INVENTING 'REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS': SEX, BODIES AND POPULATION, 1945-1995

Lead Research Organisation: University of Glasgow
Department Name: School of Humanities

Abstract

The choice as to whether to have children, when and with whom as an undeniable human right is nowadays broadly accepted across the globe. How did it come to be so? History shows us that this idea is by no means self-evident, and that its emergence was neither inevitable nor without conflict. Between 1945 and the 1990s, novel ideas regarding reproductive choice and bodily autonomy were contested and negotiated, leading to what today we call 'reproductive rights' as set of political, legal and medical principles.

'Inventing Reproductive Rights' will create new insight into the historical contexts in which the notion of reproductive rights has developed since 1945 and up to the mid-1990s, when 'reproductive health and rights' were inscribed into UN human rights. It traces shifts in sexual culture, gender roles, demography, and medical practices. The project deals with 'family planning', contraception and abortion, focusing on campaigning groups, experts, and policy-makers. Two key hypotheses underpin the project. Firstly, the emergence of reproductive rights ideas did not diminish the attempts by a range of actors at intervening in individuals' reproductive choices, but rather reframed such interventions. Secondly, it created new ways for individuals to exercise reproductive agency. These arguments are illustrated by focusing on three developments: medicalisation, or the growing role played by medical institutions in intervening in the reproductive body; feminisation, or the growing understanding that women rather than men are the key agents of reproductive planning; and the social hierarchy of reproductive bodies, or the framing of some bodies as more worthy of procreation than others, as based on social class, 'race', and ability.

The project builds on innovative scholarship on the Global South to present a globally connected analysis, with particular focus on Europe. Challenging the assumption that reproductive rights emerged solely in a liberal-democratic context, the project integrates communist Eastern and democratic Western Europe. The PI's research focuses on the UK and Italy, while a Research Associate studies Yugoslavia. The three countries reflect wider phenomena such as sexual modernisation and women-centred activism. They are distinguished by, for instance, the power of the Catholic culture in defining cultural norms (Italy); the relatively early liberalisation of contraception and abortion (UK), or the state's attempts to globally present itself as a champion for reproductive rights (Yugoslavia). The project is underpinned by an interdisciplinary conversation between the PI and established and early career scholars in History, Social Science, Law, and Medical Humanities. A monograph by the PI will provide the starting point for wider debate at two major international conferences, and the project will result in a Special Issue.

Contemporary debates and practices of reproductive rights continue to be framed by historical developments; therefore, historical awareness is needed to understand the obstacles to full reproductive justice today. We collaborate with young people in the Glasgow area and Sandyford Sexual Health Services (NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde) to create new insight into young people's experiences and values regarding reproductive rights, focusing on gender relations, access to services, and socio-cultural context. Our outputs - a large-scale survey among young people, small-group discussion, and an educational comic strip - will feed into Sandyford's policy recommendations to the Scottish Government. More broadly, they will benefit NHS professionals and youth, community and educational services around the UK. We envisage these outputs as building blocks towards a Reproductive Justice Education agenda: educating those working with young people, giving voice to the latter, and interpreting their experiences.
 
Title Graphic Novel: 'Reproductive justice in Scotland: a guide for young people' 
Description Production is ongoing. Author/artist: Catherine MacRobbie https://uk.linkedin.com/in/catherinemacrobbie The graphic novel is aimed at young people (16-25) in Scotland and once completed will be disseminated through schools, neighbourhood and youth centres, reproductive health clinics, and online. Through an interactive element, readers will be able to give online feedback on the content; the analysis of and engagement with this will form part of a follow-on project. The graphic novel is aimed at helping young people reflect on reproductive choices, reproductive freedom, and justice across different societal groups. It will give information on reproductive health services, sexual education resources, and rights, and will engage with current barriers preventing people from fully exercising reproductive freedom. It will provide historical background and an awareness of global developments. The narrative form and focus on key characters drawn from different sectors in Scottish society, will encourage young people to engage with the content. Production of the graphic novel is ongoing. Content is based on research conducted as part of the project: the academic research by scholars affiliated with the project and presented at the 2022 conference; and new interviews with reproductive health practitioners and campaigners, to be conducted by the PI (this is ongoing; follow-up funding is being applied for). The graphic novel project has been developed by the artist on a collaborative basis: regular workshops and WIP presentations throughout 2022-23, involving PI, RA, two graphic novel advisers at UofG, and the academic project affiliates around the globe. 
Type Of Art Creative Writing 
Year Produced 2023 
Impact to be determined once the novel is produced and starts being disseminated. 
 
