Regulation of Abortion as State-Socialist Governmentality: TheCase of CzechoslovakiaRadka DudovaInstitute of Sociology, Czech Academy of Sciences

I n the countries of the former Eastern bloc (and the USSR), abortionpolitics followed a different historical path than in Western Europe. In

Czechoslovakia, abortion was made legal relatively early on, almost assoon as the social and political turmoil that followed World War II andthe communist coup in 1948 had settled. Unlike in Western Europe,however, it was not legalized in response to pressure from civil society orthe feminist movement. It was a bureaucratic decision made in relationto specific macrosocial and political circumstances. The CzechoslovakAct on Artificial Termination of Pregnancy in 1957 made abortion legalon certain conditions. Special commissions were established andendowed with the authority to decide whether to grant womenpermission for abortion on demand. The decision to terminate anunwanted pregnancy was thus not placed directly in the hands of women.

What shaped and reshaped the bodily citizenship of women and theright of women to control and make decisions about their own bodies inCzechoslovakia during the second half of the twentieth century? Onepossible way to answer this question is through Michel Foucault’s theoryof governmentality, which explains how modern society’s controlmechanisms are exercised. This type of analysis represents a way ofexamining the nature of the strategies and techniques that the

This article was written with the support of a grant from the Czech Science Foundation for projectno. P404/10/0021 and of the FEMCIT project, financed by the 6th EU Framework Programme(i.n. 028746).

Published by Cambridge University Press 1743-923X/12 $30.00 for The Women and Politics Research Section of theAmerican Political Science Association# The Women and Politics Research Section of the American Political Science Association, 2012doi:10.1017/S1743923X12000098

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government deployed in the state-socialist system. Abortion regulationserves here as an example of how the body and corporality were governedin order to shape the population according to a specific rationality, theintention behind which was to strengthen the state and its power. Notonly did abortion legislation in Czechoslovakia regulate the right ofwomen to control their own bodies, but it also determined whichsubjects should or should not have the right to become a parent andunder what circumstances, who should or should not be born and when,and who was and who was not a “good” subject of the government.

This article analyzes these questions using Foucault’s concept ofbiopower and theory of governmentality. Although this concept wasdeveloped in the context of modern Western societies (Rose, O’Malley,and Valverde 2006, 84; Sigley 2006, 490) and has been applied mostlyto the study of liberal and neoliberal Western democratic systems (seeLemke 2007, 45), I show that abortion legislation in state-socialistCzechoslovakia was a specific instrument of governmentality typical oftotalitarian communist regimes.

FOUCAULT’S CONCEPT OF GOVERNMENTALITY

Before he developed his concept of governmentality, presented in hislectures at the College de France in 1978 and 1979 (Foucault 2004),Foucault introduced the notion of pouvoir disciplinaire (disciplinarypower). He distinguished it from pouvoir souverain (sovereign power), theform of power typical in feudal society. In a system of sovereign power,only the monarch enjoys “individuality,” whereas the individuality ofothers is overshadowed by their membership in a family, clan, rank inthe nobility, and so on. By contrast, disciplinary power requires itssubjects to be as individualized as possible, to have individual identities,so that they are governable by multiple disciplinary regimes and so thatthey accept for themselves the norms that are imposed upon them. AsFocault (1977, 138) put it: “What was then being formed was a policy ofcoercions that act upon the body, a calculated manipulation of itselements, its gestures, and its behaviour. The human body was enteringa machinery of power that explores it, breaks it down and rearranges it.”

Foucault analyzed the new economics of power in his book Disciplineand Punish: In the modern-day prison, the individual becomes an objectof investigation and experimentation, an object of modern scientific

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knowledge. The objective is not just to punish but to “retrain” and adaptthe individual (in this case, prisoner), and this is achieved by acting notjust on his body but on all of his time, physical gestures, and everydayhabits (Foucault 1977; 2003a, 48). This kind of all-encompassing controlover the individual is exercised through the application of modernknowledge, classification, and observation well beyond the scope ofpunishment. Technology is applied to the body of the individual, and itsprimary objective is to coerce him or her into accepting the widespreadideas that conform to the imperatives of industrial, capitalist society(Foucault 1977). In this sense, disciplinary power is productive — itproduces new forms of subjectivity. By “training” the body, it shapessubjects that are highly efficient at performing certain tasks. Butdisciplinary power does not just produce subordinate individuals; thenature of disciplinary power is not epitomized by the sovereign–subjectrelationship. Rather, according to Foucault (1980b, 98), disciplinary power“is employed and exercised through a net-like organization,” andindividuals “are always in the position of simultaneously undergoing andexercising this power.” Thus, the bodies in this relationship are not just thepassive targets of power; rather, they exercise a coercive power themselves.

