Contraception, Abortion and State Socialism

The paper explores the politics of birth control in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), with Russia, Poland and Romania as main cases. By looking at abortion and contraception policies and discourses during and after state socialism, I will discuss to what extent the transition has affected birth control policies. Furthermore, constructions of birth control under and after state socialism are used as contrasts to western European policy debates, in order to denaturalise implicit assumptions in all contexts. The analytical focus will in particular be on the distinction between contraception and abortion and on different normative assessments of these two categories, with examples from 'border conflicts' – controversies on whether a phenomenon should be categorised as the one or the other. Introduction A normative distinction between contraception and abortion currently pervades most western European countries' birth control politics and discourses (Ireland is a clear exception). Contraception is approached as responsible and as a legitimate way to prevent childbirth; abortion as either a necessary evil, for when contraception fails or when there is some other special circumstance making the individual pregnancy problematic, or as simply an evil, not legitimate under any (or only few) circumstances. Those against permissive abortion access rarely argue against modern contraceptives as such (except marginal groups), and those in favour rarely argue that abortion is unproblematic, something that should be used as primary method to avoid childbirth (to be ‘used as contraception’). This normative distinction is pervasive of today's western European birth control discourse, and has been for several decades. For the greater part of history, however, this was not the case, and it still isn't in many parts of the world. To make hidden assumptions of this particular problematisation of birth control clearer, I will in the following present birth control policies and discourses in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), in a historical perspective. Under state socialism, birth control policy was not based on a normative distinction between contraception (as relatively legitimate) and abortion (as relatively illegitimate). Abortion on request, implemented before modern contraceptives were invented or mass-produced, resulted in a reliance on abortion as the primary method of birth control (Stloukal 1999). Contraceptives, especially those for women (IUDs and the pill), were rather conceptualised as unnatural, inefficient and/or dangerous. Knowledge of modern contraceptives was not spread by the authorities, such contraceptives were furthermore simply not available, and, from the mid-1970s, the pill was in effect banned (United Nations 2002). Scholars and observers have commented on the high abortion and low contraception levels compared to elsewhere in the industrialised world, and on the lack of