The Generation to Reproduction seminars are organised by Professor Nick Hopwood and Professor Lauren Kassell
27 October, Maud Bracke (University of Glasgow)
Europe in the global rise of reproductive rights: Abortion and transnational feminisms (1960s–80s)
Seminar abstract
In this talk I propose a new way of approaching late-20th-century struggles for reproductive rights and health by pointing to the limits of nationally framed narratives, and by highlighting the emergence of a global women’s health movement in the 1970s–80s. This movement, which included organisations such as the International Contraception, Abortion and Sterilisation Campaign (created London in 1978) and the Women’s Global Network for Reproductive Rights (Amsterdam, 1984), contributed to shaping the notions of reproductive health and rights as defined at the UN Conference on Population and Development in Cairo in 1994.
The talk will focus on the debates that animated this movement in its early years (1970–84), specifically the interactions between Latin American and European women’s organisations. On the basis of their critique of the global family-planning movement and its population-control-driven approaches, Latin American organisations challenged Western feminists, calling on them to think beyond an agenda focused on the right not to be a mother. They incorporated the categories of race, location and social class into a more complex analysis of patriarchal control of women's bodies, one that was cognisant of the histories of non-white, non-Western, poor and disabled women being denied the right to parent. The talk will analyse these debates and the tensions within the feminist movements of France, the UK and Italy.
This seminar is organized in association with the Strategic Research Initiative on Reproduction