From disciplinary power Foucault next came up with the concept ofbiopower (biopouvoir). In his 1976 lecture at the College de France(published as Society Must be Defended; Foucault 2003b), in the courseof analyzing state racism, Foucault described the birth of a new form ofpower (or rather a technology of power) that he called “biopower,”which figured with increasing importance in his subsequent work.Unlike the mechanisms of sovereign power (which involves the right ofseizure, including even the seizure of a person’s life) or disciplinarypower (which is about disciplining and punishing individual bodies), themechanisms of biopower are finely intertwined with the technologies ofsecurity. Instead of blocking, bending, and destroying forces, biopoweraims to produce them, to help them grow and organize. It is a powerthat cares for life — “a power that exerts a positive influence on life, thatendeavours to administer, optimise, and multiply it, subjecting it toprecise controls and comprehensive regulations” (Foucault 1980a, 137).

Biopower is a normalizing power, its objective being to ensure thepreservation and reinforcement of the social system against “non-normal”or potentially dangerous individuals. The mechanisms of this power areexercised not by controlling the operations of the body, the ordering oftime, or the repetition of actions but by preventively monitoring anysigns of deviation from their biological origins. Here, attention shifts

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away from the body of the individual toward environmental, genetic, andintergenerational factors.

Foucault claimed that since the seventeenth century, power over life hasevolved into two basic forms linked by a whole group of relationships. Oneform centers on the body as a machine: It focuses on training the body,increasing its abilities, usefulness, and docility. The exercise of disciplineis the power procedure employed toward this end. The second form,which evolved slightly later, concerns the species-body, “the body imbuedwith the mechanics of life and serving as the basis of biological processes”(Foucault 1980a, 139). It is affected by various interventions andregulatory controls that Foucault summarily referred to as the “biopoliticsof the population.” More specifically: “The disciplines of the body andthe regulations of the population constituted the two poles around whichthe organization of power over life was deployed” (1980a, 139).

Disciplinary mechanisms and the mechanisms of population controlthus overlap and interrelate. On one hand, institutions like the armyand schools are created; on the other, the population is controlledvia demographic management analyzing the relationship betweenpopulations and resources, the circulation of wealth, and so on (1980a,140). According to Foucault (1980a, 141), there is no doubt thatbiopower was an essential element in the evolution of capitalism, whichcould only proceed through the controlled integration of the body intothe apparatus of production and by adapting the population to economicprocesses: “The investment of the body, its valorisation, and thedistributive management of its forces were at the time indispensable.” AsI shall demonstrate, the characteristics of biopower were in a certainsense even more apparent in the state-socialist system, where elements ofcoercive force were coupled with disciplinary power and biopower, andcombined and reinforced in various spheres of life.

Foucault (1980a, 136–37) points out that although the main objectiveof this new technology is to foster life, death remains a presence, even moreso than in the past: “Wars were never as bloody as they have been since thenineteenth century, and all things being equal, never before did regimesvisit such holocausts on their own populations.” He argues that racismprovides an explanation for this paradox by justifying the killing of thedegenerates and deviants who pose a biological threat to the purity of therace and whose elimination will make the state stronger and more vigorous.

Nonetheless, biopower also manifests through far more subtle meansand practices. In the eighteenth century, “population” became aneconomic and political problem: population as wealth, as manpower, or

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as labor capacity. Governments realized that they were no longer workingsimply with subjects or even “a people” but with “a population,” with allthe specific phenomena and variables attached thereto: birth and deathrates, life expectancy, state of health, and forms of sustenance and ofhabitation. At the core of the economic and political problem ofpopulation is sex: Statistics on fertility, marrying age, contraception, andabortion acquired key significance. The sexual behavior of thepopulation began to be the subject of analysis and the target ofintervention (Foucault 1980a, 25). The “global strategy” of biopower (asopposed to the “individual strategy” of disciplinary power) is directlylinked to the advance of medical power into the sphere of politicalcontrol over the population.

Foucault calls the specific way in which this power is performed“governmentality.” He formulated the theory of governmentality inconnection with his reflections on the state. For him, the state does nothave any a priori form or nature — it is just the sum of social practicesof ruling or “government.” These social practices are guided by a specifictype of rationality, and he called this rationality governmentality.

By government, Foucault meant not just the influencing and directingof other people’s behavior but also the “control’ of the self”; it could bedescribed as “the conduct of the conduct” (1982, 212–15). According toFoucault, governmentality involves not just the technologies of power —technologies that determine the conduct of individuals and submit themto certain ends or domination. It also involves technologies of the self(1988, 18): technologies that shape the subject, namely, the individualsthat make up the state. “Government” is thus applied from within as“self-control.”

Foucault defined governmentality as “the ensemble formed by theinstitutions, procedures, analyses and reflections, the calculation andtactics that allow the exercise of this very specific albeit complex form ofpower, which has as its target population, as its principal form ofknowledge political economy, and as its essential technical meansapparatuses of security” (1991, 102). It is “at once internal and external tothe state, since it is the tactics of government which make possible thecontinual definition and redefinition of what is within the competence ofthe state and what is not, the public versus the private, and so on” (1991, 103).

