion. The practices described by the interviewees show that the imperative of family planning was undermined in their individual lives. Instead, these practices led to the point that external circumstances – in fact coincidences – would ‘decide’ if a pregnancy was to happen or not. Furthermore, they could also be interpreted as a refusal by the interviewees to take sole responsibility for reproductive planning. One interesting point is that both Margarete and Paula described this kind of behavior when it came to the pregnancies they kept. They told slightly different stories about the development of the pregnancies they terminated. Paula explained her first unwanted pregnancy as being caused by an irregular ovulation and the second one by forgetting to take the pill. Karla explained it as the result of a misdiagnosis by her gynecologist. Margarete cited a lack of suitable alternative contraceptive methods because of health and problems using them. Although she admitted here that she had unprotected sex, she tried to give reasons for that beyond the point of simply taking the risk into account. The narratives of all three interviewees about the conditions leading to their unwanted pregnancies can also function as justifications for their awareness of social accusations. With the extended access to contraception and corresponding with the imperative of predictability, the reliable use of contraception was not only a possibility but became more and more a social obligation. With the worldwide establishment of the pill in the 1960s the contraceptive responsibility was exclusively assigned to women96 . Given this situation, women would feel the need to provide an explanation if they had an unwanted pregnancy, as otherwise it meant that they did not plan it successfully. As outlined above, female responsibility for reproductive planning includes a double social requirement: On the one hand, women should prevent unwanted pregnancies by using contraception, on the other hand, they should produce

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indicates that 36 percent of unwanted pregnancies are caused by a lack of contraception. Women’s lives 3. Family planning in women’s lives. Interim Report, ed. by Bundeszentrale für gesundheitliche Aufklärung, Köln 2013. Boltanski, Soziologie der Abtreibung, p. 211. Despite a wider distribution of condoms this is still valid today. Sina Neumann, Anja Baldauf, Empfängnisverhütung heute, in: Marita Metz-Becker (ed.), Wenn Liebe ohne Folgen bliebe. . . Zur Kulturgeschichte der Verhütung, Marburg 2006, p. 57–58. An interesting question would be if such described accusations are stronger in a more educated milieu, because there the use of contraception is higher and at the same time self-attributions like being educated, modernity and self-responsibility are more established. See also Henning, Kinderwunsch, p. 206–213.

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wanted pregnancies and have a certain number of deliveries. Both Margarete and Paula referred to a demographic discourse when they talked about their abortions. They emphasized the number of children they had showing that they had fulfilled the requirement of reproduction although they had had abortions. Karla did not speak about this – perhaps because she belongs to a younger generation and is therefore less influenced by the authoritarian discourse on population growth, which was stronger before the 1960s. Nevertheless she was affected by moral norms of sexuality and traditional expectations of family life. The Influence of Gender Norms and Family Values

The interviewees expressed fears of experiencing social disapproval because of their biographical deviancies from normative family models and gender roles, especially in Paula and Karla’s small-town contexts. In provincial or rural areas social relations are much less anonymous than in urban cities and the social control among the inhabitants is much higher. This can strengthen the social pressure on conforming to normative ways of living. Moral values of family and sexuality were more rigid in Paula and Margarete’s generation than later97 . The ways of living were more traditional – a solid partnership, marriage, children. In this regard, Paula represents an exception, while Margarete lived a very typical life compared to other women of her generation. In Karla’s generation, traditional social norms of family life began to loosen. Marriage receded more and more in importance, the first sexual contacts took place at an earlier age, sex education had been established in most schools and although discussion of sexuality was mostly a taboo between children and parents, they were not so strongly hindered in experiencing it. That is why sexual biographies began to be more fractured, plural and complex98 . All of this was especially true in urban areas99 . The number of children born out of wedlock has increased since the 1970s. In 1989 more than half of all children were born outside marriage100 . This development was favored in the GDR by the legal recognition of both legitimate and illegitimate children through the “Gesetz über den Mutter- und Kinderschutz und die Rechte der Frau” from 1950101 . It was followed by a liberalization of social opinions

97 98 99 100

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Leo, König, Wunschkindpille, p. 101–111. Ibid., p. 149–155. Ibid., p. 152. Approximately 25 percent of women born circa in 1952 were unmarried when they had their first child. The percentage rose to 40 percent regarding women born ten years later. Trappe, Emanzipation oder Zwang, p. 110. § 17, Gesetz über den Mutter- und Kinderschutz und die Rechte der Frau vom 27. September 1950, online available, URL: http://www.verfassungen.de/de/ddr/mutterkindgesetz50.

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about children born out of wedlock and unmarried couples102 . Nevertheless the interviewees reported social disapproval due to having illegitimate children. Besides the potential second divorce, for Paula the fact that her first child was born outside marriage strengthened the probability of her being socially ostracized. Margarete suggested that having an illegitimate child was “no problem anymore”. Her estimations could be influenced by the fact that Margarete lived in a bigger city since the mid-1970s where social relations were more anonymous than in a smaller town. Of equal importance could be the fact that of the three interviewees her way of living most closely adhered to social norms. As a functionary of the SED she was highly integrated and adjusted to society. So it can be assumed that she was not overly affected by social disapproval. In contrast, Paula’s biography did not conform in any way to traditional ways of living. Karla, from a younger generation but located in a village context, reported on her fear of being “written off ” by society by having two illegitimate children from two different biological fathers. She offered this as one important reason for the decision to terminate her second pregnancy. For all interviewees the relation to the father of the prospective child played a genuine role in the decision-making process about having an abortion. For Paula and Margarete the indifferent attitude of their partners served as an argument for terminating their respective pregnancies. While from a feminist perspective a self-determined decision of the woman on her own is propagated, Paula and Margarete wished for a clear positioning by their respective partners in order to include them in their decision. With the no-matter-reactions of their partners, both felt overwhelmed and left to their own devices. In addition, their reasoning can be interpreted as a rejection of the requirement assigned to women to decide alone about continuing a pregnancy. By focusing on the attitudes of their partners both made them jointly responsible for the decision. Paula also mentioned the incompetence of the begetter of her first unwanted pregnancy. Karla stated that during her unwanted pregnancy she did not believe her relationship to be strong enough for them to have a child together. The interviewees in Boltanski’s study developed similar arguments. In the background, Boltanski states, it is not about the father as an individual but about a kind of “parental project”. That means that both should decide to have the child. Otherwise it would not be the product of a conscious engagement and an affirmative decision but just a product of chance103 . From this perspective the narratives of the interviewees could be affected by the imperative of predictability, which includes the requirement of “conscious parenthood” and rational planning.

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htm (access on July 4, 2017). In English: “Law on the Protection of Mother and Children and Women’s Rights”. Trappe, Emanzipation oder Zwang, p. 110. Boltanski, Soziologie der Abtreibung, p. 175.

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In addition, it quietly implies the traditional norm of children having a father and a mother. The legalization of abortion, as Boltanski states, did not mean that the sole responsibility for the decision to have an abortion or not fell to the pregnant woman. Boltanski states that the described “parental project” is the new “supra-individual authority” which is to decide about keeping a pregnancy104 . From another perspective, all the interviewees reasoned their decisions for terminating pregnancies using external circumstances. All three women presented their decisions as having been made with some reluctance – namely against their actual wish for a child. Karla even mentioned her wish to have four or five children, if she would have found the “right man”. One explanation could be the naturalization of motherhood which refers to the construction that women ‘by their nature’ desire a child but the realization of which can be hindered by inconvenient conditions. This corresponds with the previously mentioned explanations offered by Mehlan, who cited women’s wish for a child and who identified the main socio-political task as being to create good conditions for realising that wish105 .

Summary As shown above, the interviewees presented different narratives according to their respective generation, the context of their milieus and their individual biographies. All of them dealt in a specific way with the framing conditions provided by social value changes by referring to family life, family planning and changing legal terms in this regard. Since 1972, women were no longer forced to terminate their unwanted pregnancies unofficially and illegally. They also had access to contraceptive methods to prevent unwanted pregnancies. But despite the possibilities of family planning there were still a lot of unwanted pregnancies106 . Practical approaches often failed because of the cited contradictions in dealing with contraception, relationships and parenthood. As outlined, phenomena like the ambivalences in attitudes and behavior, problems of use and medical tolerance were relevant to the utilization of contraception. The interviewees reported diverse practices, which evaded the imperative of predictability. Against that background the imperative of predictability had only temporarily been valid to my interviewees, if at all. The imperative of predictability premises a rational subject acting consciously, making clear decisions and realising those decisions in their every-day lives. 104 105 106

Ibid., p. 172f. Mehlan, Wunschkinder, 209–211. Leo, König, Wunschkindpille, p. 158.

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That subject did not exist in real life. Various social and human life conditions were not included in the concepts of predictability and rational parenthood and therefore constrained the exact predictability of family planning. Nevertheless, it became obvious that the interviewees were affected by the imperative of predictability. They incorporated the responsibility for reproductive planning assigned to them as women and that is why they presented narratives which functioned as self-justificatory explanations for failing to plan responsibly. The imperative of predictability was flanked by an expectation of female responsibility for contraception and the invocation of women as mothers by socio-political measures. That is why it affected men and women differently, something that contradicted the officially propagated notion of gender equality. A discourse on individual responsibility in family planning in the context of an authoritarian regime like the GDR was an unusual combination. As described, it led to contradictory social requirements for women. In this contribution a critical view of the conditions in the GDR regarding family planning has been provided. But it has to be kept in mind that women in the GDR were given multiple, often ambivalent options to determine their lives. These options varied throughout the existence of the GDR. Women were economically independent and they had the right to decide about terminating or completing a pregnancy. It is important to remember that women in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) did not have this kind of freedom.

