TY - JOUR
T1 - Nationalism, Pronatalism, and the Guild of Gynecology
T2 - The Complex Legacy of Abortion Regulation in Hungary
AU - Pető, Andrea
AU - Svégel, Fanni
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s), 2024.
PY - 2024/4/2
Y1 - 2024/4/2
N2 - By tracing the history of abortion politics in Hungary since World War I, this article covers a century of conflict with particular attention to gynecologists’ self-serving professional jockeying and lobbying under very different political regimes. It suggests that nationalism has been a pivotal element of the abortion debates that both government actors and gynecologists have shaped over the last hundred years and argues that abortion rights were differently recognized in eastern and western Europe during the Cold War because of the legacy of mass wartime rapes committed by the Soviet troops in Hungary, among other countries, which determined those countries’ postwar legislation on abortion and reproductive rights. The article introduces the rarely researched contribution of the gynecologist lobby to the debates by examining how they could represent their own interests independently of political regime. Today, Hungary’s illiberal regime questions the legitimacy of abortion by normalizing US fundamentalist-Christian discourse because anti-abortion policy fits into its nation-building course.
AB - By tracing the history of abortion politics in Hungary since World War I, this article covers a century of conflict with particular attention to gynecologists’ self-serving professional jockeying and lobbying under very different political regimes. It suggests that nationalism has been a pivotal element of the abortion debates that both government actors and gynecologists have shaped over the last hundred years and argues that abortion rights were differently recognized in eastern and western Europe during the Cold War because of the legacy of mass wartime rapes committed by the Soviet troops in Hungary, among other countries, which determined those countries’ postwar legislation on abortion and reproductive rights. The article introduces the rarely researched contribution of the gynecologist lobby to the debates by examining how they could represent their own interests independently of political regime. Today, Hungary’s illiberal regime questions the legitimacy of abortion by normalizing US fundamentalist-Christian discourse because anti-abortion policy fits into its nation-building course.
KW - abortion
KW - gynecology
KW - Hungary
KW - reproductive rights
KW - wartime sexual violence
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85189294000&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1017/S0008938924000037
DO - 10.1017/S0008938924000037
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85189294000
SN - 0008-9389
JO - Central European History
JF - Central European History
ER -