Governmentality emerged as a specific and new art of government inthe sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but it was really deployed in theeighteenth century when population began to be an issue. Unlikesovereign rule, government has an objective of its own: to reach “an

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arrangement of things” that is convenient for everyone being governed(e.g., by producing the greatest possible amount of wealth, providing thepeople with adequate means of subsistence, enabling the population tomultiply) (Foucault 1991). As such, the instruments of government,instead of being laws, become a range of multiform tactics. This newpolitical rationality rests on two basic elements: governmentalapparatuses and a body of various types and systems of knowledge.Successful government is conditioned by “the knowledge of things, ofthe objectives that can and should be attained, and the disposition ofthings required to reach them” (1991, 96).

Foucault focuses attention not on the abstract concept of the state, but onthe specific practices or “techniques of government.” Since the eighteenthcentury, the ultimate end of the action of any government is its population.Government acts on it either directly, through large-scale campaigns, orindirectly, through practices that influence birth rates and direct the flowof people into certain regions or activities. One of the main technicalfactors behind the new rationality of government is statistics: Statisticsreveal that a population has its own specific patterns and characteristicsthat are irreducible to those of individuals or families (Foucault 1991).

Governmentality involves various technologies and strategies that evolveinto a level of power that produces specific knowledge and truths, and thesesecure rule and discipline. According to Foucault (1971), all forms ofknowledge and truth are constituted through discourse: Discoursedefines and produces the objects of our knowledge, and it also definesthe rules that prescribe certain ways of talking about the topics andexclude others. Knowledge is then applied directly and indirectly tohuman bodies via different strategies of government and self-government. The production of knowledge, and knowledge itself, is thusclosely tied up with power.

GOVERNMENTALITY IN A NONLIBERAL CONTEXT

Foucauldian governmentality was used mainly as a tool for analyzingliberal and neoliberal systems of the 1980s and 1990s (see, e.g., Barry,Osborne, and Rose 1996; Burchel, Gordon, and Miller 1991; Dean andHindess 1998). Studies of governmentality mostly neglected non-Western and nonliberal contexts (Sigley 2006, 490–93). The question iswhether and how it can be applied to the programs, strategies, and

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technologies of government of the state-socialist regime that existed inCzechoslovakia in the 1950s–80s. Power in this setting was lessdispersed than in liberal systems, where self-government by the subjectsof government gained more importance than disciplinary forms of rule.In the state-socialist system, those who governed were significantly morecentralized, concentrated within a single locus — the communistnomenclature. Power was not legitimated by democratic elections orfree-market logic. Unlike liberal forms of government, the state-socialistsystem did not exercise power and govern in conditions of freedom (seeHindess 2001).

Nonetheless, there are many reasons why the governmentality analyticframework is suited to the study of the state-socialist system and even veryfruitful (especially for studying regulation of the private sphere and thereproductive behavior of the people). According to Foucault (1991), the“governmentalisation” of the state does not eliminate sovereignty ordiscipline. On the contrary, “discipline was never more important ormore valorised than at the moment when it became important tomanage the population” (1991, 102). Foucault, in fact, says that there isa sovereignty-discipline-government triangle that primarily targets thepopulation. The state’s security apparatus is its mechanism of power(Foucault 1991).

In his College de France lecture in 1976 (2003b), Foucault developedthe concept of biopower as manifested in the Nazi and state-socialistregimes. He hypothesized that socialism actually reworked or reinvestedthe same power mechanisms constituted in the capitalist state:“Socialism has made no critique of the theme of biopower[;] it has infact taken it up, developed, reimplanted, and modified it in certainaspects” (2003b, 261). He claimed that both systems embraced the sameidea, namely, that the essential function of society is “to take control oflife, to manage it, to compensate for its aleatory nature, to explore andreduce biological accidents and possibilities” (2003b, 261).

Accordingly, in state-socialist Czechoslovakia, the politics and policiesdirected at the population were far-reaching, universally applicable, andgiven much public importance. Expert knowledge was given aprominent role, and was intertwined with the rationale of state-socialistgovernment as it both fed state ideology and was itself informed by it.Moreover, the technologies of power were not limited to the legislation,regulations, and practices of the state-socialist ruling elite, but had moresubtle and dispersed levels (including the self-government of subjects)(see also Rose, O’Malley, and Valverde 2006, 89).

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According to Sigley (2006), the concept of governmentality need not belimited in its applicability to Western liberal democracies. He uses the term“socialist arts of government” or “socialist governmentality” to refer to asystem that exercised government not through “the tactics of ‘freedomand liberty,’ but through a distinct planning and administrativerationality . . . which is nonetheless a product of the same process thatFoucault partly outlines in the governmentality lecture” (Sigley 2006,491). Advanced liberal societies also deploy sovereign and authoritarianmeasures, at least toward some of their members (see Hindess 2001;Power 2005). But while in the liberal systems freedom and unfreedomcannot be clearly separated, in the state-socialist forms of rule, thefreedom of the subject was situated in the future and was to arrive withthe emergence of a new socialist human, whose morals and capacity forcontrol over the self, desires, and needs were supposed to represent theideal self-governing subject of communist society. In the meantime, menand women were not yet capable of governing themselves properly andthus had to be governed through other disciplinary methods, such ascoercion, constraint, and oppression.