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From “Children by Choice” to “Families by Choice”? 20th -Century Reproductive Decision-Making between Social Change and Normative Transitions This concluding chapter raises the questions how reproductive decision-making changed in the course of the 20th century in Eastern and Western European countries. Thus, it not only contextualizes the findings of the case studies published in this volume, but also develops a broader perspective for future research. A first part compares the political and legal frameworks, discourses and actors of reproduction in different regimes and regions. Next, a more detailed analysis of norms and practices of abortion in the United States and Poland highlights different trajectories of reproductive decision-making in East and West. Building on these observations and the volume’s case studies, the final section of the paper suggests a periodization of normative change in the field of reproductive decision-making. The paper offers two major conclusions: First, we can distinguish different phases of reproductive decision making in the 20th century – despite striking differences in women’s rights discourses and social practices of reproduction in Eastern and Western Europe. Second, there was no general transition from materialist to post-materialist values in the realm of reproduction, but rather many complex and contingent processes of negotiation that require further study.

Introduction When American birth control pioneer Alan F. Guttmacher published his advice manual “Babies by choice or by chance” in 1961, he made a case for birth control information and free access to contraceptives. Guttmacher argued that women, couples, and families should make their own informed decisions on their family size and conceive this as their “personal right”1 . Yet, the expert’s advice on “children by choice” mainly addressed contraception within the framework of the nuclear family. “Families by choice”, however, alludes to the contempo1

Alan F. Guttmacher, Babies by Choice or by Chance, New York 1961 (First edition Garden City 1959), p. 11; Id., The Complete Book of Birth Control, New York 1961, p. 4.

https://doi.org/9783110524499-010

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rary practice of defining and re-arranging family ties in the course of changed social practices of “doing family” which can comprise same-sex partnerships, patchwork families and families created through the use of assisted reproductive technologies (ART)2 . In any case, this second approach includes the notion of rationally “planning one’s family” due to the resources and knowledge on reproduction available. The United Nations officially integrated this claim into their concept of reproductive rights as human rights during the 1990s3 . I use these two perspectives on “children by choice” versus “families by choice” to ask how norms and practices of reproductive decision-making changed in the course of the second half of the 20th century4 . Hormonal contraception, legal abortion, in-vitro fertilization – already these keywords suggest that in the course of the 20th century, namely during its second half, reproductive decision-making changed forever. But the past century also knew trends like eugenics, forced sterilizations, paternalist population policies – which hint at fundamental discrepancies in decision-making options due to social, political, economic, and ethnic boundaries. This leads to a new set of questions: Which individuals and groups of people were able to enjoy their full “reproductive rights” – and how did this change? Which men and women were precluded from doing so, by whom, and for what reasons? Did expert knowledge and new medical technologies lastingly influence social practices of reproductive decision-making? Can we perceive a linear process of change – or, rather, follow a meandering path of contradictory and sometimes even counterfactual developments? Do we have any indications even to diagnose a fundamental change of values in the field of reproductive decision-making5 ? 2

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Michi Knecht, Maren Klotz, Stefan Beck (eds.), Reproductive Technologies as Global Form. Frankfurt a. M., New York 2012; Karin Jurczyk, Andreas Lange, Barbara Thiessen (eds.), Doing Family – Familienalltag heute, Weinheim 2010. Program of Action, Adopted at the International Conference on Population and Development, Cairo, 5–13 September 1994, p. 45, Article 7.2, URL: www.unfpa.org. Already during the UN’s International Conference on Human Rights, held in Teheran in 1968, family planning (but not yet reproductive rights in a broader sense) was defined as a human right (of parents only). For more details, see below. The research for this contribution has been carried out in the framework of my research project on “Reproductive Decision-making in West Germany and the US in the Second Half of the 20th Century” in the Collaborative Research Center 1150 “Cultures of Decision Making” of the German Science Foundation at the University of Muenster. I understand reproductive decision-making here as a deliberate process of choosing between two or more alternatives after a period of reflection. Decision-making also means a social interaction that is framed by norms and discourses that draws on various resources and can resort to different methods. See Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger, Cultures of Decision-Making, in: German Historical Institute London Bulletin (2016), p. 5–51, p. 6. For a detailed discussion of different types of reproductive decision-making see the contribution of Claudia Roesch in this volume. For an overview on the field of historical value research, see Bernhard Dietz, Christopher Neumaier, Andreas Rödder (eds.), Gab es den Wertewandel? Neue Forschungen zum

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And, finally, can we say that only ‘modern’ societies consider reproduction a matter of decision-making instead of recurring to destiny, fate or faith6 ? To answer these questions and to develop some further perspectives for research on reproductive decision-making and its values, this contribution focuses on the developments in East and West European societies, especially since the Second World War. Studying “changing values of reproduction” targets the transformation of norms, values, and legal ramifications of reproductive decision-making. To address this complex interplay, I rely on a definition of values provided by Jan van Deth and Elinor Scarbrough, which describe values as “conceptions of the desirable [. . . ] evident in moral discourse”, which have the power to generate guiding patterns of orientation7 . As Claudia Roesch suggests in this volume, values of reproduction can be immaterial and material, individual and collectivist8 . Nevertheless, discourses and practices of reproduction seldom display “archetypes” but rather heterogeneous and ambivalent mixtures of value orientations. Of even more importance seems to be the fact that values of reproduction (as normative framework) and reproductive decision-making (as social practice) are interrelated in complex ways: While changing values can alter reproductive decision-making as such, social change equally can stimulate normative reconfigurations9 . An example for the first case is the acceptance of women’s right to govern over their own bodies and reproductive functions

6 7

8 9

gesellschaftlich-kulturellen Wandel seit den 1960er Jahren, München 2014; Bernhard Dietz, Zur Theorie des “Wertewandels”. Ein Schlüssel für sozialen und mentalen Wandel in der Geschichte?, in: Peter Dinzelbacher, Friedrich Harrer (eds.), Wandlungsprozesse der Mentalitätsgeschichte, Baden-Baden 2015, p. 25–47; Isabel Heinemann, Wertewandel, Version: 1.0, in: Docupedia-Zeitgeschichte, 22.10.2012, URL: http://docupedia.de/zg/Wertewandel? oldid=125455. Isabel Heinemann, Vom “Kindersegen” zur “Familienplanung”? Eine Wissensgeschichte reproduktiven Entscheidens in der Moderne, forthcoming. “Values are seen here as conceptions of the desirable which are not directly observable but are evident in moral discourse and relevant to the formulation of attitudes. [. . . ] The claim for the empirical relevance of values, we argue, is demonstrated by patterning among attitudes. We call these meaningful patterns value orientations.” Jan W. van Deth, Elinor Scarbrough (ed.), The Impact of Values, Oxford, New York 1995, S. 46f. Claudia Roesch, “Children by Choice” – Family Decisions and Value Change in the Campaigns of the American Planned Parenthood Federation (1942–1973), this volume. For a definition of values as “general and fundamental normative concepts of order [. . . ] which are relevant for individual and collective thought, speech, and action and which can be articulate explicitly or assumed implicitly” see Andreas Rödder (translation mine) and Klyde Klockhohn. Andreas Rödder, Wertewandel in historischer Perspektive. Ein Forschungskonzept, in: Dietz, Neumaier, Rödder (eds.), Gab es den Wertewandel? (as in n. 5), p. 17–39, esp. p. 29; Clyde Kluckhohn, Values and Value Orientations in the Theory of Action. An Exploration in Definition and Classification, in: Talcott Parsons, Edward A. Shils (eds.), Toward a General Theory of Action, Cambridge, MA 5 1962, p. 388–433.

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which resulted in legal abortion as a social practice in the West. The second case, normative reconsiderations mirroring social change, is illustrated by the fact that advances in the field of assisted reproductive technologies initiated new normative regulations of such “families by choice” comprising more than two parents. Studying values of reproduction in comparative perspective entails a set of assumptions: First of all, we can identify relevant changes in norms and values regarding reproduction since the 1960s – the debate on the pill, the abortion controversy and the discussion on assisted reproductive technologies (ART) all do account for that10 . Meanwhile, in the field of reproduction – as in that of the family in general – we don’t have any reliable evidence for a linear process of change from “materialist” to “post-materialist” values – as political scholar Ronald Inglehart had assumed for the general value orientation of modern industrial societies since the mid-sixties11 . Rather, we can identify complex negotiation processes and cycles or waves of value transformation – as for example discourses on out-of-wedlock births illustrate12 . While the family as such seems very much based on altruism and trust, reproductive decision-making nevertheless has a strong “materialist” component, as the decision on whether or not to have children has a decisive impact on the lives of the individuals concerned and also

10

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For a brief orientation, see Johanna Schoen, Abortion after Roe, Chapel Hill 2015; Mary Ziegler, After Roe. The Lost History of the Abortion Debate, Cambridge, London 2015; Grace E. Hale, A Nation of Outsiders. How the White Middle Class Fell in Love with Rebellion in postwar America, Oxford, New York 2011, p. 227–302; Elizabeth Siegel Watkins, On the Pill. A Social History of Oral Contraceptives, 1950–1970, Baltimore, London 1998; Elaine Tyler May, America and the Pill. A History of Promise, Peril, and Liberation, New York 2010; Jonathan Eig, The Birth of the Pill. How Four Crusaders Reinvented Sex and Launched a Revolution, New York, London 2014; Lutz Niethammer, Silke Satjukow (eds.), “Wenn die Chemie stimmt. . . ”. Geschlechterbeziehungen und Geburtenplanung im Zeitalter der “Pille”, Göttingen 2016; Knecht, Klotz, Beck (eds.), Reproductive technologies (as in n. 2); Peter-Paul Bänziger et al. (eds.), Sexuelle Revolution? Zur Geschichte der Sexualität im deutschsprachigen Raum seit den 1960er Jahren, Bielefeld 2015; Silvia de Zordo, Johanna Mishtal, Lorena Anton (eds.), A Fragmented Landscape. Abortion Governance and Protest Logic in Europe, New York, Oxford 2017. Ronald Inglehart, The Silent Revolution in Europe, in: American Political Science Review 4 (1971), p. 991–1017; Id., The Silent Revolution. Changing Values and Political Styles Among Western Publics, Princeton 1977, p. 3; Id., Kultureller Umbruch. Wertwandel in der westlichen Welt, Frankfurt a. M., New York 1989; Id., Pippa Norris, Rising Tide. Gender Equality and Cultural Change Around the World, Cambridge, MA 2003; Id. (ed.), Human Values and Social Change. Findings from the Values Surveys, Leiden 2003. Rickie Solinger, Wake Up, little Suzie. Single Pregnancy before Roe vs. Wade, New York 1992; Beth L. Bailey, Sex in the Heartland, Cambridge 1999; Anne Fessler, The Girls who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades before Roe v. Wade, New York 2006; Heather Munro Prescott, Student Bodies. The Impact of Student Health on American Society and Medicine, Ann Arbor 2007.

