Feminist Mobilization for Reproductive Rights in State Socialist Hungary

Abstract

This article scrutinizes the role of the signature-collection campaign of 1973 in the protection of legal abortion based on contemporary oral histories and archival sources. Following an examination of the atmosphere and events that triggered this resistance action and a discussion of the history of socialist abortion legislation in Hungary, this essay offers an analysis of the counterculture’s gendered relations. I hypothesize that the petition was developed on feminist grounds, but due to the diversity of the signatories’ motivations, it cannot be exclusively identified as a feminist action. However, the historical experience of collective civil action against a potentially destructive biopolitical measure is particularly significant in the present, when the struggle for reproductive rights has again come to the forefront of political battles in Hungary and across the world.