According to Rose, O’Malley, and Valverde (2006), the study ofgovernmentalities requires the identification of their specific rationalities,the conditions in which these rational principles were formed, theprinciples and knowledge that they borrow from and generate, thepractices of which they consist, and the ways in which they are exercised.The governmentality framework allows us to study the technologies ofpower with an analysis of the political rationality that underpins them.This means that by analyzing the regulations, measures, institutions, andpractices surrounding abortion, it becomes possible to identify how thefemale body was understood and conceptualized in the governmentrationale of state-socialist Czechoslovakia in the second half of thetwentieth century. Moreover, an analysis of the politics of abortion inCzechoslovakia in the 1950s–80s allows us to explore how “socialistgovernmentality” (Sigley 2006, 491) or “totalitarian governmentality”(Dean 1999, 131–48) was put into practice.

BIOPOWER AND REPRODUCTION

An analysis of legislative measures relating to abortion shows how medicineand governing institutions construct the female body in terms of its

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reproductive function. The regulations determining the conditions underwhich abortion is allowed and conducted and the measures accompanyingthese rules are formulated with this end in mind.

The regulation of fertility and reproduction at the social level is not, inany case, the reserve of state socialism. As Heitlinger (1987, 15) explains:“All societies intervene in procreation. The processes of giving birth andraising children are too important for societies to leave uncontrolled,though controls do not always work.” Nor is this a historically newphenomenon, as Tinkova has shown in the Czech case (2004): In thepast, a mechanism of control or restriction, for example, involved makingit difficult for certain people to marry. Tinkova also uses the example ofabortion and infanticide to illustrate how the nature of social control haschanged — from the exemplarily cruel punishment of individual casesto the existence of a sophisticated system of control and prevention thatencompassed a “whole” complex of minute sanctions and preventivedisciplinary measures, a central role in which was played by constant,anonymous, and manifold surveillance (Tinkova 2004, 335). As infanticidegradually ceased to be a part of the religious, moral-theological, and social-prevention discourse and began to be conceptualized primarily within theframework of the psychobiological discourse of doctors, biopower acquiredmore importance.

Although every society regulates reproduction and legislatively definesand restricts access to abortion, there are several ways in which thisis done. Heitlinger (1987, 19) notes that although cross-nationalcomparisons of the population policies of former Western and EasternEurope (in the 1950s–70s) are difficult to do because some WesternEuropean countries severely restricted access to abortion and birthcontrol, and others had very advanced fertility policies (e.g., France),while at the same time there were socialist countries with a verypermissive tradition (East Germany), it is still possible to trace differencesin the approaches taken by socialist and nonsocialist countries to the“problem”‘ of low fertility. None of the Western countries could havegotten away “with creating as systematic, extensive, and resolute aprogramme of fertility policy” (Heitlinger 1987, 267) as those preparedin the Eastern European states. The political pluralism in Western statesmeant that various ideologies always coexisted and that no policy of thiskind ever received universal support. In the 1960s, the influence of thefeminist movement began to play a role in this area, as it took an openstand against the existing reproductive policies. Within the framework oflimited government, only minor fertility policies could be introduced.

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Reproductive decisions in these countries were understood more as acouple’s private matter. Moreover, in the 1960s, these countries were notvery concerned about declining fertility owing to the baby boom thatfollowed World War II and the import of labor from abroad (which wasnot really an option in socialist countries) (Heitlinger 1987, 21).

The situation was different in the countries of the Eastern bloc. Policiesconcerning fertility and reproduction were very broad and pervasive, andthe public debate was restricted and limited to just some actors. AsWolchik showed (1983), experts and specialist elites played a significantrole in formulating these policies in the socialist states. Those involvedin the debate included not just demographers but also physicians andother health-care professionals, psychologists, economists, legal experts,writers, and others. Socialist governmentality thus developed in closerapport with the construction of knowledge on bodies, psychologies,reproduction, health, and the economy.

THE ROLE OF EXPERTS AND THE REGULATION OF ABORTION ASPART OF SOCIALIST GOVERNMENTALITY

In 1955, abortion on demand was made legal in the USSR and insubsequent years also in other Eastern European countries — Bulgaria,Hungary, and Poland. In Czechoslovakia, legislation legalizing abortioncame into force in 1957. Unlike in democratic countries, the abortionlegalization in state-socialist Czechoslovakia in 1957 was more abureaucratic decision taken in response to macrosocial and politicalcircumstances. In the interwar period, women and the women’smovement in Czechoslovakia had engaged in organized political actionin an effort to change the legislation on abortion, but at that time theyhad been unsuccessful (see Musilova 2007, 76–83).

