Critical Reflections on the Historiography of Abortion Rights in Hungary

Abstract

This reflection provides critical comments on the study Abortion in the Kádár era. Decades of the Transformation of Pregnancy Prevention Methods, published in TNTeF 2022/2. First, I review the brief history of induced abortion regulation from the end of the 19th century and move on to explore misunderstandings about the Ratko era. Then I study the biopolitical control of the female body and the issue of sexual freedom in the Kádár-era. In closing, I offer a different frame in Hungarian scholarship. I argue that we might overcome the difficulties of historical investigation of the abortion question in the Kádár regime by grasping the diversity of historical-social realities and properly apprehending the differences between de jure and de facto conditions.