Preliminary Programme

Wed 12 April
    08.30 - 10.30
    11.00 - 13.00
    14.00 - 16.00
    16.30 - 18.30

Thu 13 April
    08.30 - 10.30
    11.00 - 13.00
    14.00 - 16.00
    16.30 - 18.30

Fri 14 April
    08.30 - 10.30
    11.00 - 13.00
    14.00 - 16.00
    16.30 - 18.30

Sat 15 April
    08.30 - 10.30
    11.00 - 13.00
    14.00 - 16.00

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Wednesday 12 April 2023 08.30 - 10.30
I-1 WOM20 Policy, Religiion and Reproductive Rights
B34
Networks: Sexuality , Women and Gender Chair: Laura Kelly
Organizers: - Discussants: -
Agnieszka Balcerzak : Brave Sisters or “Keep Your Rosaries Off My Ovaries”: Reproductive Rights, Abortion Access and Corporeal Autonomy in Poland and Croatia
Political struggles over pregnancy termination are longstanding in Europe and reveal a Europe of antagonisms in political, moral and religious questions. On the one hand, there is legal respect of fundamental human rights with regard to sexuality and reproduction and an increasing acceptance of corporeal and reproductive autonomy, promoted by ... (Show more)
Political struggles over pregnancy termination are longstanding in Europe and reveal a Europe of antagonisms in political, moral and religious questions. On the one hand, there is legal respect of fundamental human rights with regard to sexuality and reproduction and an increasing acceptance of corporeal and reproductive autonomy, promoted by a think tank of feminist NGOs and networks, liberal parties and a progressive European civil society. On the other hand, there are persistent Christian-conservative tendencies towards moralization controlled by an alliance of religious dignitaries, ultra-right-wing political parties, official government agencies and activists of fundamentalist “pro-life” organizations, whose “Anti-Abortion Crusades” in the media and “Demonstrations for Traditional Marriage and Family” as part of “Festivals for Life” are only the spearhead of a well-networked, Europe-wide “pro-life” and pro-family movement.
In the last decade, a dynamic erosion of long-held abortion rights can be observed especially in Poland and Croatia, two still overwhelmingly Catholic Eastern European countries. In Poland, after a long “war on abortion” that has polarized the country since the 1990s, the near-total abortion ban came into effect in early 2021. Since then, abortion is only permitted in situations of risk to the life or health of a pregnant woman, or if a pregnancy results from incest or rape. While terminating a pregnancy is legal in Croatia – according to the current law, which has been in force since 1978 allowing abortions on request up to 10 weeks after conception – access to abortion is becoming increasingly challenging. The Church, the ruling conservative HDZ and several ultra-conservative organisations such as Ordo Iuris, Vigilare and In the Name of the Family are leading the charge of the anti-abortion narration supporting social stigma of abortion, conscientious objection in the gynecological profession or prayer vigils in front of abortion hospitals to deter women.
In practice, in both countries it became increasingly difficult or almost impossible for those women eligible for a legal abortion to obtain one. Every year thousands of women leave Poland or Croatia to access abortion care in other European countries, while others import medical abortion pills. But the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions make travel for abortion and access to medication prohibitively difficult and costly. Furthermore, abortion advocacy groups in Poland face the additional challenge of delivering abortion access to pregnant Ukrainian refugees, also those raped by Russian soldiers since Russia first invaded Ukraine in 2022. Feminist initiatives such as Abortion Dream Team (Poland) and Brave Sisters (Croatia), oppose the bans and crisis situations by organizing pro-choice demonstrations, workshops on access to medical abortion or providing psychological and legal support to women who decide to terminate their pregnancies. Only over the last year, the rule-breaking Polish collective and founding member of the international initiative Abortion Without Borders, have helped 34.000 women from Poland to access safe abortion services.
Based on a methodological triangulation of discourse analysis, participant observations and qualitative interviews, and drawing on approaches to network theory, the politics of aesthetics, and protest mobilization, the presented paper investigates the logics, images and strategies of abortion access in Poland and Croatia by taking the nexus of politics, religion, gender and feminist activism into account. The ethnographic study considers some implications of the abortion debate for feminist activism and aims at a critical discussion of feminist solidarity and its political power(lessness) to create transformative social change in a time of socio-political crises, rising populism and anti-genderism in Europe. (Show less)

