Conceptualizing and Researching Abortion and Reproductive Rights in Communist and Post-Communist East Central Europe

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Brief Description

The fall of communism in East Central Europe at the end of the 1980s, and the region’s post-socialist transition during the 1990s was supposed to bring liberation for the oppressed people from the ‘other Europe’ (Mark 2010). However, when it comes to access to (elective) abortion and reproductive rights, the departure from the communist legacy translated rather into the rise of sexual conservatism and de jure and de facto restrictions, a preview of the global pursuit against women’s rights witnessed in the last years.

This roundtable discusses in a comparative manner the ways in which reproductive rights and access to abortion in three countries from East Central Europe (Romania, Hungary, and Poland) during the 1980s and 1990s can be historicized, researched, and understood on its own terms. This will enable us to uncover significant differences, unexpected similarities, conflicting layers of meaning, and unparallel chronologies across the region.

The roundtable brings together scholars of the region, who will discuss the state of research on abortion and reproductive rights, methodologies, theoretical underpinnings and (inter)disciplinary approaches, on the one hand, and the possibilities of integrating the regional meanings into a global history of women’s rights, on the other. We will pay particular attention to conflicting knowledges and professional interests built around abortion, health care provisions and their practical implementation, continuities and discontinuities between socialism and post-socialism with regard to abortion and reproductive rights in terms of actors, legal provisions, knowledges, and practices.

Sub Unit

• History: 1945-1990

Roundtable Members

• Corina Dobos, University of Bucharest

• Malgorzata Fidelis, U of Illinois at Chicago

• Agata Ignaciuk, U of Granada (Spain)

• Judit Sandor, Central European U (Hungary)

Session Manager

• Nana Gulic, U of Toronto (Canada)