Abstract
After World War II, European states developed new policies toward human reproduction. The deep transformations that occurred in the debates over abortion and over concepts such as “motherhood” and “reproduction” on both sides of the Berlin wall exemplify the relation of the “politics of reproduction” to the political systems of postwar Europe.1 This essay presents four case studies of national reproductive policies in Western Europe (Federal Republic of Germany and France) and Eastern Europe (German Democratic Republic and Romania), comparing different states’ involvements in abortion legislation in order to analyze the debates, protests, and silences that divided people and policies along national and bloc lines in Europe after 1945.
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Notes
F. Ginsburg, R. Rapp, “The Politics of Reproduction,” Annual Review of Anthropology 20 (1991): 311–343.
For extensive discussions on this issue, see especially: Mary Katzenstein and Carol Mueller, eds, The Women’s Movement of the United States and Western Europe (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987).
Faye D. Ginsburg and Rayna Rapp, eds, Conceiving the New World Order: The Global Politics of Reproduction (Berkley: University of California Press, 1995).
Anita Grossmann, Reforming Sex: The German Movement for Birth Control and Abortion Reform 1920–1950 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995).
Henry P. David and Joanna 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: Greenwood Press, 1999).
David Hoffmann, “Mothers in the Motherland: Stalinist Pronatalism in Its Pan-European Context,” Journal of Social History 34, no. 1 (Autumn 2000): 35–54.
Donna Harsch, Revenge of the Domestic: Women, The Family, and Communism in the German Democratic Republic (Princeton/Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2007).
Robert G. Moeller, “Reconstructing the Family in Reconstructing Germany: Women and Social Policy in The Federal Republic, 1949–1955,” Feminist Studies 15 (1989): 137–169, 137.
Malcolm Potts, Peter Diggory, and John Peel, Abortion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 298–332, 392.
Field, 1956, cited in Henry P. David, “Abortion in Europe, 1920–1991: A Public Health Perspective,” Studies in Family Planning 23, no.1 (January-February 1992): 1–22.
For a comparative view, see Dorothy McBride, ed., Abortion Politics, Women’s Movements, and the Democratic State: A Comparative Study of State Feminism (Oxford: University Press, 2001).
Dieter Rucht, “The Impact of National Contexts on Social Movement Structures: A Cross-Movement and Cross National Comparison,” in Doug McAdam, John D. McCarthy, and Mayer N. Zald, eds, Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements: Political Opportunities, Mobilizing Structures, and Cultural Framings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 185–204.
Dieter Rucht and Friedhelm Neidhardt, “Auf dem Weg in eine ‘Bewegungsgesellschaft’? Über die Stabilisierbarkeit sozialer Bewegungen,” Soziale Welt 44 (1993): 305.
On this subject, see Kristina Schulz, “Echoes of Provocation: 1968 and the Women’s Movements in France and Germany,” in Gerd-Rainer Horn and Padraic Kenney, Transnational Moments of Change: Europe 1945, 1968, 1989 (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004), 137–154.
Cf. Janine Mossuz-Lavau, Les lois de l’amour. Les politiques de la sexualité en France (1950–1990) (Paris: Payot, 1991).
François Isambert and Paul Ladriere, Contraception et avortement. Dix ans de débat dans la presse (1965–1974) (Paris: Editions du CNRS, 1979).
For the French case, see Jean C. Robinson, “Gendering the Abortion Debate: The French Case,” in, Dorothy McBride Stetson, ed., Abortion Politics, Women’s Movements, and the Democratic State (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 87–110.
On the French women’s movement, see also Françoise Picq, Libération des femmes: Les années-mouvement (Paris: Seuil, 1993).
See Choisir, Avortement. Une loi en procès. L’affaire de Bobigny. Sténotypie intégrale des débats du tribunal de Bobigny (8 novembre 1972). Préface de Simone de Beauvoir (Paris: Gallimard, 1973).
The so-called Contergan-Skandal pushed forward the debate on eugenic abortion. Contergan was a tranquilizer recommended especially for pregnant women. Its use resulted in birth defects. Cf. Jürgen Gerhards, Friedhelm Neidhardt, and Dieter Rucht, Zwischen Palaver und Diskurs: Strukturen öffentlicher Meinungsbildung am Beispiel der deutschen Diskussion zur Abtreibung (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1998), 14.
From a perspective of comparative political sciences: Myra Marx Ferree, “Resonance and Radicalism: Feminist Framing in the Abortion Debate of the United States and Germany,” American Journal of Sociology 109 (2003): 304–344.
“Stellungnahme der Sprecherin der ‘Aktion 218’, Barbara Nirumand, vor dem Sonderausschuß des Deutschen Bundestages anläßlich des Hearings vom 10.-12. April 1972,” Gerhardt Kraiker, §218. Zwei Schritte vorwärts, ein Schritt zurück (Frankfurt: Fischer, 1983), 105–114.
Chantal Horellou-Lafarge, “Une mutation dans les dispositifs de contrôle social: le cas de l’avortement,” Revue française de sociologie 23 (1982): 411.
