‘Abortion is a great evil for women’: Reproductive Politics, Physicians, and Women in the Soviet Union, 1936-1964

Abortion was the main family planning option for women throughout the Soviet Union, from 1920 to 1991. Policies and attitudes surrounding the procedure and other prophylactics fluctuated under different Soviet leaders. This thesis uses reproductive politics as a lens to examine socio-political shifts from Joseph Stalin to Nikita Khrushchev. In 1936, Stalin made abortion illegal, after it had been legal since 1920. Doctors and medical professionals were in charge in enacting the new pronatalist policy. Physicians conducted medical surveillance on their patients to try to prevent illegal abortions; if suspected of having one, a woman was reported to the local police and prosecutor for punishment. After the Second World War, the policing of women’s reproduction increased. The first anti-abortion campaign was created, though it did not receive sustained funding and was hamstrung from the beginning. In 1955, under the new leader Khrushchev, abortion was relegalised in order to stop the thousands of deaths from illegal abortions occurring each year; almost immediately the Ministry of Health launched a new state-directed anti-abortion campaign which was more active. Public health literature, such as educational pamphlets and posters, were created and distributed and doctors gave lectures about the danger surrounding the procedure. Alternative birth control methods, such as condoms and intrauterine devices, were promoted in order to help limit the number of abortions. However, they were never prioritised and were largely absent from the store shelves; when products were available, they were viewed as unreliable and uncomfortable. As such, many couples relied on abortion as the most reliable form of family planning. Furthermore, women were not passive subjects and sought to control their reproductive decisions. Ultimately, both anti-abortion campaigns failed as the Soviet Union refused to invest in creating reliable contraception and largely ignored many of the issues that women raised as reasons for liming their family size.