Wannes Dupont : Turning the Tide: Vatican Opposition to Birth Control in India (1950-1977)
Much research has recently been done on the way in which the Roman Catholic Church emerged as a global force against liberal, libertarian and constructionist conceptions of gender and sexuality since the early 1990s. In fact, this globalisation stretches back to the late 1940s, when the Church tried to curb ... (Show more)
Much research has recently been done on the way in which the Roman Catholic Church emerged as a global force against liberal, libertarian and constructionist conceptions of gender and sexuality since the early 1990s. In fact, this globalisation stretches back to the late 1940s, when the Church tried to curb the world’s very first national family planning programme proposed by the newly independent nation of India under Jawaharlal Nehru. This paper is the first to examine the ways in which the Vatican and the Indian Church sought in vain to prevent this programme from creating a blueprint for other countries to follow. We argue that this failure is a major reason - perhaps the major reason - for why, by 1968, the encyclical Humanae Vitae affirmed the Catholic Church’s ban on ‘unnatural’ forms of birth control, in spite of the fact that most Catholics in the West opposed this ban and later ignored it. When thousands of poor Indians were forcibly sterilised by the state during India’s ‘Emergency’-period from 1975-1977, Catholic hardliners felt, as many still do, that the encyclical had been prescient.

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Nathalie Le Bouteillec : Equal Rights to Parents: the Paternity Procedure in Sweden and its Consequences for the Child
In 1917, the legal framework in Sweden concerning non-marital parenting was changed in order to provide for the children born out of wedlock. Before 1917, maternity and paternity outside marriage were conditional on the parents' willingness to recognize a child. Marriage was the only institution that awarded a de facto ... (Show more)
In 1917, the legal framework in Sweden concerning non-marital parenting was changed in order to provide for the children born out of wedlock. Before 1917, maternity and paternity outside marriage were conditional on the parents' willingness to recognize a child. Marriage was the only institution that awarded a de facto father and mother to the child. The law of June 14, 1917, on children born out of wedlock changed the rights of these children by ending the anonymous childbirth and imposing the designation of a father. The mother could not refuse the maternity of the child. The right of the child to know its origins was opposed to the rights of the parents to remain anonymous. The parents also had to provide the child with care and education, thus to take responsibility for the child in a way which attests to the recognition of family ties outside of marriage. Parental responsibilities were no longer attached to the status of filiation.

Although the mother was vested with parental authority, the legislature entrusted the municipal administrations, and in particular the Commission for Child Protection, with the responsibility of appointing a "guardian" or curator (barnarvårdsman) for any child born out marriage. The barnarvårdsman was also responsible for investigating and establishing the paternity of the child. In the majority of the cases, the search for paternity and the determination of the amount of child support were dealt with out of court. The man who was recognized as the father of the child undertook to pay maintenance in writing. When the parties could not agree, a legal procedure was launched. Similarly, when the mother refused to entrust the identity of the father to the barnarvårdsman, the curator had to initiate an action in search for paternity. Through history the laws and techniques for identifying the father developed. As with the 1933 Act, which recognized the right of the father to require a blood test and more recently with the DNA technology which in fact has shown that legally determined fathers who have not agreed to this in some cases have not been the biological fathers.

In this communication we explore the development of the search for paternity since the adoption of the law of 1917 until today in Sweden. We begin with the legislative debates during the preparation of the 1917 law. We then analyze the modalities provided by this law to the practices of paternity research. We trace the history of paternity research until today by studying how the responsibilities (allowances) towards children that are not spontaneously recognized by fathers have developed and what rights it implies for these children concerning inheritance. Our main question is if this policy always has been pursued in the interest of the child. (Show less)



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