The most important actors in the push for the new legislation and inexplaining it to the public were the experts (specifically, medical expertswho occupied official posts in the structures of power). Medicalarguments dominated the public discussion that preceded the bill’sadoption. The argument was that, despite the illegality of abortion, thenumber of abortions was still high and abortions were being performedby unskilled people in unsuitable conditions. Poor hygienic conditionsand the inexperience of abortionists meant that illegal abortions weretaking a heavy toll on women’s health.

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Wolchik (1983) pointed out how expert input tended to be applied topolicy issues that were problematic but not ideologically sensitive (i.e.,no threat to the existing political order or the power of the politicalleaders). Reproduction, child care, and, more specifically, abortion werejust such issues. But the real influence wielded by experts in the state-socialist regime was determined by two important factors: their resources(i.e., their expertise and access to top political decision makers) and thegeneral political climate (Wolchik 1983, 115). Over the course ofimportant debates, experts formed their own alliances — often informal— and took an active role in arguing for the adoption of variouspopulation measures (Wolchik 1983).

The role of medical experts in the debates on abortion was crucialthroughout the period of state socialism. Gynecologists were, in fact, themost publicly visible advocates of legal abortion during the communistperiod. They set the agenda, they pushed the issue forward, and theyretained control over the issue. Not all doctors, of course, held the sameview on this issue. Some were “progressive” and advocated forlegalization in cooperation with, and with the support of, leadingauthorities of the Communist Party, exerting maximum efforts to makeeffective contraception widely accessible. Some were more conservative(possibly from a Catholic background), questioned the benefits of legalabortion, and sometimes refused to perform abortions after the law cameinto effect. The debate in 1957 was thus carried on in medical terms,with both sides using the health of women as their main argument. Inthe parliamentary debates, this medical discourse was then adopted bylegislators and speakers (see Dudova 2010).

Experts also played a major role in changing the abortion law in 1986,when the abortion commissions were abolished. Next to gynecologists,psychologists were the other most visible party in the public debate, andtheir views were widely disseminated in the media. Some of themexercised an influence through the Governmental PopulationCommission, a forum for engaging in discussion with the governmentand party representatives and with representatives of other organizations,such as the Czechoslovak Union of Women. There were severalchannels of influence that experts exercised on policymaking. Oneof them was the use of informal contacts. For example, Jirı Sracek, aninfluential gynecologist in the 1980s, reports that he and his friend andcolleague Vladimir Wynnyczuk together lobbied Cestmır Adam, thedirector of the Social and Health Committee of Parliament and deputychair of Parliament (Czech National Council), and that Adam was a

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former schoolmate and friend of Wynnyczuk. Another way of havinginfluence over the issue was through membership in formal stateorganizations, in this case particularly the Governmental PopulationCommission. Sracek acted there as an expert on family planning(personal interview with Sracek, June 19, 2009).

The Governmental Population Commission, in fact, had considerableauthority and power over the proposal of new legislation. The task of thecommission was to provide the government with materials, make policyrecommendations, and monitor their implementation. The commissionalso assigned research institutes with research themes that neededaddressing (Heitlinger 1987; Kalinova 1999, 24). The PopulationCommission collaborated closely with abortion commissions and wassupposed to issue abortion-policy recommendations. Starting in 1971,the commission was made up of deputy ministers and representatives ofsocial organizations in society, for example, union organizations such asthe Union of Youth or the Union of Women. It also included expertsfrom research institutes. Members of the commission thus had anopportunity to discuss issues directly with the government and partyrepresentatives and with representatives of other organizations. Theprogressive policy stance of Sracek and many of his colleagues gainedthe support of parliament (thanks to Adam), the Ministry of Health andits minister, and most members of the Czech and Slovak Union ofWomen. As Wolchik noted (1983, 123), similar opinions and personalacquaintances were more important factors in the formation of coalitionsthan disciplinary training or institutional affiliation.

The writings of psychologists and gynecologists (both for and againstlegal abortion) used the same arguments and vocabulary as those foundin the documents of the official regime. The emphasis was placed onthe collective, not the individual. It is not clear whether the expertsadjusted their ideas to comply more with communist ideology, orwhether the diction stemmed from their scientific orientation (sciencewas defined in very positivist and quantitative terms in this period). Butwhat is important is that this style of writing left little room in which toquestion the well-being of the woman, let alone to articulate anyparticular women’s interests. Gynecologists spoke from a position ofauthority and knowledge, whereas women asking for an abortion were tobe judged by a commission, educated, and helped.

Abortion was construed in contemporary texts as an issue that was solelythe concern of women (as was the entire area of child care): a woman filed arequest, appeared before an abortion committee, was duly “advised” by the

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committee, and paid a fee. The man’s responsibility for reproductivebehavior was thus minimized (see also Heitlinger 1987, 165).Nonetheless, women were not considered as subjects responsible enoughto decide for themselves. Demanding an abortion was still seen as “adisplay of egoism, light-mindedness and misunderstanding of life”(Radvanova, Nezkusil, and Novotny 1957). Because women might abusethe legalization and ignore the health risks still associated with abortion,there had to be some control mechanism that could judge thelegitimacy of their demand and limit the total number of abortions beingperformed. This mechanism was exercised through the practices ofabortion commissions, through the regulations and notices that theMinistry of Health issued concerning the decision making of thesecommissions, and through the education of women with articlespublished in popular journals and by their gynecologists. Here, health-care staff played the role of gatekeepers exercising control over women(see, e.g., Smith 2003, 65).