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entails important socio-economic consequences13 . Nevertheless, research on reproductive decision-making faces two important constraints: Whereas the private realm is generally difficult to access on the level of sources, historians are confronted with huge amounts of sources produced by medical and mostly male experts that comment extensively on how to make the “right” reproductive decisions14 . So, how can we map private deliberations and negotiations on whether or not to have children15 ? And how can we develop a perspective that goes beyond the expert-centered approach and takes into account women’s and clients’ perspectives on reproduction16 ? To discuss how reproductive decision-making changed in the course of the 20th century in Eastern and Western European countries, this chapter proceeds in four steps. A first section is devoted to the discussion of the different political and legal frameworks of reproduction as they have been raised in the other chapters of the volume. Also, it identifies the discourses and actors involved and the sources which inform us about them. Thus, it lays the formal fundament for further analysis. The second part provides an example of changing discourses and practices of reproductive decision-making while comparing attitudes towards and practices of abortion in the United States and Poland. A third chapter suggests a periodization of normative change in the field of reproductive decision-making. Some perspectives on future research conclude the piece.

13 14

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Daniel Scott Smith, Recent Change and the Periodization of American Family History, in: Journal of Family History 20/4 (1995), p. 329–346. For a discussion of the important role social experts played in modern societies (and the quest to take into account clients as well) see Lutz Raphael, Embedding the Human and Social Sciences in Western Societies, 1880–1980. Reflections on Trends and Methods of Current Research, in: Kerstin Brueckweh (ed.), Engineering Society. The Role of the Human and Social Sciences in Modern Societies, 1880–1980, New York 2012, p. 41–56. The argument that male experts always sought to control women’s reproduction is spelled out by Barbara Ehrenreich, Deirdre English, For Her Own good. 150 years of the Expert’s Advice to Women, London 1979. Here, ego-documents such as diaries, letters, letters to the editors, oral history interviews are hard to trace in huge quantities but provide valuable insight into private processes of deliberation and decision-making. See the works on the women’s health movement in the US: Sandra Morgen, Into Our Own Hands. The Women’s Health Movement in the United States, 1969–1990, New Brunswick, N.J., London 2002; Kathy Davis, The Making of Our Bodies, Ourselves. How Feminism Travels Across Borders, Durham 2008; Wendy Kline, Bodies of Knowledge. Sexuality, Reproduction, and Women’s Health in the Second Wave, Chicago 2010; Jennifer Nelson, More than Medicine. A History of the Feminist Women’s Health Movement, New York 2015.

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Who Decides? Political and Legal Frameworks, Discourses, Actors and (Re)sources of Reproductive Decision-Making On the political and legal level, we can distinguish different trajectories and speeds of transformation in the countries discussed in this volume: Weimar Germany and the two German States, France, the United States, Italy, Spain, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and the Soviet Union. I will give three brief examples to make this point: eugenic sterilization, sex education, and access to contraceptives and legal abortion. The last aspect, legal abortion as the most controversial issue of reproductive decision-making, will be treated in more detail in the second section of the piece. First of all, eugenics held currency in most Western countries in the aftermath of World War I, when eugenic movements and experts claimed that due to falling national birth-rates only the “right” families and individuals should reproduce. Eugenic sterilization laws that allowed for unconsented sterilizations of those deemed “feeble-minded”, deviant or bearers of hereditary diseases, were passed in the United States (1927) and Germany (1933)17 . In the USA, the American Eugenic Society had sought to win support for eugenic family planning through so-called “fitter family contests” since 1921, while the rate of forced sterilizations rose sharply after 1927. Nazi Germany, however, was the first (and only) state to transform eugenics and “Rassenkunde” into official state ideology, leading to mass euthanasia and extermination policies directed at those deemed “feeble” or of lesser “racial value”18 . In Great Britain, where Francis Galton had coined the term “eugenics” and since 1907 presided over the Eugenics Education Society (later British Eugenics Society), the “Mental Deficiency Act” of 1913 allowed for 17

18

USA: Decision Buck vs. Bell of the Supreme Court, 74 U.S. 200 (1927). See Philipp R. Reilly, The Surgical Solution. A History of Involuntary Sterilization in the United States, Baltimore 1991. See also the statement by one of the main eugenicists of the time, Harry H. Laughlin, The Legal Status of Eugenical Sterilization. History and Analysis of Litigation under the Virginia Sterilization Statute, which led to a Decision of the Supreme Court of the United States Upholding the Statute, Chicago 1930. Germany: Gesetz zur Verhütung erbkranken Nachwuchses, 14.7.1933, RGBl. I 1933, p. 529–531; see also Ulrike Benzenhöfer, Zur Genese des Gesetzes zur Verhütung erbkranken Nachwuchses, Münster 2006; Gisela Bock, Zwangssterilisation im Nationalsozialismus. Studien zur Rassenpolitik und Frauenpolitik, Opladen 1986. Götz Aly, Die Belasteten. “Euthanasie” 1939–1945. Eine Gesellschaftsgeschichte, Frankfurt a. M. 2013; Maike Rotzoll et al. (eds.), Die nationalsozialistische “Euthanasie”-Aktion “T4” und ihre Opfer. Geschichte und ethische Konsequenzen für die Gegenwart, Paderborn 2010; Hans-Walther Schmuhl, Rassenhygiene, Nationalsozialismus, Euthanasie. Von der Verhütung zur Vernichtung “lebensunwerten Lebens”, 1890–1945. Göttingen 1987; Paul Weindling, Health, Race and German Politics between National Unification and Nazism, 1870–1945, Cambridge 1989.

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the hospitalization of those labelled “feeble-minded”, but no state-sanctioned forced sterilizations were ever effectuated19 . The same holds true for France, where a French Eugenic Society had existed since 1912, but placed more emphasis on the “influence of the environment” than on “heredity” to increase the quantity of French people due to the fear of population decline20 . Interestingly, French anarchists advocated negative eugenics and birth control in the inter-war years – to enhance the freedom of the individual21 . Regarding the institutionalization of eugenics, we thus see great shifts between the Western nations – although the US allowed for compulsory sterilizations and some of its states stuck with this practice well into the 1970s, Nazi Germany was the only nation to make it the guideline of state policy. Compared to the Western nations, where the eugenic movements at least gained considerable ground, Eastern European states had been quite reluctant to endorse eugenic thinking. Here, only the Soviet Union stands out as a pioneer in medical genetics that even ventilated versions of “Bolshevik eugenics” until Stalin decided to ban eugenics altogether in 193122 . Most Western states, however, saw a transition from eugenics to expert-guided family planning by the 1940s, or, in the German case, after World War II23 . When it comes to sex education and contraceptive advice, legal contraception and the accessibility of drugs and devices, striking differences between the nations discussed prevail. In the US, the circulation of contraceptives and birth control information was banned by the Comstock Laws of 1897, until a Court of Appeals 19

20

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Dorothy Porter, Eugenics and the Sterilization Debate in Sweden and Britain before World War II, in: Scandinavian Journal of History 24/2 (1999), p. 145–162; Lucy Bland, Lesley A. Hall, Eugenics in Britain. The View from the Metropole, in: Oxford Handbook of the History of Eugenics, ed. by Bashford, Allison and Peter Levine, Oxford 2010, p. 213–227. William Schneider, Toward the Improvement of the Human Race. The History of Eugenics in France, in: Journal of Modern History 54/2 (1982), p. 268–291, esp. p. 276; Id., Quality and Quantity. The Quest for Biological Regeneration in Twentieth-Century France, Cambridge 1990; Richard Fogarty, Mary Osborn, Eugenics in France and the Colonies, in: Oxford Handbook (as in n. 19), p. 332–346. Richard Sonn, “Your Body is Yours”. Anarchism, Birth Control and Eugenics in interwar France, in: Journal of the History of Sexuality 14/4 (2005), p. 415–432. Furthermore, until the advent of Lysenkoism in the late 1930s, the Soviet Union used to be a world leader in medical genetics. Mark B. Adams, Eugenics in Russia, 1900–1940, in: Id. (ed.), The Wellborn Science. Eugenics in Germany, France, Brazil, and Russia, New York 1990, p. 153–200, p. 154; Nikolai Krementsov, From “Beastly” Science to Medical Genetics. Eugenics in Russia and the Soviet Union, in: Annals of Science 68/1 (2011), p. 61–92. For an overview on eugenics as an international trend, see Adams, Wellborn Science (as in n. 22). For the expansion of family planning in the US and internationally see the development of Planned Parenthood Federation of America since 1942 and Planned Parenthood International since 1952. Also see Rickie Solinger, Mie Nakachi (eds.), Reproductive States. Global Perspectives on the Invention and Implementation of Population Policy, New York 2016.

