Reproductive Rights as Battlefield in the New Cold War

A hybrid lecture by Prof Andrea Pető (CEU Vienna), organised by the Centre for European Studies. Attacks on reproductive rights fill the headlines. Allegedly mainstream governments increasingly adopt positions previously espoused only by the far right, creating a dangerous void in the centre of the political spectrum. Meanwhile, white mothers with cute white babies are smiling down from expensive billboards advertising motherhood from Hungary to Poland, from Germany to Denmark, and from Russia to Serbia. Is the ethnocentric pronatalism of today comparable to the pronatalism of the interwar period in its rhetoric and mobilizational potential? Using the method of historical comparisons, what can we learn from the past for the future? In the literature on interwar Europe, there is consensus about the trigger moment for the rise of far-right movements: the financial crisis of 1929. Should the triple crises – financial, security, and ‘refugee’ – of the years following 2008 and/or the COVID-19 pandemic be considered as our era’s trigger moments? This talk tries to give an answer to these troubling questions with a historical comparative analysis of the different phases of contestations of reproductive rights – abortion policy and promoting motherhood – based on interviews with activists, using Hungary as a case study. Prof Andrea Pető is a historian and a Professor at the Department of Gender Studies at Central European University, Vienna, Austria, a Research Affiliate of the CEU Democracy Institute, Budapest, and a Doctor of Science of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Her works on gender, politics, Holocaust, and war have been translated into 23 languages. In 2018 she was awarded the 2018 All European Academies (ALLEA) Madame de Staël Prize for Cultural Values and the 2022 University of Oslo Human Rights Award. She is Doctor honoris causa of Södertörn University, Stockholm, Sweden. Recent publications include: The Women of the Arrow Cross Party. Invisible Hungarian Perpetrators in the Second World War. Palgrave, Macmillan, 2020. And Forgotten Massacre: Budapest 1944. DeGruyter, 2021. She writes op-ed pieces for many international and national media about academic freedom and illiberal higher education. Please register here. This talk is organized and hosted by Dr Clemens Ruthner, Director of the Trinity Centre of European Studies. Please indicate if you have any access requirements, such as ISL/English interpreting, so that we can facilitate you in attending this event. Contact: ruthnerc@tcd.ie