The main aim of the final conference of the project “’Family Planning’ in East Central Europe from the 19th Century until the Approval of the ‘Pill’” was to trace the social transformations which effected changes in the understanding of family planning in East Central and Eastern Europe and to compare these processes with the ones in Western Europe.

After a welcome and introduction by Elisa-Maria Hiemer, Heidi Hein-Kircher and Denisa Nešt’áková, ISABEL HEINEMANN (Münster) gave a keynote lecture. She presented how reproductive decision-making changed during the 20th century, comparing the legal and political framework in different European countries and the US. Heinemann focused on eugenics and sterilization, contraception, sex education, abortion and women’s movement and campaign against the abortion ban. She showed that in the 1920s and 1930s attempts to control reproduction were dominant both in Eastern and Western Europe. After WW II, the situation regarding debates on abortion changed. While the socialist countries legalized abortion during the 1950s, western countries followed during the late 1960s and 1970s. The end of state socialism, as Heinemann pointed out, led to a retightening of abortion regulations. In the conclusion, she stated that traditional gender concepts are on the rise today and that women’s rights and decision-making options are at stake both in US and Europe.

Opening the first panel on privacy and motherhood, ANJA TITZE (Heidelberg) explored the struggle of pro-life and pro-choice supporters in Ireland and Poland, emphasizing that in both countries the Catholic Church played an important role in politics and society, especially during crises. She argued that in Ireland, Church and state were closely linked resulting in fetal protection and very restricted reproductive rights, while in Poland the Church has successfully campaigned for a further tightening of the abortion law.

TRYFONAS LEMONTZOGLOU (Athens) presented census data both from interwar and postwar periods to highlight the significant increase in the proportion of children born outside marriage in 20th-century Greece. He argued that the rising trend in no marital fertility through Greek territories seems to have started much before the postwar years. He also focused on significant within-country variations, since Central Greece and the Greek Islands were reported to have higher rates of children born outside marriage than Northern Greece. Until the family law reforms promulgated by PASOK (1983), illegitimate children were socially and legally stigmatized.

JAKUB GAŁĘZIOWSKI (Warsaw) presented an analysis of articles published in the Catholic press, as well as in expert medical journals published in 1945/46 in post-war Poland, focusing on the topic of war rapes and the termination of pregnancies resulting from rapes, within the context of pro-natalist policies adopted by the Polish authorities. According to Gałęziowski, from the end of May to the end of November 1945, victims of rape were given a choice for abortion. Although most victims opted for an illegal abortion, Polish authorities decided to stop the practice of abortion assistance and adopted a pronatalist stance in order to facilitate quick recovery from population losses. Gałęziowski argued that in post-war Poland there was neither space for victims of rape to reveal their suffering nor a possibility to receive psychological and psychiatric help. Silence about crimes of the Red Army facilitated the transmission of unaddressed trauma to subsequent generations.

In the second panel on transitions of knowledge and norms, ALLISON RODRIGUEZ (Hartford) examined plebiscite propaganda in Upper Silesia through a gendered lens. She argued that propaganda’s depiction of women reflected how Germany and Poland wished to portray and present themselves and each other. Thus, Poland presented itself as a young family, with a strong father and a loving mother, who passed down the Polish language and Catholic customs to their children. Due to its pre-war imperial and militaristic past, Germany depicted mothers as the pinnacle of peace and of middle-class morality. In both cases, Rodriguez further argued, mothers voted not for themselves, but for their children – and thus for the future of the nation.

SYLWIA KUŹMA-MARKOWSKA (Warsaw) focused on interwar birth control discourses in Poland, shedding a light on family planning narrative spurred by the Catholic Church. She examined family planning activism in socialist, liberal, eugenic, and Jewish milieus and discussed the transnational aspect of Polish interwar birth control activism.

EVA ŠKORVANKOVÁ (Bratislava) presented her research on family planning in Slovakia during WW II. According to her, motherhood and marriage were portrayed as the main role of a women as Slovak nationalist politicians believed that the decline of marital and family life was a burdening heritage of the Czechoslovak Republic that aimed to decompose the Slovak Christian family. Abortion and contraception were prohibited, since it was believed that “an expulsion of a foetus (was) the biggest ploy and crime against family” and that conception protection was “an immoral and sinful deed”.