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ruling declared the importing of contraceptive devices “for medical purposes” legal in 1936. Nevertheless, in some states married partners were not allowed to legally buy contraceptives before 1965 and unmarried women not before 197224 . The watershed, in any case, was the licensing of the first hormonal contraceptive (“Enovid”, produced by pharma company Searle, the research for which had been sponsored by Catherine McCormick, close friend of Margaret Sanger) by the Federal Drug Administration in 1960 and the subsequent breakthrough of “the pill”25 . In other Western countries, the picture is pretty much the same – in Germany, for example, contraceptives were in principle legal at the beginning of the 20th century, but the Weimar government sought to fight the declining birth-rate after World War I and thus ventilated legal restrictions before the National Socialists again banned contraception and abortion for those deemed of “racial value” altogether26 . In the FRG, hormonal contraceptives had been on the market since 1961 (“Anovlar”, produced by Schering) and enjoyed high popularity27 . Nevertheless, they were at first introduced as “medications to treat menstrual disorders” due to the conservative morals of doctors and consumers and the staunch position of the Catholic Church which forbade the use of birth control (apart from abstinence and the rhythm method) altogether. In the GDR, gynecologist Karl-Heinz Mehlan oversaw the production and marketing of a competing drug (“Ovosiston”) which was distributed from 1965 to help socialist women balance reproduction and work28 . Republican Spain allowed the use of contraceptives in the late 1930s, before the Franco dictatorship banned 24

25 26

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For the case that allowed birth control devices to be imported into the US, United States v. One Package of Japanese Pessaries (1936) see Carole McCann, Birth Control Politics in the United States 1916–1945, Ithaca 1994, p. 75, 175. For the Supreme Court Cases Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) and Eisenstadt v. Baird (1972) which first allowed married partners to buy contraceptives and then also unmarried individuals see Marc Stein, Sexual Injustice. Supreme Court Decisions from Griswold to Roe, Chapell Hill 2010; see also Nicola Beisel, Imperiled Innocents. Anthony Comstock and Family Reproduction in Victorian America, Princeton 1997; Andrea Friedman, Prurient Interest. Gender, Democracy, and Obscenity in New York City, 1909–1945, New York 2000. Tyler May, America and the Pill (as in n. 10); Siegel Watkins, On the Pill (as in n. 10). Atina Grossman, Reforming Sex. The German Movement for Birth Control and Abortion Reform 1920–1950, New York, Oxford 1995; Cornelia Usborne, Frauenkörper – Volkskörper. Geburtenkontrolle und Bevölkerungspolitik in der Weimarer Republik, Münster 1994. Eva-Maria Silies, Liebe, Lust und Last. Die Pille als weibliche Generationserfahrung in der Bundesrepublik, 1960–1980, Göttingen 2010; Robert Jütte; Lust ohne Last. Geschichte der Empfängnisverhütung von der Antike bis in die Gegenwart, München 2003. Women over 40 or those with five children or more and those who had given birth in short intervals could receive the contraceptive for free, others had to pay 7 Marks a month which was quite an expenditure. Christian König, Planwirtschaft und Eigeninitiative. Zur Einführung der “Wunschkind-Pille” in der DDR, in: Niethammer, Satjukow (eds.), “Wenn die Chemie stimmt. . . ” (as in n. 10), p. 286–304, esp. p. 291.

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contraceptives and the dissemination of contraceptive information altogether in 1941. Although the use of contraceptives remained illegal until 1978, the pill entered the Spanish market in the 1960s, as Agata Ignaciuk shows in her contribution: It was marketed as a cure for obstetrical problems29 . Also, Eastern European countries joined the trend. For example, newly reconstituted Poland saw a move towards more liberal contraceptive advice and family planning information pushed for by social reformers in the early 1930s30 . The Soviet Union never had a ban on contraceptives and principally already allowed for the development and circulation of birth control devices as a way to prevent unwanted pregnancies during the 1920s. But it did so but with little enthusiasm and, other than Great Britain or the Netherlands, it did not gain a substantial market share in the production of early contraceptives31 . This backlog in production capacities and technology became prevalent after the invention of the hormonal pill. As the contributions of the volume show, hormonal contraceptives started their victory in the West during the 1960s, whereas the countries of the Soviet Block depended on legal abortion as a social practice due to production shortages and lack of quality of the local blends of contraceptive drugs. Interestingly, a couple of nations, East, South and West, experienced liberal sexual reform movements that demanded legal abortion and framed it as a women’s rights issue in the 1930s, followed by a strict abortion ban at the end of the 1930s: While the young Soviet Union was the first state to declare abortion legal in 1920 for the sake of women’s equal rights, this also went in hand with the medicalization of birth control and intensified doctor’s control over women’s bodies, as Yulia Hilevych and Chizo Sato argue32 . In the same period, Weimar Germany discussed feminist proposals to legalize first trimester abortions – but national-conservative and pronatalist positions dominated by far33 . When French politicians engaged in heavy parliamentary debates on abortion and birth control in the 1920s, collectivist values as the well-being of the nation prevailed, 29

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Agata Ignaciuk, Paradox of the Pill. Oral Contraceptives in Spain and Poland (1960s–1970s), this volume; Teresa Ortiz-Gómez et al., Doctors, Women and Circulation of Knowledge on Oral Contraceptives in Spain. 1940s–1970s, in: Id. (ed.), Gendered Drugs and Medicine, Ashgate 2014, p. 133–152; Id., Agata Ignaciuk, “Pregnancy and Labour Cause more Deaths than Oral Contraceptives”. The Debate on the Pill in the Spanish Press in the 1970s, in: Public Understanding of Science 24/6 (2015), p. 658–671. Anna Titkow, Poland, in: Henry P. David (ed.), From Abortion to Contraception. A Resource to Public Policies and Reproductive Behavior in Central And Eastern Europe from 1917 to the Present, London 1999, p. 165–190. Boris Denisov, Victoria Sarkevich, Birth Control in Russia. A Swaying Population Policy, in: Niethammer, Satjukow (eds.), “Wenn die Chemie stimmt. . . ”, esp. 248–253. Yuliya Hilevych, Chizu Sato, Popular Medical Discourses on Birth Control in the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Shifting Responsibilities and Relational Values, this volume. Cornelie Usborne, Abtreibung in der Weimarer Republik. Weibliche Forderungen und Erfahrungen, in: Niethammer, Satjukow (eds.), “Wenn die Chemie stimmt. . . ”, p. 96–118.

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as Ann-Katrin Gembries has pointed out34 . In Spain, the short-lived Second Republic declared abortion legal in 1936 if requested by women and the young Polish state allowed abortion for medical and criminal indications in 193235 . While Stalin’s pronatalist conviction saw him issue an abortion ban in 1936, Nazi Germany vigorously fought abortion among women deemed of “racial value” as a means of racial policy. At the same time, forced abortions were induced on forced laborers from Eastern Europe and abortions made easily accessible in the occupied countries, understood as an effective measure to increase the value of the German population36 . Motivated by patriarchal, pronatalist and Catholic tendencies, Franco Spain banned abortion in 194137 . After the Second World War, the Soviet Union was the first socialist nation to declare abortion upon request legal in 1955. Poland and Hungary followed in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 195738 . The early legalization of abortions (mostly first trimester abortions) upon request and without complicated assessment of indications in Eastern Europe is a prime difference to the developments in most Western countries39 . In the West, Great Britain was the first nation to declare first-trimester abortions legal upon request in 1967 by a Parliamentary Act, and the US followed suit 34

35 36 37

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Ann-Katrin Gembries, Birth Control as a National Threat? Pronatalist Discourses on Abortion and Contraception in France and Germany (1920s–1970s), this volume. See also Ann-Katrin Gembries, Von der Fortpflanzungspflicht zum Recht auf Abtreibung. Werte und Wertewandel in französischen Parlamentsdebatten über Geburtenkontrolle, 1920–1974, in: Dietz, Neumaier, Rödder (eds.), Gab es den Wertewandel?, p. 307–335. Titkow, Poland (as in n. 30), p. 170. Bock, Zwangssterilisationen (as in n. 17). Verordnung zum Schutz von Ehe, Familie und Mutterschaft vom 9.3.1943, RGBl. I, 1943, Br. 27, p. 140f. Walter Perron, Landesbericht Spanien, in: Albin Eser, Hans-Georg Koch (eds.), Schwangerschaftsabbruch im internationalen Vergleich. Rechtliche Regelungen – Soziale Rahmenbedingungen – Empirische Grunddaten, Teil 1. Europa, Baden-Baden 1989, p. 1621–1667, esp. p. 1630f.; Ortiz-Gómez, Ignaciuk, “Pregnancy and Labour” (as in n. 29), p. 659. Radka Dudová, Discourses on Abortion and their Impact on Institutions in Czechoslovakia/ the Czech Republic in the Second Half of the 20th century (1950–2003), this volume; Susan Gal, Gender in the Post-Socialist Transition. The Abortion Debate in Hungary, in: East European Politics and Societies 8 (1994), p. 256–286. With the exception of Sweden, where abortion had been legally available under certain conditions since 1939, but permission had to be requested from the national board of health in a complicated procedure. On Sweden see Lena Lennerhed, Sherri Finkbine’s Choice. Abortion, Sex-Liberalism and Feminism in Sweden in the 1960s/70s, in: Women’s History Magazine 73 (2013), p. 13–18; Id., Taking the Middle Way. Sex Education Debates in Sweden in the Early Twentieth Century, in: Shaping Sexual Knowledge. A Cultural History of Sex Education in Twentieth-Century Europe, London 2009, p. 55–70; Tomáš Sobotká, The Stealthy Sexual Revolution? Birth Control, Reproduction, and Family under State Socialism in Central and Eastern Europe, in: Niethammer, Satjukow (ed.), “Wenn die Chemie stimmt. . . ”, p. 121–150.