The purpose of abortion commissions was not only to make decisionsabout abortion, but also to gather information about the womenwho underwent abortions (together with statistical monitoring). Thecommissions reported to the State Population Commission. Theinformation was thus used to generate knowledge that could then bedirectly or indirectly employed in the assertion of power. The abortioncommissions were more than just advisory bodies offering womenassistance and support; they had the power to make the final decisionabout the reproductive rights of each individual woman. Moreover, thecommissions were directly linked to the political bodies of the state,who retained the power to influence how many abortions werepermitted and the conditions under which permission was granted.Abortion commissions occupied an ideal position; they were able toobtain very personal, intimate information from citizens and couldalso use this information to design policies or to take more repressivepolitical actions.

The State Population Commission, the abortion commissions, therules issued by the Ministry of Health, the practices of the hospitalstaff and gynecologists, and the information and propaganda in themedia together comprised the instruments of governmentality:“institutions, procedures, analyses and reflections, the calculation andtactics” of government (Foucault 1991, 102), underpinned by aspecific political rationality and expert knowledge about women’sbodies and reproduction.

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HEALTHY WOMEN, HEALTHY POPULATION

In the political reasoning of the socialist state, women’s bodies wereconstrued as material, a resource not just for economic production butalso for the reproduction of the population. Emphasis was placed on thefunctional quality of this building material, that is, on the reproductivehealth of women. The legalization of abortion was, from the beginning,interpreted as a pro-population measure: The reproductive health ofwomen would be saved by hospital-performed abortions, and thesewomen would be able to have children later.

When the first (1957) and second (1986) acts on abortion were adopted(the second abolished the abortion commissions) and when other ordersand regulations were formulated, the primary framings employed in thedebates related to health. Health reasons were used as an argument firstfor legalizing abortion (abortions were brought under the control ofhealth-care facilities), then also for their restriction (even abortionscarried out by doctors put women’s health at risk and, therefore, shouldnot be granted simply upon a woman’s request), and eventually even forcompletely free access in 1986 (experts discovered that abortionsperformed early in pregnancy are less of a risk to a woman’s reproductivehealth, and so the process had to be accelerated). But even health wasconstrued in a specific, totalitarian way; many of the arguments wereunsubstantiated by any objective scientific findings or research, andvalidation of results was limited by the closed system of the state-socialistregime.

One of the effects of the expert discourses was the creation of a definitionof a “healthy” mother (and her “healthy” child). The politics of abortionthen comprised the technologies not only of domination, but alsoof the self. State-initiated norms were directed at individuals throughthe hegemonic discourses of power/knowledge; state power was thusembodied in mental and physical restrictions and regulations (see Ludwigand Wohl 2009). Ideally, women were expected to govern themselves (andtheir bodies) so that they would reproduce and become mothers in orderto ensure a healthy and abundant population. They were supposed to viewtheir own bodies as a reproductive instrument, as subject to medicaloversight and intervention, or as an object to which knowledge is applied.

According to government texts and expert articles from the 1960s–80s,the ideal reproductive age had an upper age limit of 35 (or 39) andstarted at 18. Women were to have no fewer than two children, but nomore than four or five. Children were expected to be born into a two-

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parent heterosexual family and raised in satisfactory socioeconomicconditions. The children were to be white (Roma minority women wereencouraged to have abortions, and the abortion commissions were morewilling to accommodate their requests for an abortion) (see Motejl2005). In keeping with the aim of producing ideal children, womenwere encouraged and sometimes even forced to have an abortion ifdefects were detected in the fetus.

THE CASE OF PRENATAL SCREENING

A preoccupation with population quality emerged in Czechoslovakia withdevelopments in the field of scientific knowledge on genetics. It replacedthe concern with population size that had predominated in the 1950sand 1960s. Genetics occupied a very important role in the thinking ofdemographers, gynecologists, and obstetricians. For demographers, thetarget was to have a “quality population,” and genetics were seen as ascientific means to achieve this aim (see Cerny 1971; Dejmek 1972).For gynecologists and obstetricians, the aim was to minimize the rates ofperinatal mortality (Fajfr 1964). Prenatal screening methods (andabortion if prenatal defects were detected) were used as a tool in both ofthese cases: in order to improve the genotype of the population and inorder to minimize the number of children who would be born with adefect incompatible with life, thus negatively influencing the statistics ofperinatal mortality. As statistics on the incidence of perinatal mortalitywere considered to be important criteria for judging the quality of healthcare, they also became an important political issue, involving cross-national comparisons (Heitlinger 1987, 213).