IEVA BALČIŪNĖ (Vilnus) presented her research on motherhood and family planning issues in the Soviet Lithuanian Magazine for Women, “Tarybinė Moteris” (“The Soviet Women”). She stated that the journal based its discourses on motherhood and family planning according to developments in Soviet propaganda. According to Balčiūnė, in order to disseminate Soviet ideology, several main themes and narratives were used: motherhood as the foundation of a happy and meaningful life; mothers as the main representatives and disseminators of Soviet ideology; motherhood subjected to the natural world, pure, and uncontrolled; motherhood as a standard and expected condition for Soviet women; the unreliability of modern family planning methods, their unnaturalness, obscurity and popularity in the West. Moreover, she concluded, the publications on family planning and birth control rarely provide practical information since their main goal was to enforce official demographic policies.

In the last panel about challenging old norms, DOMINIKA KLEINOVA (Paradubice) talked about birth control and family planning from the perspective of prostitutes in interwar Czechoslovakia. She focused her analysis on the questions how prostitutes planned motherhood and what was the quality of their relationship with offspring.

FANNI SVÉGEL (Budapest) presented her research about the continuities and discontinuities of birth control regimes in 20th-century Hungary and outlined five models of reproduction, arguing that there was a non-linear development in the history of reproduction during the period in question.
MICHAEL ZOK (Warsaw) talked about sexuality, reproductive rights, and partnership as areas of conflict in post-war Poland, focusing his analysis on the questions of reproduction, family/partnership and sexuality from the 1970s to the early 1990s. Zok argued that, despite the continuing conflict between communist authorities and the Church, during this period politics in the realm of gender and gender relations became more and more conservative, almost intersecting with the ideas of the Catholic Church.

All presentations showed how productive a micro-level focus on social change is since family values and family planning reflect this process.

Conference overview:

Welcome and introduction

Elisa-Maria Hiemer, Heidi Hein-Kircher, Denisa Nešt’áková (Marburg)

Keynote

Isabel Heinemann (Münster): Family Planning, Reproductive Decision-Making und Health Feminism

Section I: Publicizing the Privacy (Motherhood on the Stage) / Breaking the Taboo

Chair: Heidi Hein-Kircher (Marburg)

Tryfonas Lemontzoglou (Athens): Revisiting the “Illegitimacy” Phenomenon: Evidence from the 20th Century Greek Censuses

Jakub Gałęziowski (Warsaw): Approaches to Survivors of Conflict Related Sexual Violence in Post-War Poland. Discourses in the Polish Press: Political, Religious and Medical, 1945–1946

Natalia Shok (Moscow), Nadezda Beliakova (Nishni Novgorod): Plurality of Family Planning Concepts (Late Sowjet Period)

Section II: (Transcultural) Transitions of Knowledge and Norms

Chair: Elisa-Maria Hiemer (Marburg)

Allison Rodriguez (Hartford, CT): “Mother, think of me”: Women and Mothers in the Upper Silesian Plebiscite Propaganda

Sylwia Kuzma-Markowska (Warsaw): Conflicts and Interdependencies: Family Planning Narratives and Activisms in Interwar Poland

Eva Škorvanková (Bratislava): Family Planning in Slovakia 1939–1945 and its Ideological Influences

Ieva Balčiūnė (Vilnius): Motherhood and Family Planning Issues in the Soviet Lithuanian Magazine for Women “Tarybinė Moteris”

Section III: Challenging “Old” Norms: Between Science, Propaganda and Intimacy

Chair: Denisa Nešt’áková (Marburg)

Gábor Koloh (Szeged): Socioeconomic and Cultural Determinants of Family Planning in Southern Transdanubia (Hungary), 19th Century

Dominika Kleinova (Pardubice): She-Wolves and Children of the Night: Birth Control and Family Planning from the Perspective of Prostitutes in Interwar Czechoslovakia

Fanni Svégel (Budapest): From “Abortion Culture” to Family Planning. The Continuities and Discontinuities of Birth Control Regimes in 20th Century Hungary

Michael Zok (Warsaw): “Love is a Battlefield”. Sexuality, Reproductive Rights, and Partnership as Areas of Conflict in Post-War Poland

Concluding remarks

Chair: Ivana Dobrivojevic Tomić (Belgrade)

Concluding comment

Agata Ignaciuk (Granada)

Final discussion

Elisa-Maria Hiemer, Heidi Hein-Kircher, Denisa Nešt’áková