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with a Supreme Court decision that upheld women’s right to privacy in 1973 – a milestone success for feminist women’s activism40 . The two German States joined the trend to enhance family planning during the 1950s, but were reluctant to legalize first-trimester abortions. While the GDR declared first trimester abortion legal in 1972, discussions in the Federal Republic took a rocky path. In 1974, the West German parliament installed a liberal first trimester solution which was declared unconstitutional by the German Supreme Court a year later. In 1976, the parliament issued a restricted ruling which tied legal abortion to an indication (medical, eugenic, criminal, or social) and to mandatory counselling of the pregnant woman, provided either by family planning organizations or church counsellors41 . Interestingly, while fierce confrontations on abortion prevailed in the US and a strong anti-abortion movement built up pressure against abortion providers and their clientele in the 1980s, most of the Eastern European nations experienced a comparable trend. Starting in the 1980s, abortion upon request came under fierce criticism by the Catholic Church in Poland and after the end of socialism in 1990 was officially banned in 199342 . Also, in Czechoslovakia, controversial abortion discourses prevailed through the 1980s and even in the Soviet Union women and couples sought to replace habitual abortion as a means of birth control by other, more “natural” and less invasive contraceptive techniques43 . In Spain, however, abortion that had been banned during the Franco regime was re-legalized in 1985. Now, ethnic and social barriers assumed greater importance, as the costs for terminations exploded: Abortions had to be effectuated mostly in expensive private clinics in the metropolitan regions44 . 40

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Abortion Act 1967. An Act to amend and clarify the law relating to termination of pregnancy by registered medical practitioners, Parliament of the United Kingdom, 27.10.1967, 167 c 87. Roe v Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), 22.1.1973. See also: Leslie J. Reagan, When Abortion was a Crime. Women, Medicine and the Law, 1867–1973, Berkeley 1997; Schoen, Abortion after Roe (as in n. 10). Daphne Hahn, Modernisierung und Biopolitik. Sterilisation und Schwangerschaftsabbruch in Deutschland nach 1945, Frankfurt a. M. 2000; Ilse Lenz (ed.), Die neue Frauenbewegung. Abschied vom kleinen Unterschied. Eine Quellensammlung, Wiesbaden 2008; Emma Budde, Abtreibungspolitik in Deutschland, Wiesbaden 2015. Johanna Mishtal, Quietly “Beating the System”. The Logics of Protest and Resistance under the Polish Abortion Ban, in: de Zordo, Mishtal, Anton (eds.), A Fragmented Landscape (as in n. 10), p. 226–244; Malgorzata Fuszara, New Gender Relations in Poland in the 1990s, in: Susan Gal (ed.), Reproducing Gender. Politics, Publics and Everyday Life after Socialism, Princeton et al. 2000, p. 259–285; Id., Abortion and the Formation of the Public Sphere in Poland, in: Nanette Funk (ed.), Gender Politics and Post-Communism. Reflections from Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union, New York et al. 1993, p. 241–252. Dudová, Discourses on Abortion (as in n. 38); Denisov, Sarkevich, Birth Control in Russia (as in n. 31). Beatriz Aragón Martin, Women Rights or “Unborn” Rights? Laws and Loopholes in Madrid’s Public Healthcare Services’ Abortion Provision, in: de Zordo, Mishtal, Anton (eds.), A Fragmented Landscape, p. 169–186; Perron, Landesbericht Spanien (as in n. 37).

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But not only legal ramifications for abortion and the distribution of birth control information or contraceptives differed largely between East and West. So did discourses on family planning and population policy. While after World War I most Western countries joined in eugenicists’ discourses of progress, the countries of Eastern Europe were far more reluctant here45 . In the US, birth control pioneer Margaret Sanger had founded the American Birth Control League in 1921, renamed the Planned Parenthood Federation of America in 1942, to bring birth control information to American women. Interestingly, the organization shifted from promoting international population planning in the 1950s and 1960s back to using birth control to overcome ethnic and class boundaries in the United States46 . While the Hungarian state linked the promotion of sex education for young adults to a peculiar version of pronatalism in the 1960s through to the 1980s, Italian feminists discovered discourses of female pleasure to loosen the strict gender boundaries in a still largely patriarchal society47 . In the GDR, finally, women considering abortion during the 1970s to the 1990s managed to link narratives of contraception and abortion to their individual needs, as Rona Torenz shows48 . Thinking of who made reproductive decisions and who opted for value changes, we can distinguish different types of actors in the countries considered: First of all, we need to balance individual actors (women, their partners, their families) against collective actors (states, nations, churches). Next, social movements (feminists, women’s movements, civil rights movements) were important as they countered and challenged the authority of mostly male social experts and networks of experts. Medical and social experts, however, cannot be underestimated, as they used to control access to birth control devices and contraceptive drugs as well as the administration of legal abortion and, later, assisted reproductive technologies. Obviously, birth control activists were relevant actors, sometimes even seeking alliance with pharma companies to produce and market contraceptives (US-American birth control activist and entrepreneur Margaret Sanger or East German doctor Karl-Heinz Mehlan are examples here)49 . Also, pa-

45 46 47 48 49

Maria Bucur, Eugenics in Eastern Europe, 1870s–1945, in: Oxford Handbook, p. 398–412. Roesch, “Children by Choice” (as in n. 8). Dudová, Discourses on Abortion; Fiammetta Balestracci, The Influence of American Sexual Studies on the ‘Sexual Revolution’ of Italian Women, this volume. Rona Torenz, Narratives About Contraception and Abortion in the GDR (1972–1990), this volume. Ellen Chesler, Woman of Valor. Margaret Sanger and the Birth Control Movement in America, New York 2007 (First edition 1992); Andrea Tone, Devices and Desires. A History of Contraceptives in America, New York 2001; Eig, Birth of the Pill (as in n. 10); König, Planwirtschaft und Eigeninitiative (as in n. 28), p. 286–295; Annette Leo, Christian König, Die “Wunschkindpille” in der DDR. Weibliche Generationenerfahrung und staatliche Geburtenpolitik in der DDR, Göttingen 2015.

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tients and clients (involuntarily pregnant women, infertility patients, IVF clients) need to be considered as autonomous actors who sought their own ways when expert advice or legal restrictions failed to meet their needs50 . Such “subversive” agency can be studied over the entire 20th century, be it in the form of illegal abortions, use of illegal contraceptives or international fertility tourism. Finally, the church and religious movements were important actors as they played a vital part in negotiating values of reproduction in Western countries, but also in Eastern Europe. Here, the Polish abortion ban of 1993 which transformed Catholic values into state law is a case in point, while other examples include the fierce protests of the Catholic Church in West Germany against abortion legalization during the 1960s and 1970s or the church-state alliance for conservative family values in Franco Spain51 . The sources addressed in the context of reproductive decision-making, as mirrored in this volume, are vast: Some contributions deal mainly with sources of medical and scientific provenience such as expert publications on contraception and abortion, studies in sex research, medical journals. Others study institutions and sources from the political realm as parliamentary debates, the publications of international congresses and family planning organizations, marketing strategies for contraceptives. A third range of sources deals with collective actors (social movements, churches, religious family counselling) while a fourth addresses individual actors as mirrored in surveys, autobiographies and letters, oral histories and patients’ histories. Taken together these sources allow reproductive decision-making and the underlying values to be addressed from a variety of perspectives, taking into account the effects of legal, political and expert-guided “frames” on reproductive decision-making as well as the agency of individual women and couples.

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On women’s agency in requesting fertility treatment or contraceptives already at the beginning of the 20th century, see Christina Benninghaus, Great Expectations – German Debates about Artificial Insemination in Humans around 1912, in: Studies in the History of the Biological and Biomedical Sciences 38 (2007), p. 374–392; Id., “No, Thank you, Mr Stork”. Voluntary Childlessness in Weimar and Contemporary Germany, in: Studies in the Maternal, Special issue on “Non-Reproduction: Politics, Ethics, Aesthetics” 6 (2014), p. 1–36. Eleonora Zielińska, Between Ideology, Politics, and Common Sense. The Discourse of Reproductive Rights in Poland, in: Gal, Reproducing Gender (as in n. 42), p. 23–57; Daniel Maguire, Sacred Rights. The Case for Contraception and Abortion in World Religions, Oxford, New York 2003; Perron, Landesbericht Spanien.

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Reproductive Rights as Human Rights? Discourses and Practices of Abortion in Poland and the United States On an international level, the United Nations conceived reproduction as a human right from the late 1960s. The first step was the United Nations Conference on Human Rights in Teheran in 1968. Here, the final declaration insisted that parents had the right to intentionally plan the size of their families: “Parents have a basic human right to determine freely and responsibly the number and the spacing of their children”52 . In 1969, the United Nations officially declared the family the “basic unit of society” which “should be assisted and protected so that it may fully assume its responsibilities within the community”. This also implied that the decision of how many children a family wanted to have and a woman wanted to bear counted as a human right53 . The next important step followed 25 years later. In 1994, the final charter of the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo for the first time defined “reproductive health” as an element of human rights that needed protection. This included “the right of men and women to be informed [about] and to have access to safe, effective, affordable and acceptable methods of family planning of their choice, as well as other methods for regulation of fertility which are not against the law.”54 Another year later, in 1995, the UN’s Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing identified “sexual and reproductive health” as a central component of the “human rights of women”.55 This development illustrates a broad understanding of reproductive rights on the part of the UN which also included a strong quest for women’s equal rights. But did this stimulate a general transformation of values of reproductive decision-making in the member states as well? A short glance at abortion discourses in the United States and Poland during the 1980s provides further insight. In May 1985, when legal abortion was under heavy attack from the conservative Reagan government, an American couple from Lexington, Massachusetts, 52

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Final Act of the International Conference on Human Rights, Teheran, 22 April to 13 May 1968, New York 1968, Proclamation of Teheran, Article 16, 13.5.1968, URL: http://legal.un. org/avl/pdf/ha/fatchr/Final_Act_of_TehranConf.pdf. Declaration on Social Progress and Development Proclaimed by General Assembly resolution 2542 (XXIV) of 11 December 1969, Article 4, URL: http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/ ProfessionalInterest/progress.pdf. Program of Action, Adopted at the International Conference on Population and Development, Cairo, 5–13 September 1994, p. 45, Article 7.2, URL: www.unfpa.org. “Good health is essential to leading a productive and fulfilling life, and the right of all women to control all aspects of their health, in particular their own fertility, is basic to their empowerment.” United Nations, Report on the Fourth World Conference on Women, Bejing, 4–15 September 1995, Article 92. See also Article 94, URL: http://www.un.org/ womenwatch/daw/beijing/pdf/Beijing%20full%20report%20E.pdf.

