This idea to investigate from birth control to human rights, reproductive decision making

and historical perspective.

And I have a written talk, but I'll see whether I'll read it or whether I rather explain it

to you and maybe lose one, a little of my content, but have it more precise and lively

here.

So if you look at this first slide, hormonal contraception, legal abortion, in vitro fertilization,

already these keywords suggest that in the course of the 20th century, reproductive decision

making changed forever.

By reproductive decision making, I understand decision processes of individuals, couples

and families on whether to have children, when to have them, how many and in which family

to a constellation to raise them.

But the past century also saw eugenics for sterilization and paternalist population policies,

which limited individual decision making options to social, political and ethnic categories.

Actually, the COVID crisis has not only prompted many countries to restrict women's options

for choice, delay abortion procedures or outlaw legal abortion altogether, also right-wing

populist parties, as you see here in the picture, have claimed that we needed to reduce women

to their reproductive capacity and that we needed to promote racist and ethnonationalist

policies to clarify biologists, gender roles and traditional families.

And these, as you all know, these movements are on the rise in many European countries,

but also in the United States with the old right and ethnonationalist movements.

If we compare those two signs held up by women recently, one woman in Austin, Texas brandishing

this sign, My Body, My Choice, and another woman in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania holding

up this sign.

What comes to your mind?

I think the first thing to realize that the slogan, My Body, My Choice pertains to the

women's movement claiming bodily autonomy and choice, of course, whether to have children

or not, whether to have medication or not, and is one of the central claims of gender

rights movements, of course.

But if you look at the right-hand side image, the woman brandishing the sign with the mask

in the middle, you see how, and of course, brandishing American flags at the same time,

you see how this symbol or the slogan of the women's movement is being appropriated by

a right-wing, by right-wing actors that see wearing masks as an unduly attack on their

freedom and autonomy.

And this is something which we can observe in many political fields, like the right-wing

parties appropriating protest techniques and symbols of different contexts, mainly the

social movements.

But here, I found it interesting that this also applies to the context of reproduction

and reproductive decision-making, as the first sign is tied to, of course, abortion rights,

and the other one is tied to, I don't want to wear masks here.

So the body and decision-making regarding reproduction and the body is a contested

battleground today.

Looking back to the history of reproductive decision-making is an appropriate thing, I

guess, to better understand these contemporary processes and their manifold and diverse backgrounds.

So I would suggest a set of questions, which I put here on the slides to discuss tonight,

at least basically to gather historical perspective on who did enjoy reproductive rights, at what

historical stage, and who was denied decision-making rights, for which reasons.

What role was played by expert knowledge and medical technologies within the framework

of reproductive decision-making?

And can we say, this goes a little in the direction of my former Aminuta research group,

that there was a sort of value change in the field of reproductive decision-making in the