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Since World War II, abortion policies have remained remarkably varied across European nations, with struggles over abortion rights at the forefront of national politics. This volume analyses European abortion governance and explores how social movements, political groups, and individuals use protests and resistance to influence abortion policy. Drawing on case studies from Italy, Spain, Norway, Poland, Romania, Russia, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the European Union, it analyses the strategies and discourses of groups seeking to liberalise or restrict reproductive rights. It also illuminates the ways that reproductive rights politics intersect with demographic anxieties, as well as the rising nationalisms and xenophobia related to austerity policies, mass migration and the recent terrorist attacks in Europe.
“This edited volume does not only offer gender historians a rich source, but should also be of interest to historians of social movements and legal historians who have to face the fact that an expected process like ‘liberalization’ is created by economic and material factors as well as subterranean techniques of subjectivization and does not reveal any direction but presents a constellation that can switch position any time.” · H-Soz-Kult
“This is an extremely important contribution to the literature on the policies and politics surrounding reproductive rights. It covers a range of historical developments and national contexts while developing multiple overarching themes in an accessible manner.” · Jennifer Merchant, Université Paris II
Introduction
Silvia De Zordo, Joanna Mishtal, and Lorena Anton
PART I: PRO-ABORTION RIGHTS ACTIVISM, MOVEMENTS, STRATEGIES, AND PROTEST LOGICS
Chapter 1. Legal and Political Discourses on Women’s Right to Abortion
Christina Zampas
Chapter 2. Freeing Abortion in Sweden
Annulla Linders and Danielle Bessett
Chapter 3. Women’s Liberation and the ‘Right to choose’: Struggling for Abortion in the United Kingdom and Switzerland
Kristina Schulz and Leena Schmitter
PART II: ANTI-ABORTION RIGHTS ACTIVISM, MOVEMENTS, STRATEGIES, AND PROTEST LOGICS
Chapter 4. Contesting Abortion Rights in Contemporary Italy: Discourses and Practices of Pro-life Activism
Claudia Mattalucci
Chapter 5. Innocence and Demographic Crisis: Transposing Post-Abortion Syndrome into a Russian Orthodox Key
Sonja Luehrmann
Chapter 6. Still a Woman’s Right? Feminist and Other Discourses in Belgium’s Abortion Struggles
Karen Celis and Gily Coene
PART III: HEALTH PROFESSIONALS'/PROVIDERS' INVOLVEMENT IN THE PRO- OR ANTI-ABORTION RIGHTS DEBATE AND ACCESS TO SERVICES
Chapter 7. ‘Good doctors do not object’: Obstetricians-Gynaecolosists’ Perspectives on Conscientious Objection to Abortion Care and their Engagement with Pro-abortion Rights Protests in Italy
Silvia de Zordo
Chapter 8. Women Rights or Unborn Rights? Laws and Loopholes In Madrid’s Public Healthcare Services Abortion Provision to Migrant Women
Beatriz Martín Aragón
Chapter 9. One Step Forward and Two Steps Back: Accessing Abortion in Norway
Mette Løkeland
PART IV: PRONATALISM, NATIONALISM, AND RESISTANCE IN ABORTION POLITICS AND ACCESS TO ABORTION SERVICES
Chapter 10. For the Good of the Nation: Pronatalism and Abortion Ban during Ceauşescu’s Romania
Lorena Anton
Chapter 11. Quietly ‘Beating the System’: The Logics of Protest and Resistance under the Polish Abortion Ban
Joanna Mishtal
Chapter 12. Abortion Governance in the New Northern Ireland
Robin Whitaker and Goretti Horgan
Afterword: Reproductive Governance meets European Abortion Politics: The Challenge of Getting the Gaze Right
Lynn M. Morgan
Bibliography
Acknowledgments
Index