The history of prenatal screening in Czechoslovakia started in the 1970sand was first used for families with a risk of spina bifida. In the course of the1980s, the range of screening methods was significantly expanded. If adefect was detected, the woman was advised to undergo an abortion forhealth reasons, as is indicated, for instance, in the Memorandum to ActNo. 66/1986 Coll. on the artificial interruption of pregnancy: “Thanks todevelopments in genetic counselling early detection is possible. As aconsequence, the birth of children with defects, for whom society wouldhave to provide long-term care, is consequently being prevented.Abortion is preferred in these cases.” In addition to extensive prenatalscreening, there were other methods used to create a healthy population:

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reducing the number of sex-related genetic diseases through prenatalsex-selection methods; controlling the fertility of people with geneticallytransmitted deceases; restricting the fertility of older women; andmonitoring the transmission of genes associated with genetic diseases,advising abortion if the gene was transmitted (Cerny 1971, 118).

The long list of health problems justifying an abortion, combined withthe pressure exerted by doctors and other hospital staff on women to have anabortion when a problem seemed to fit this list, were one instrument ofgovernmentality aimed at the construction of a healthy productive andreproductive population. These regulatory and disciplinary instrumentstook the form not only of technologies of government applied fromwithout but also of self-disciplinary technologies applied from within.Undergoing all the available prenatal tests was required in order forwomen to qualify for entitlement to family and child-care allowances,and taking these tests was also considered the most normal and rationalthing to do. In the Czech Republic today, these tendencies persist in thestill-universal application of prenatal examinations and in the subtlepressure put on pregnant women by health-care staff to undergo anabortion if the results indicate the presence of any defects (as shown, forexample, by Hasmanova Marhankova 2008).

THE CASE OF ROMA WOMEN

As has been demonstrated in a number of studies (Final Opinion of theDefender of Public Rights [Motejl 2005]; Charta 77: documents no. 23/1978 and 3/1990 [Cısarovska and Precan 2007]; Body and Soul [Centerfor Reproductive Rights 2003]), between the 1970s and 1980s, there wasan attempt in socialist Czechoslovakia to use reproductive policy toinfluence the ethnic composition of the population and to judge someethnicities as being of lower quality than others. This aim was intimatedat the level of the central government. In Working with the GypsyPopulation, a 1976 manual drawn up by the Ministry of Labor andSocial Affairs of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, the followingsentence is found in a chapter entitled “Health Education Care forGypsy Citizens”: “That is why it is necessary to make use of all possiblemeans so that parents understand the purpose of planned parenthood, sothat they try to regulate fertility, and also so that they raise their childrenas healthy, happy citizens of benefit to society” (Motejl 2005, 46).

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The pressure to limit Roma fertility is more evident, however, in reportsof the National Committees based on fieldwork in Roma settlements. All ofthem were concerned with the “undesirable growth of Tzigan families,”and they also saw the most important problem to be the “unplannedparenthood that results in a low-quality population, when children withmental defects are born” (Motejl 2005, 47). An analysis of these reportsalso shows that the abortion commissions did not take the sameapproach to Roma women as to majority women: “[W]hen demandingan abortion, Tzigan women are prioritised” (Report from the NationalCommittee of Southern Moravia district, quoted in Motejl 2005, 47).According to a report by the National Committee of the South Bohemiadistrict dated July 6, 1972, “the [Roma] women asking for an abortionare granted artificial termination quite willingly and almost free ofcharge” (Motejl 2005, 47).

Another instrument used with the aim of controlling the population’sethnic composition was financial subsidies granted to women whodecided to undergo sterilization (in 1973 this benefit equaled 2,000Czechoslovak crowns, and was increased in 1988 to up to 10,000 Czk,the average gross monthly income being 3,095 Czk, according to theCzech Statistical Office), or even sterilization performed without thewoman’s consent or with consent obtained through threats and as aresult of incomplete information. Repeated attempts were also made totailor family policies toward promoting the ideal of the two/three-childfamily. This was done, for instance, by scaling child allowances and byfocusing on support for the first three children in the family:“Population at any price might not be a profit to society. If we areconcerned also with the quality of the population, then support forsociety should focus on the first three children, and end with the fifthchild. Society should provide support for additional children only ifthere are all the guarantees of a good and universal education” (Sojka1966, 6).

Throughout the period of state socialism in Czechoslovakia, governingbodies and institutions devoted considerable effort to managing andinfluencing Roma reproductive behavior. This group, constructed on thebasis of race, was assigned a number of negative characteristics:alcoholism, promiscuity, a lack of interest in education and work, abuseof the welfare system, and poor health. The solution was seen to lie inthe management of the population. When the strategies andtechnologies used in the first period (such as the dispersion of familiesacross the territory and the (re)education of Roma children in foster-care

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institutions) proved to be ineffective, more scientific methods were to beused: genetics, fertility control, and demographic policy.