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addressed his political representative on the issue. They wrote: “We feel strongly that the government should not be the ‘third person’ in bed with the couple. [. . . ] Reproductive freedom is a vital part of personal freedom. The current struggle is really about the nature of state authority – not morality – and the role of the state in the most intimate personal decision.”56 The letter was part of a national letter writing campaign to defend legal abortion organized by the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL), America’s oldest civil rights organization for legal abortion. The campaign, entitled “Silent no More!”, produced around 45,000 letters in favor of abortion rights. Although abortion had been legal in the US since 1973, a well-organized and highly motivated anti-abortion movement increased pressure on women to carry their pregnancies to term and confronted abortion providers with violent assaults57 . In socialist Poland, however, where abortion was legal since 1956 and free of indications since 1959, women had to resort to abortion as a social practice and a family planning strategy when contraceptives were unavailable. Historian Agata Ignaciuk has, among others, made this point. She recounted the story of Lucyna, born in 1959, who had resorted to abortion twice during the 1980s: “I had two abortions and it never was a problem, for my friends neither, it was arranged in the private surgery. [. . . ] Abortion was professional, was safe. The only thing is that you had to pay for it and make this decision, a difficult decision.”58 While the American couple wanted to defend an individual right against state interventions, Lucyna described abortion as a rational method of birth control, a social reality, not a human right. These two statements from people living in diverging political systems on different continents, signal the breadth of arguments exchanged and illustrate the value of an internationally comparative analysis. Four further points illustrate the diverging trajectories of reproductive decision-making and recognition of women’s reproductive rights in the two countries. First of all, in the United States legal abortion in 1973 was to a large extent the result of a vigorous women’s rights movement that voiced the demand for choice and challenged the existing laws in a famous court case that lead to the new ruling59 . In Poland, however, a centralist government had declared abortion 56

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Hanna Papanek and Gustav F. Papanek, Lexington, MA, 14.5.1985, to Representative Stephen Doran, c/o Mass Choice. Schlesinger Library Harvard University (SLHU) MC 659, Box 17, Folder 5. Schoen, Abortion after Roe; Ziegler, After Roe (as in n. 10); Hale, Nation of Outsiders (as in n. 10); Daniel K. Williams, Defenders of the Unborn. The Pro-Life Movement before Roe v. Wade, Oxford, New York 2016. Agata Ignaciuk, Reproductive Policies and Women’s Birth Control. Practices in StateSocialist Poland (1960s–1980s), in: Niethammer, Satjukow (eds.), “Wenn die Chemie stimmt. . . ”, p. 305–330, p. 306. Rickie Solinger, Pregnancy and Power. A Short History of Reproductive Politics in America, New York 2007; Reagan, When Abortion was a Crime (as in n. 40).

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legal in a top-down manner in 1956 and 1959. Only under the condition of the 1993 abortion ban did a visible women’s rights movement emerge60 . Next, there is a connection between knowledge of contraceptives and birth control and the request for legal abortion: While in the US since the first decade of the 20th century, a vital birth control movement distributed family planning information, the Polish Society for Family Planning put more effort in fighting population decline. More importantly even, sex education was virtually non-existent in Polish schools from the 1960s through the 1980s – the only institution to fill the gap was the Catholic Church which then preached “natural contraception”61 . In the US, however, availability of birth control information and access to contraceptives were strongly segregated by ethnic origin and social status. While white middle class women had preferred the pill since the 1960s and could afford safe abortions even before Roe v Wade, women of colour were pushed towards sterilization or long-term contraceptives (hormone implants, intrauterine devices)62 . Also, women of low income suffered more complications after illegal abortions before 1973 and were (and still are) gravely affected by the fact that most public welfare programs do not cover the cost for legal abortions. Furthermore, practices of abortion used to differ greatly in the two countries. While American women could use abortion as a way out when contraceptives had failed, women in Poland had limited access to hormonal contraceptives and thus chose abortion as a “fall back option”. Before the conservative roll-back of the 1990s, most women – like Lucyna – did not conceive of abortion as a woman’s right, but relied on it as an inevitable and much needed social practice. Finally, gender concepts and notions of equal rights for women differed strongly in both countries. In the United States the “Equal Rights Amendment” – one of the most famous projects of the women’s movement dating back to the 1920s – was finally rejected due to conservative women’s organizations’ activism in 198263 . Polish women, however, had enjoyed formal equal rights since 1952, but suffered from conservative gender norms that placed the entire responsibility for work, home, education of the children and contraception with them64 . Also, since the 1970s, a pro-natalist policy had sought to limit women’s room for manoeuvre. 60

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Titkow, Poland, p. 170–171; Mishtal, “Beating the System” (as in n. 42), p. 237–240; Fuszara, New Gender Relations (as in n. 42), p. 282–284; Zielińska, Between Ideology (as in n. 51), p. 25, 36–39. Titkow, Poland, p. 181–188. Johanna Schoen, Choice and Coercion. Birth Control, Sterilization and Abortion in Public Health and Welfare, Chapel Hill 2005; Dorothy Roberts, Killing the Black Body. Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty, New York 1999; Jennifer Nelson, Women of Color and the Reproductive Rights Movement, New York 2003. Donald G. Mathews, Jane Sherron de Hart, Sex, Gender, and the Politics of ERA. A State and the Nation, Oxford 1999. Fuszara, New Gender Relations.

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In general, we can see that reproductive decision-making in the US changed considerably with the pill in 1960, legal abortion in 1973, and in-vitro fertilization. In contrast, Polish women experienced a different trajectory: legal abortion in 1956, shortage of hormonal contraceptives since 1960 and abortion as social practice, and severe abortion restrictions in 1993. To put these diverging experiences and values of reproduction into perspective, the next section provides a broader overview of different phases of reproductive decision-making in both the East and West.

Phases of Normative Change in Reproductive Decision-Making 1920s/1930s: International Eugenics, Birth Control Information and Collectivist Values of Reproduction

The contributions to this volume demonstrate that already by the 1920s and 1930s important similarities in the way reproductive decision-making was discussed and negotiated existed in Eastern and Western Europe: From different angles, notions of “progress” – medical, scientific, social and political – were aired regarding the “planning of reproduction”. Modern societies reached out to the promise of eugenics to “strengthen the quality” of their populace through better and more rationally administered “breeding” and mating. By this, they sought to make up for the losses of World War I and to overcome population decline. International conferences on eugenics such as those in London in 1912, and in 1921 and 1932 in New York, helped to build a scientific community around the issue and facilitate knowledge transfer and networking65 . At the same time, obstetricians made important progress in endocrinology and fertility treatment to fight unwanted sterility66 . In another vein, sexual studies and the quest for safe contraceptives burgeoned as well67 . The Soviet Union, however, was the first modern state to legalize first trimester abortions in 1920 to fight the high death rate women caused by illegal interruptions. Although the quest for birth control and abortion was presented as a “women’s rights issue” by feminists and birth control activists 65 66 67

Stefan Kühl, Die Internationale der Rassisten. Aufstieg und Niedergang der internationalen eugenischen Bewegung des 20. Jahrhundert, Frankfurt a. M. 1997. Benninghaus, Great Expectations (as in n. 50). For the US and Germany, see Chesler, Woman of Valor (as in n. 49); Angela Frank, Margaret Sanger’s Eugenic Legacy. The Control of Female Fertility, Jefferson 2005; Gabriele Czarnowski, Das kontrollierte Paar. Ehe- und Sexualpolitik im Nationalsozialismus, Weinheim 1991; Kristina von Soden, Die Sexualberatungsstellen der Weimarer Republik, 1919–1933, Berlin 1988.

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alike, official state policies in East and West both emphasized collective values such as the well-being of the nation and the recovery of the national birth-rate over individual values that addressed personal happiness or women’s choice. 1940s/1950s: Family Planning in the West, Legal Abortion in the East

With World War II and the block confrontation of the Cold War, the situation changed dramatically. While the Western countries saw powerful movements for birth control at home and abroad and thus proceeded to install family planning as a means to control population growth, the socialist countries had legalized abortion on demand by the mid-1950s. While capitalist societies emphasized the “isolated modern family” and its traditional gender roles of male breadwinner and female homemaker as best suited to meet the demands of the capitalist economy, socialist economies relied on women’s double capacity as workers and mothers. As contraceptives were scarce, the access to legal abortion was meant to allow women to balance the double burden. While East European societies predominantly referred to collective values of reproduction to promote the vision of a socialist and egalitarian society, women had to deal with the virtual absence of contraceptives and largely traditional gender norms that placed the entire responsibility to control their reproduction on them. Abortion provided a way out – not as a matter of choice but rather an inevitable social practice. In most states in the West, individual values of happiness and health achieved through family planning entered the debate. At the same time, collective values permeated postwar population policies in the US and elsewhere, as it was clearly distinguished into who benefited the nation (ethnically, socially) and who did not68 . 1960s/1970s: Hormonal Contraception and Legal Abortion in the West, Paternalistic Administration of Birth Control in the East

The 1960s constituted a watershed in the history of reproductive decision-making, as the first reliable oral contraceptive was introduced and soon developed into the prime contraceptive method in the West. In Eastern Europe, however, as Ignaciuk, Hilevych/Sato and Dudová discuss in their contributions, women had to cope with limited availability and the low quality of modern contraceptives,

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Solinger, Nakachi (eds.), Reproductive States (as in n. 23); The Population Knowledge Network (ed.), Twentieth-Century Population Thinking, A Critical Reader of Primary Sources, Abingdon, New York 2016; Matthew Connelly, Fatal Misconception. The Struggle to Control World Population, Cambridge 2008.

