Judging voluntariness: abortion assistance around 1900

Abstract

ABSTRACT In this article, I focus on a practice that is legally referred to as assisting or abetting abortion. Using the example of Margarethe Hardegger (1882–1963), a Swiss women’s rights activist and socialist who was charged with this crime in 1915, I analyze how she defended her assistance before the criminal court of the city of Bern. I seek to show how her conception of voluntary action as feminist women’s solidarity entered into a battle of interpretation with patriarchal thought and legal-economic ideas of order, whose exponents sought to impute a commercial character to her engagement. Additionally, I explore how the medical profession positioned itself in this dispute and what the women who had abortions with her help had to say. In light of this case study, the article aims to bring out the multiform interpretations of a voluntary social practice and thus gain insight into the contemporary power dynamics and forms of resistance.