Description The project has made a major contribution to scholarly analysis of reproductive rights principles, and how these have come about and developed during the 20th Century. IIncorporating perspectives from History, Social Science, and Medical Humanities, the project, and the 15 scholars affiliated with it, has established a number of key findings as listed below. This has occurred through exchanges at conferences, workshops and public lectures associated with the project, and thanks to research activities such as interviews and archive research.
Key conclusions :
1. In a global perspective, reproductive governance was transformed during the mid-late 20th Century. This resulted from the rise of human rights discourse, specifically the articulation of human rights by the UN; technological and medical innovation (for instance in contraception); the globalisation and politicisation of demographic discourse in the context of decolonisation and the global cold war; and the radicalisation of feminist politics, claiming autonomy for women in procreation. However, while many parts of the world saw a degree of liberalisation of legal and cultural norms with regard to individuals' procreative choice, new legal frameworks were accompanied with new cultural norms, including the foregrounding of 'modern', 'rational' procreative choices.
2. During this period, a range of socio-political actors considered it centrally important to monitor and influence individuals' procreative behaviour, in order to maintain the social, gender and moral order as well as safeguard economic and demographic interests. Those actors include governments, experts, medical practitioners, campaigning groups such as family planning organisations, and organised religion. The project has traced and compared a range of tools adopted by those actors, including legal tools, coercion, media campaigns, and state and non-state welfare systems encouraging certain family choices over others.
3. These actors tend to perceive and treat reproductive subjects differently along the lines of social class, ethnicity, citizenship status, and perceived ability. The project has adopted notions such as stratified reproductive governance, intersectionality, and reproductive justice to explore those social hierarchies in reproduction. Across time and place, and despite liberalisation, individuals have been subject to hierarchisation along the lines of social class, ethnicity, and perceived ability in terms of their reproductive behaviour and rights. Specifically, some groups are perceived to be more capable of making the 'right' reproductive choices autonomously.
4. Individuals claimed reproductive liberty in new and different ways, both through intimate life-choices and in political and public discourse. Human rights language in relation to reproduction became important in several parts of the world, well before the definition of reproductive rights as human rights by the UN in the mid-1990s. Women's liberation was another key discursive framework for claiming reproductive liberty, especially among activists in the Western world from the 1960s. At the same time, there is a need to de-centre the experiences of Western women and the history of Western feminism, long held paradigmatic for the very definition of feminism.
Exploitation Route The project has emerged as the first major international project to explore post-1945 reproductive governance in a truly global perspective. It has established a methodological and conceptual framework for a gliobal0-history analysis of the emergence of reproductive rights thinking after 1945, and for the transformation of reproductive governance regimes. It has foregrounded three key concepts: feminisation; medicalisation; and social hierarchisation of reproductive subjects. In doing so it has drawn on feminist theory (intersectionality, stratified reproduction), gender history (embodied citizenship) and medical humanities (medicalisation).
Scholars across these fields will benefit from the encompassing conceptual framework that this project has proposed, as well as from the case studies that have been developed within it. They will be able to use these concepts for analysis across different periods and localities. Strong evidence that scholars are already engaging with and building on this framework is emerging in the response to the academic events organised as part of the project (international conference 2022; online lecture series 2022-23), in scholarly engagement with publications stemming from the project, and in speaking invitations.
Sectors Healthcare

Government

Democracy and Justice

Other

 
Description Non-academic: As previously reported, the Knowledge Exchange/Impact chapter of the project has partly been revised due to Covid-19. The following elements as Pathways to Impact have been completed: - Interviews with reproductive health practitioners and campaigners, towards input for PI Report and graphic novel: stage 1 completed (interviewees identified and background research) - Graphic novel development- stage 1 completed - artist: Catherine MacRobbie For the next steps building towards impact (graphic novel and PI report for Scottish Parliament commitees), University of Glasgow funding is being applied for. Other engagement activity: PI and RA: Panel event on proposal to establish and legislate for 'buffer zones' around hospitals in Scotland, safeguarding access to abortion services; University of Glasgow, February 2023; organised by Amnesty International Scotland. Attended by ca. 100. Academic Impact: The research is starting to have a significant impact on scholarly debates in history, feminist theory, and medical humanities. This is primarily thanks to its global and transdisciplinary approach. It is the first research project to map and trace global connections between reproductive rights, against the background of the transformation of reproductive governance regimes and the globalisation of political activism, technologies, and expertise. Evidence of academic impact includes: - Publication of three research articles by PI in leading peer-reviewed journals - as attached to this report - Publication of research by project affiliates: Dr Milica Prokic (Research Associate): research article on experiences of abortion in communist Yugoslavia forthcoming in peer-reviewed journal Europe-Asia Studies - Speaking invitations, PI (selection): Warwick University, conference keynote 2023; 'Women's Bodies, Women's Rights. Health Feminism, Reproductive Knowledge and Women's Activism Across Europe in the long 20th Century', October 2023, University of Konstanz, keynote; Pierre Du Bois conference, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies Geneva, roundtable speaker. - Book proposal: monograph by PI entitled Feminism, contraception, and abortion: - Gendered citizenship and reproductive rights in France (1950s-80); under review with OUP - Book proposal 'From Rights to Justice: Global Reproductive Politics Since 1945' (all editors affiliated with the project: PI; Raul Necochea, Jesse Olszynko-Gryn, Catherine Burns), under review with University of California Press Reproductive Justice Series (upon invitation)
First Year Of Impact 2023
Sector Healthcare,Other
Impact Types Societal