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especially the pill, and thus relied on “natural methods” and legal abortion for birth control. When the Western states went on to declare first trimester abortion legal at the end of the 1960s (Great Britain) or in the course of the 1970s (GDR (1972), USA (1973), France (1975), FRG (1976), Italy (1978), they did so as a result of women’s social activism, especially the women’s movements’ demands for the rights of women to control their bodies. Hand in hand with this paradigm shift that recognized a woman’s “right to privacy” in her reproductive-decision making or even opted for “reproductive rights” and “reproductive choice” went the recognition of less patriarchal and more liberal gender concepts. In Eastern Europe, however, as for example Radka Dudová shows, a far more paternalistic approach to birth control (a woman’s business alone) and gender roles prevailed, while women’s movements that dealt with issues of women’s health and reproductive autonomy were virtually non-existent. While Planned Parenthood succeeded in disseminating family planning information all over the US and its international branches burgeoned as well, American society was nonetheless neither colour-blind nor egalitarian. On the contrary, class and ethnicity largely determined the degree of “reproductive autonomy” a woman could achieve or whether she was threatened by unconsented sterilization (effectuated on poor African American or Mexican American women until the early 1970s) or had to deal with the fact that public healthcare would not cover the costs for a legal abortion (relevant for women on welfare, many of them non-white and single mothers)69 . At the same time, the quest of American feminists for women’s rights and sexual and reproductive health also echoed in other countries. As Fiammetta Balestracci has explained, Italian feminists in the 1960s and 1970s discovered female sexual pleasure and promoted feminist self-help to counter a largely paternalistic gender structure70 . In France, as Ann-Katrin Gembries has pointed out, parliamentary debates on abortion in the 1960s and 1970s mirror a turn towards more individualist values. While supporters of legal abortion insisted on the mother’s right to choose, adversaries sought to defend the right to life of the unborn child71 . The same tone of the debate can also be observed in other Western countries such as the US, Great Britain and West Germany, but does not account for a general and irreversible change in values, as issues of abortion, contraception and “reproductive rights” remained highly contested. 69

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Elena Gutierrez, Fertile Matters. The Politics of Mexican Origin Women’s Reproduction, Austin 2008; Rickie Solinger, Beggars and Choosers. How the Politics of Choice Shapes Adoption, Abortion, and Welfare in the United States, New York 2001; Roberts, Killing the Black Body (as in n. 61); Schoen, Choice and Coercion (as in n. 62); Rebecca M. Kluchin, Fit to be Tied. Sterilization and Reproductive Rights in America, 1950–1980, New Brunswick, London 2011. Balestracci, Influence of American Sexual Studies (as in n. 47). Gembries, Pronatalist Discourses (as in n. 34).

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1980s/1990s: Assisted Reproductive Technologies and Anti-Abortion Protests in East and West

While the 1960s and 1970s had seen a breakthrough in contraceptive drugs and legal abortion throughout the West, the 1980s were a turning point in the use of assisted reproductive technologies. Doctors and medical experts had explored strategies to overcome unwanted sterility, but the birth of the first British “test tube baby” in 1978 (and the first US one in 1981) introduced the new method of in-vitro-fertilization. This technology entailed previously unknown possibilities for egg and sperm donation and all sorts of surrogacy arrangements which started to blossom all over the planet. Infertile couples hurried to make use of the technology as did same sex-couples in some countries in the West, who, for the first time ever, could now realize their reproductive wishes through gamete donation and surrogacy (in the case of male couples). Surrogacy, however, is a good example of a technology that combines liberating effects (for the commissioning couples) with problematic ones such as global fertility tourism and the commodification of childbirth (for the surrogates)72 . The most striking facts of this period, however, were not the new possibilities for reproductive decision-making through medical technologies, but rising antiabortion activism and legislation – both in the East and the West. While Western states had faced vital anti-abortion movements since the 1970s, the 1980s saw an unprecedented increase in religiously motivated anti-abortion-activism and also violence among abortion protesters, especially in the USA. The latter privileged the “right to life” of the embryo and “foetal personhood” over the right to decide of the woman and the medical risks she had to bear. Interestingly, after the end of state socialism, many Eastern European states revoked abortion legislation during the 1990s, sometimes with the help of the Catholic Church. As Susan Gal has argued for 1990s Hungary, anti-communism was not well-equipped to affirm women’s rights and women’s autonomy, but criticized women’s alleged advantages under state socialism. Instead, anti-communists sought to invoke notions of civility or national identity73 . In the field of reproduction, this increased the pres72

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Andreas Bernhard, Kinder machen. Neue Reproduktionstechnologien und die Ordnung der Familie. Samenspender, Leihmütter, Künstliche Befruchtung, Frankfurt a. M. 2014; Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim, The Post-Career Mom. Reproductive Technology and the Promise of Reproductive Choice, in: Gijs Beets, Joop Schippers, Egbert R. te Velde (eds.), The Future of Motherhood in Western Societies. Late Fertility and its Consequences, Heidelberg et al. 2011, p. 149–158; Id., Die Reproduktionsmedizin und ihre Kinder. Erfolge – Risiken – Nebenwirkungen, Salzburg, Wien 2016. Susan Gal, Gender in the Post-Socialist Transition (as in n. 38); See also Henry P. David, Overview, in: Id. (ed.), From Abortion to Contraception (as in n. 30), p. 4; Lynn M. Morgan, Afterword. Reproductive Governance Meets European Abortion Politics. The Challenge of Getting the Gaze Right, in: de Zordo, Mishtal, Anton, Fragmented Landscape, p. 266–282,

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sure on women considerably. Nevertheless, women’s rights organizations were founded in the 1990s that sought contact with Western and international family planning organizations and women’s health movements. Still, it remains completely open where reproductive decision-making, gender norms, and women’s rights will go from here in Eastern Europe. At least, the emergence of massive civilian protests – as in the case of the “czarny protest” of October 2016, where people went to the streets to protest a further tightening of the abortion ban in Poland74 – are positive signs: Although values of reproduction at present seem to be highly contested, especially in Eastern Europe, but also in some Western countries, we can discern some lasting effects of liberal gender concepts and notions of women’s “reproductive rights”.

Conclusion and Perspectives for Future Research The contributions to this volume demonstrate, first, that already in the 1920s and 1930s attempts to debate and control reproduction were prevalent in the states of Eastern and Western Europe alike (eugenics, sex research, contraception). Second, many countries sought to reduce the social practice of abortion and liberal reproductive decision-making in general during the 1980s. Third, the end of state socialism provoked a tightening of abortion regulations and a reduction of women’s decision-making options, combined with a reaffirmation of more traditional gender concepts. Fourth, the legalization of abortion had already occurred in communist states during the 1950s while Western states followed during the late 1960s and 1970s – but for different reasons (lack of access to contraceptives and contraceptive information versus women’s rights and abortion as a matter of private choice). Such long-term and transnational comparisons help to better understand practices of reproductive decision-making in different societies. Also, they highlight that legal abortion (as in the state socialist countries up to 1990) did not necessarily require liberal gender norms or notions of women’s rights. Furthermore, they demonstrate that even in authoritarian regimes with traditional gender concepts women managed to seek reproductive autonomy, be it through access to contraceptive drugs for “medical issues” or through illegal abortions. Future research in the field could address the role of the church and religious associations in administering and withholding contraceptive information and

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esp. p. 274; Sobotká, Stealthy Sexual Revolution? (as in n. 39); Fuszara, Abortion (as in n. 42); Id., New Gender Relations. Krystina Kacpura, Stop this Crackdown on Abortion in Poland, in: The Guardian, 21.9.2016, URL: www.theguardian.com. Mishtal, “Beating the System”, p. 237–239.

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family planning, the impact of welfare regulations and the quest for female workforce participation, the different concepts of the family and parenthood and how they evolve. Of equal interest are the diffusion of medical knowledge and the role of feminist movements therein, the agency of women as patients and clients, the impact of consumerism and globalization/commercialization of reproduction, especially with regard to the demand for assisted reproductive technologies. Equally under-researched are embedded sexual and gender norms, for example when abortion was labelled a “punishment for deviant sexuality”, as well as the expansion of birth control knowledge and the development of medical technologies. Finally, we need to address more thoroughly the complex relation between social and normative change, especially with regard to changing social practices and individual lifestyles. Concluding this comparative analysis of social change and value transformations in the field of reproductive decision-making in both Western and Eastern European societies during the 20th century, we cannot identify a general transition from materialist to post-materialist values in the realm of reproduction. In the historical and comparative perspective of this volume, prominent interpretations of the social sciences such as Helmut Klages’ “change in values” or Ulrich Beck’s “individualization thesis” lose their accuracy in the face of the complex and sometimes contradictory developments in the East and West75 . This is especially so as the undisputable increase in options for reproductive decisionmaking during the 1960s and 1970s primarily concerned Western European states, while Eastern European states provided legal abortion from the late 1950s, but did not frame it as a women’s rights issue. In contrast, the diverging negotiations of family planning and reproductive decision-making reveal multiple (and sometimes contingent) processes of normative and social change and their respective counter-movements, all of which require further historical study. Especially with regard to the ongoing debates about abortion and women’s rights in the former state socialist countries, but also in the face of a strengthened religious opposition to reproductive decisionmaking in the West, the question of whether couples and individuals can create their “families by choice” as suggested by the United Nation’s human rights discourse, remains completely open.

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Helmut Klages, Traditionsbruch als Herausforderung. Perspektiven der Wertewandelsgesellschaft, Frankfurt a. M. 1994, p. 45; Ulrich Beck, Risikogesellschaft. Auf dem Weg in eine andere Moderne, Frankfurt a. M. 1986; Ulrich Beck, Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim (eds.), Riskante Freiheiten. Individualisierung in modernen Gesellschaften, Frankfurt a. M. 1994, p. 10–36. See also Theresia Theuke, Children by Choice? Changing Values, Reproduction, and Family Planning in the 20th Century, this volume.

