Article ID: CBB543154930

In Sickness and in Health: Expert Discussions on Abortion Indications, Risks, and Patient-Doctor Relationships in Postwar Poland (2021)

unapi

This article analyzes expert debates relating to abortion in Poland between 1956 and 1993, a period when the procedure was legal and accessible. Through the pages of the primary Polish journal for gynecology and obstetrics, Ginekologia Polska, the author traces continuities and ruptures around three major intersecting themes: the procedure’s indications, its (dis)connection to health, and the patient-doctor relationship. The journal became a forum showcasing interpretative tensions over indications for abortion and the malleability of the categories “therapeutic” and “social.” In addition to these tensions, abortion was represented throughout this period as a potentially risky surgery, although this was initially nuanced with parallel representations of legal abortion combating maternal mortality. During the 1970s, abortion began to be linked to infertility, often in simplistic cause-and-effect terms. Simultaneously, opposition to abortion based on the idea of defense of the nation and fetal “life,” surfaced in expert discourse.

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https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB543154930/

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Authors & Contributors
Reagan, Leslie J.
Moran, Rachel Louise
Sarah Fox
Sara Matthiesen
Heidt-Forsythe, Erin
Daxenbichler, Maria
Concepts
Abortion
Reproductive medicine
Obstetrics and pregnancy
Women and health
Medicine and gender
Gynecology
Time Periods
20th century, late
20th century
19th century
21st century
20th century, early
Early modern
Places
United States
Buenos Aires (Argentina)
England
Weimar Republic (1919-1933)
London (England)
Argentina
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