Roland Roth and Dieter Rucht, eds, Die sozialen Bewegungen in Deutschland seit 1945: Ein Handbuch (Frankfurt: Campus, 2008), 29.
Michael Gante, §218 in der Diskussion. Meinungs—und Willensbildung 1945–1976 (Düsseldorf: Droste, 1991), 43.
Anita Grossmann, Reforming Sex: The German Movement for Birth Control and Abortion Reform, 1920–1950 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 193–194.
Hilde Benjamin, “Juristische Grundlagen für die Diskussion über den §218,” in Kristen Thietz, ed., Ende der Selbstverständlichkeit? Die Abschaffung des §218 in der DDR, Dokumente (Berlin: Basis Druck Verlag GmbH, 1992), 18, 47.
Donna Harsch, “Society, the State, and Abortion in East Germany 1950–1972,” American Historical Review 102, no. 1 (1997): 58.
Ralf Rytlewski and Manfred Opp de Hipt, Die Deutsche Demokratische Republik in Zahlen 1945/49–1980 (München: Beck, 1987), 41–42.
Deutsche Presse-Agentur, DPA Hintergrund. Archiv—und Informationsmaterial, Hamburg (April 5, 1974), 5.
The number of legal abortions in 1965 was about a half the number in 1966, while the number in 1964 was about 1/30th of those in 1966. Cf. Donna Harsch, Revenge of the Domestic: Women, the Family, and Communism in the German Democratic Republic (Princeton/Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2006), 268, 271.
Chizuko Ueno et al., The Invisible Wall in Germany: Women Rethink Reunification (in Japanese) (Tokyo: Iwanami, 1993), 191.
Cf. Akira Saito, Consumption and Women: An Aspect of German Social History 1920–1970 (in Japanese) (Tokyo: Nihonkeizaihyöronsha, 2007), 284.
Michael Hubert, Deutschland im Wandel: Geschichte der deutschen Bevölkerung seit 1815 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1998), 288.
Toshiko Himeoka, “The Unification of Germany and Feminism,” in Hiroko Hara and Kaoru Tachi, eds, From Motherhood to Power: Bringing Up the Next Generation: For the Society which Bears and Brings Up (in Japanese) (Tokyo: Shinyôsha, 1991), 293–294.
On this subject, see Yoshie Mitobe, “Mein Bauch gehört dem Staat? Politics of Abortion Law Reform in the Seventies,” in Osamu Kawagoe and Hidetaka Tsuji eds, Life of the Social State: State, Community, and Individual in Twentieth-Century Germany (in Japanese) (Tokyo: Hôsei University Press, 2008), 243–278.
Henry P. David, “Abortion in Europe, 1920–1991: A Public Health Perspective,” Studies in Family Planning 23, no.1 (January-February 1992): 13.
Gail Kligman, Politica duplicitäţii, Controlul reproducerii în Romania lui Ceauşescu (The Politics of Duplicity: Controlling Reproduction in Ceauşescu’s Romania) (Bucharest: Humanitas Publishing House, 2000).
Bernard Berelson, “Romania’s 1966 Anti-Abortion Decree: The Demographic Experience of the First Decade,” Population Studies 33, no. 2 (1979): 209.
H. David and N. H. Wright, “Abortion Legislation: the Romanian Experience,” Studies in Family Planning 2 (1979): 205–210.
For a more in-depth description of the creation of the socialist-mother tradition by means of propaganda, see Lorena Anton, “Abortion and the Making of the Socialist Mother during Communist Romania,” in Lisa Bernstein, ed., (M)Othering the Nation: Constructing and Resisting Regional and National Allegories Through the Maternal Body (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008), 49–61.
Thomas J. Keil and Viviana Andreescu, “Fertility Policy in Ceausescu’s Romania,” Journal of Family History 21, no. 4 (October 1999): 478–492.
See in this sense B. Johnson et al., “Women’s Perspectives on Abortion in Romania,” Social Science and Medicine 42, no. 4 (1996): 521–530.
J. L. Leibowitz, Reproductive Choice in Romania: Cultural Models of Abortion and Contraception (2003, PhD dissertation, University of Connecticut).
Vasile Gheţău, Declinul demografic şi viitorul populatiei României (The Demographic Decline and the Future of Romania’s Population) (Bucharest: Alpha MDN, 2007).
Nira Yuval-Davis, Gen şi naţiune (Gender and Nation) (Bucharest: Univers Publishing House, 2003).
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© 2012 Kathrin Fahlenbrach, Martin Klimke, Joachim Scharloth, and Laura Wong
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Anton, L., Mitobe, Y., Schulz, K. (2012). Politics of Reproduction in a Divided Europe: Abortion, Protest Movements, and State Intervention after World War II. In: Fahlenbrach, K., Klimke, M., Scharloth, J., Wong, L. (eds) The Establishment Responds. Palgrave Macmillan Transnational History Series. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230119833_8
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