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PD Dr. Fiammetta Balestracci, Queen Mary University of London (QMUL), since 2017 Marie Curie Research Fellow at the QMUL in partnership with the German Historical Institute of Rome, 2006–2012 Researcher in Contemporary History on the German–Italian Historical Institute of the Bruno Kessler Foundation of Trento, 2003 PhD at University of Milano. Selected publications: The Italian Communist Party and the Sexual Revolution of Italian Women (under publication); Rastrellamenti e deportazione, in KL nell’Italia occupata, in: Brunello Mantelli, Nicola Tranfaglia (eds.), L’Europa sotto il tallone di ferro. Dalle biografie ai quadri generali, Il libro dei deportati, vol. 4, Milano 2015, p. 565–726; La Prussia tra reazione e rivoluzione 1918–1920. La riorganizzazione degli interessi agricoli tra esperienze consiliari e modelli corporativi, Zamorani, Torino 2004. Radka Dudová, Ph.D., Institute of Sociology, Czech Academy of Sciences, since 2007 Senior researcher in the Gender and Sociology department at the Institute of Sociology, Czech Academy of Sciences, 2008–2010 Post-doctoral researcher at department of Political Sciences, FSW, Leiden University. Selected publications: Postarat se ve stáří. Péče o seniory v rodině (Care in the Old Age. The elderly care in the family), Prague 2015; Interrupce v České republice: zápas o ženská těla (Abortion in the Czech Republic. A Struggle for Women’s Bodies), Prague 2012; Otcovství po rozchodu rodičovského páru (Fatherhood after the Parent’s Separation), Prague 2008. Ann-Katrin Gembries, M.A., Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz (Germany), since 2014 scientific assistant and Ph.D.-Candidate in the DFG-funded research project “Wertewandel in Moderne und Postmoderne” at the Department of Modern History, JGU Mainz. Doctoral fellowships from the Heinrich Böll Foundation (2013–2014) and from the German Historical Institute in Paris (2012). From 2003 to 2009, she studied history, philosophy and general and comparative literature at the universities of Burgundy (Dijon, France) and Mainz. Selected publications: Von der Fortpflanzungspflicht zum Recht auf Abtreibung. Werte und Wertewandel im Spiegel französischer Parlamentsdebatten über Geburtenkontrolle 1920–1974, in: Bernhard Dietz, Christopher Neumaier, Andreas Rödder (eds.), Gab es den Wertewandel? Neue Forschungen zum gesellschaftlich-kulturellen Wandel seit den 1960er Jahren, München 2014, p. 304–334. https://doi.org/9783110524499-011

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Prof. Dr. Isabel Heinemann, since 2009 Assistant Professor (Juniorprofessorin) for Contemporary History at the University of Muenster, Germany, 2009–2016 Chair of the Emmy Noether Research Group “Family Values and Social Change: The US-American Family in the 20th Century”, sponsored by the German Science Foundation, since 2015 PI in the Collaborative Research Center (CRC) of the German Science Foundation “Cultures of Decision-Making”, Chair of Research Project on “Reproductive Decision-Making in Germany and the United States in the Second Half of the 20th Century”. Selected publications: Wert der Familie. Debatten um Ehescheidung, Frauenarbeit und Reproduktion in den USA des 20. Jahrhunderts (under publication with DeGruyter–Oldenbourg, Berlin); As editor: Inventing the Modern American Family. Family Values and Social Change in 20th Century United States, Frankfurt a. M., New York 2012; Preserving Family and Nation. Eugenic Masculinity Concepts, Expert Intervention, and the Hegemonic American Family in the United States, 1900–1960, in: Pablo Dominquez-Andersen, Simon Wendt (eds.), Masculinities and the Nation in the Modern World. 1800–1945, New York 2015, p. 71–92. Dr. Yuliya Hilevych , Ph.D. in Sociology, since 2017 post-doctoral researcher in the Policy and Dissemination Research Group, Netherlands, Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI), since 2014 visiting Researcher and Researcher at the Department of Economic, Social and Demographic History, Faculty of Arts, Radboud University (NL). Selected publications: Abortion and gender relationships in Ukraine, 1955– 1970, in: The History of the Family 20/1 (2015), p. 86–105; Strong Families and Declining Fertility. A Comparative Study of Family Relations and Reproductive Careers in Soviet Ukraine, Wageningen 2016; Later, if ever. Family influences on transition from first to second birth in Soviet Ukraine, in: Continuity and Change 2 (2016), p. 275–300. Dr. Agata Ignaciuk, Ph.D. in Women’s and Gender Studies (University of Granada, Spain), since 2016 Collaborator, Department of the History of Science, University of Granada, Spain, since October 2017 Polish National Science Center – Marie Curie Sklodowska Actions COFUND POLONEZ fellow, Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, University of Warsaw, Poland (2017– 2019), 2017 Consultant, University of Ottawa, Canada, 2015–2016 Postdoctoral fellow, University of Granada, Spain, 2010–2015 Ph.D.-Candidate, University of Granada, Spain. Selected publications: with Teresa Ortiz-Gómez, Anticoncepción, mujeres y género. La “píldora” en España y Polonia, Madrid 2016; Reproductive policies and women’s birth control practices in state-socialist Poland (1960s–1980s), in: Lutz Niethammer, Silke Satjuko (eds.), “Wenn die Chemie stimmt”. Gender

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relations and birth control in the age of the “pill”. Göttingen 2016, p. 271–294; with Teresa Ortiz-Gómez, “Pregnancy and labour cause more deaths than oral contraceptives”. The debate on the pill in the Spanish press in the 1960s and 1970s. Public Understanding of Science 24/6 (2015), p. 658–671. Dr. Claudia Roesch, since 2018 Research Fellow at the German Historical Institue, Washington D.C. 2015–2017 Research Fellow at the Collaborative Research Center 1150 “Cultures of Decision-Making”, University of Münster, Project A 05: “Between Private Choice and Public Debate: Reproductive Decision-Making in West Germany and the USA, 1945–1993”, 2015 Postdoctoral Grant of the Gerda Henkel Foundation for the project: “Between Public Decisions and Private Choice: Reproductive Debates in the 20th Century United States”, 2010–2014 Ph.D.-Candidate in the Emmy Noether Junior Research Group “Family Values and Social Change: The US-American Family in the 20th Century” University of Münster. Selected publications: Macho Men and Modern Women. Mexican Immigration, Social Experts and Changing Family Values in the 20th Century United States, Berlin, Boston 2015; The Social Distance Scale, Emory S. Bogardus and Californian Interwar Migration Research Offside the Chicago School, in: Journal of Migration History 1/2 (2015), p. 184–198; “Failure to Provide”. Mexican Immigration, Americanization and Marginalized Masculinities in the Interwar United States, in: Pablo Dominguez Andersen, Simon Wendt (eds.), Masculinities and the Nation in the Modern World. Between Hegemony and Marginalization, New York 2015, p. 149–170. Dr. Chizu Sato, since 2016 Lecturer & Researcher (tenured) at the Sociology of Consumption and Households Group, Wageningen University, 2012–2016 Lecturer & Researcher (non-tenure) at the Sociology of Consumption and Households Group, Wageningen University, 2011 Lecturer at the Sociology of Consumption and Households Group, Wageningen University. Selected publications: Empowering women. A symptom of Development, in: Ilan Kapoor (ed.), Psychoanalysis and the Global. Lincoln, NE (Forthcoming in 2018); Two frontiers of development? A transnational feminist analysis of public–private partnerships for women’s empowerment. International Political Sociology 10/2 (2016), p. 150–167; Towards transnational feminist literacy practices. Rethinking Marxism. 26/1 (2014), p. 44–60. Theresia Theuke, Dipl. Gyml., since 2014 Ph.D.-Candidate in the DFG-funded research project “Wertewandel in Moderne und Postmoderne” at the Department of Modern History, JGU Mainz, since 2017 student of the “Deutsches Journalistenkolleg”, Berlin, since 2015 doctoral fellowship from the KonradAdenauer-Foundation, 2007–2011 fellowship from the Konrad-Adenauer-Foun-

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dation, 2008–2010 academic assistant RWTH Aachen. From 2007–2012 she studied history, French and catholic theology at the RWTH Aachen. Rona Torenz, M.A., 2017 Second degree (Master of Arts) in Applied Sexual Science Merseburg UAS, 2015–2016 academic assistant Merseburg UAS, 2014 Master’s degree (“Magister Artium”) in Gender Studies and Philosophy HU Berlin. Selected publications: with Franziska Reiniger, Feminismus. Rassismuskritische Annäherungen an die Geschichte und Gegenwart des weißen deutschen Feminismus, in: Susan Arndt, Nadja Ofuatey-Alazard (eds.), Wie Rassismus aus Wörtern spricht. (K)Erben des Kolonialismus im Wissensarchiv deutsche Sprache. Münster 2011; with Stefan Gerbing, Kritische Weißseinsforschung und deutscher Kontext. Über das Verhältnis von Deutschsein, Weißsein und die Konstruktion des Ariers, Saarbrücken 2007. Dr. Eszter Varsa, Ph.D. fellow at the Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies (IOS) at Regensburg, 2011–2013 Lecturer, Department of Gender Studies and Department of History, Central European University (CEU), 2011 Ph.D. in Comparative Gender Studies from CEU in Budapest. Selected publications: “The minor would hinder the mother in finding employment”. Child protection and women’s paid work in early state socialist Hungary, East European Politics & Societies and Culture (forthcoming 2017); “The Gypsy Population is Constantly Growing”. Roma and the Politics of Reproduction in Cold War Hungary, in: Sara Bernasconi, Heike Karge, Friederike KindKovacs (eds.), Beyond Medicine. The History and Politics of Public Health in 20th-Century Europe, New York (forthcoming); The (Final) Solution of the Gypsy-Question. Continuities, in: Discourses about Roma in Hungary, 1940s–1950s, Nationalities Papers 45/1 (2017), Online on 2.12.2016, URL: http: //dx.doi.org/10.1080/00905992.2016.1241221.

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