 
Description Edited volume 
Organisation University of Lyon
Country France 
Sector Academic/University 
PI Contribution Edited volume 'From Rights to Justice: Global Reproductive Politics Since 1945' (all editors affiliated with the project: PI; Raul Necochea, Jesse Olszynko-Gryn, Catherine Burns)., Proposal under review with University of California Press Reproductive Justice Series (upon invitation) The book results from a major international, hybrid conference organised as part of the project at the University of Glasgow, June 2022. Partners: Prof Catherine Burns, University of Witwatersrand SA, Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research Prof Raul Necochea Lopez, Univ of N Carolina at Chapel Hill, Dept of Social Medicine Dr Jesse Olszynko-Gryn, Collegium de Lyon, France and Strathclyde University
Collaborator Contribution PI and three partners are all co-editors to the book project. They have organised the 2022 conference together, designing the programme and selecting papers. They have developed the book concept together through a series of online workshops involving the chapter authors.
Impact Book: 'From Rights to Justice: Global Reproductive Politics Since 1945'
Start Year 2022
 
Description Edited volume 
Organisation University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Department UNC School of Medicine
Country United States 
Sector Academic/University 
PI Contribution Edited volume 'From Rights to Justice: Global Reproductive Politics Since 1945' (all editors affiliated with the project: PI; Raul Necochea, Jesse Olszynko-Gryn, Catherine Burns)., Proposal under review with University of California Press Reproductive Justice Series (upon invitation) The book results from a major international, hybrid conference organised as part of the project at the University of Glasgow, June 2022. Partners: Prof Catherine Burns, University of Witwatersrand SA, Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research Prof Raul Necochea Lopez, Univ of N Carolina at Chapel Hill, Dept of Social Medicine Dr Jesse Olszynko-Gryn, Collegium de Lyon, France and Strathclyde University
Collaborator Contribution PI and three partners are all co-editors to the book project. They have organised the 2022 conference together, designing the programme and selecting papers. They have developed the book concept together through a series of online workshops involving the chapter authors.
Impact Book: 'From Rights to Justice: Global Reproductive Politics Since 1945'
Start Year 2022
 
Description Edited volume 
Organisation University of the Witwatersrand
Country South Africa 
Sector Academic/University 
PI Contribution Edited volume 'From Rights to Justice: Global Reproductive Politics Since 1945' (all editors affiliated with the project: PI; Raul Necochea, Jesse Olszynko-Gryn, Catherine Burns)., Proposal under review with University of California Press Reproductive Justice Series (upon invitation) The book results from a major international, hybrid conference organised as part of the project at the University of Glasgow, June 2022. Partners: Prof Catherine Burns, University of Witwatersrand SA, Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research Prof Raul Necochea Lopez, Univ of N Carolina at Chapel Hill, Dept of Social Medicine Dr Jesse Olszynko-Gryn, Collegium de Lyon, France and Strathclyde University
Collaborator Contribution PI and three partners are all co-editors to the book project. They have organised the 2022 conference together, designing the programme and selecting papers. They have developed the book concept together through a series of online workshops involving the chapter authors.
Impact Book: 'From Rights to Justice: Global Reproductive Politics Since 1945'
Start Year 2022
 
Description Panel debate 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Regional
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact PI and Research Associate: Panel event on proposal to establish and legislate for 'buffer zones' around hospitals in Scotland, safeguarding access to abortion services; University of Glasgow, February 2023; organised by Amnesty International Scotland
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023