ABORTION AND SOCIALIST GOVERNMENTALITY

Analysis of the politics of abortion and prenatal screening, specifically withregard to women of Roma ethnicity, shows how biopower (accompanied byexplicit state racism; see Foucault 2003b) pervaded power relations insidestate-socialist Czechoslovakia. The example of abortion illustrates howsocialism took up, developed, and modified biopower to its own end,and how the mechanism of biopower functioned in practice in socialistCzechoslovakia between the 1950s and 1980s. Women as a group didnot have an opportunity to participate in decisions on these policies.

The exercise of biopower, according to Foucault, is made possiblebecause of the existence of an ensemble of institutions, procedures,analyses and reflections, and calculations and tactics that he calledgovernmentality (Foucault 1991, 102). The reproductive behavior offamilies was influenced by knowledge, instruments of public policy, anddisciplinatory mechanisms, together constituting a governmentalitythrough which the selves and the bodies of subjects were managed. Thisgovernmentality was based on a specific knowledge-power complex andreinforced that knowledge-power base itself.

From this analysis of the abortion issue in Czechoslovakia between 1948and 1989, it is possible to conclude that a specific form of socialistgovernmentality existed in the state-socialist regime. It was represented bythe political rationality that determined social practices and, in effect,constituted the totalitarian communist state. The rationality behind thistype of governmentality was geared toward maximizing economicproduction, represented by heavy industry, and reproduction, manifestedas (healthy and quality) population growth. This rationality wasembodied in the effort to exert centralized control over the reproductivefates of women. Legislative documents, legal regulations, practices of theabortion committees, and, in certain circumstances, even medicalprocedures were the techniques and strategies by which socialistgovernmentality was asserted in this area. The pervasiveness of thisgovernmentality was amplified by a special instrument in this system ofpower: the secret police — an absolute instrument used to collectinformation and generate knowledge about the population and to

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produce exact statistics. This was possible because of the absence of anyprotection of privacy and the existence of a powerful, coercive apparatusof the state.

In this perspective, the governmentality theory of Foucault proves to bevery suitable for analyzing state-socialist systems. The analysis in this articleshows how government was directly applied to the (female) body throughabortion measures and practices. The female subjectivity created by thistype of governmentality led women to manage their roles in both theproductive and reproductive spheres and assume responsibility for thecreation of a healthy population constituting a governable labor force. Byreproducing these norms of subjectivity, women essentially facilitated thereproduction of the given system — though individually they, in manycases, perceived the regulations and practices of abortion and, moregenerally, reproduction as aggressive interference by a higher power —the state — in their lives.

The use of the instruments of governmentality in state-socialistCzechoslovakia was particularly systematic and extensive and was oftenaccompanied by forms of disciplinary and repressive power. It waslegitimized by ideas very similar to the ones cited in liberal settings —drawn from the same Enlightenment tradition that valorized science andoften used it as an instrument of domination. In the state-socialistregime, the logic of the connection among biopower, governmentality,scientific expertise, and political power is easily observed and analyzed.The role of experts was unique to the centrally planned totalitariansocieties, as we saw in the example of the State Population Commission.Expert power was exercised through political structures and vice versa.Experts created a discourse that gave legitimacy to the instruments ofgovernmentality, and expert knowledge was used to rationalize thegovernment’s exercise of power. The study of governmentality in thestate-socialist context thus enriches the Foucauldian concept ofgovernmentality by showing the role of expert power in the creation andfunctioning of governmentality.

CONCLUSION

The period since 1989 in Czechoslovakia, and now in the CzechRepublic, has been marked by recurring discussions on the moralacceptability or unacceptability of abortion. Opponents of free choice in

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reproduction denounce the current abortion legislation (from 1986) as acommunist law and the unrestricted access to abortion as a negativecarry-over from the communist regime. A closer look at the past,however, reveals the opposite: Despite its considerable benevolenceabout access to abortion, the state-socialist regime tried to control and toregulate the number of abortions and thus to decide who would bearchildren and who would not. Abortion in Czechoslovakia was neveradequately related to the notion of human rights, and it was neversufficiently argued as the right of a woman to have control overreproductive decisions in the public discourse. It was not until thecommunist regime slightly loosened its grip on society at the end of the1980s that abortion legislation became less strict and conditions werecreated for the spread of birth control in Czechoslovakia.

The 1957 Czechoslovak Act on the Termination of Pregnancy can beviewed as an instrument that the Communist Party used to try to controland regulate the population directly through the bodies and thereproductive fates of women.

Clearly, the legislative regulation of reproduction is not intrinsic to state-socialist regimes; it plays a role in the governmentality of any form of rule.Yet it was in the environment of the totalitarian state, controlled by a singlepolitical party and with no opposition groups or movements, that biopower,and the governmentality that this type of power implied, was most open andvisible.

Radka Dudova is a Researcher at the Institute of Sociology, Czech Academyof Sciences, Prague, Czechoslovakia: radka.dudova@soc.cas.cz

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