Selective pronatalism in childcare and reproductive health policies in Czechoslovakia

Abstract

ABSTRACT The paper discusses how selective pronatalism has been incorporated into childcare and reproductive health policies in the socialist state of Czechoslovakia (1948–1989). It answers the question of how pronatalist framing has been used to categorise ‘others’, whose procreation has been deemed undesirable. It pays attention to the ways limitations on women’s bodily and social citizenship were used as a tool of selective pronatalism, as well as how the pronatalist framing was linked to the framing of women´s interests, to determine whether and how women´s interests were present in the debates on reproduction and childcare. It considers both childcare and reproductive health policies to show how a healthy and able population was to be secured in the socialist state of Czechoslovakia. Based on the framing analysis applied to major policy texts and political discussions preceding legislative changes, the paper analyses the development of abortion policies, policies regulating the use of assisted reproduction technologies, prenatal screening, policies of childcare and family support, and the framings that contributed to their development. By linking the analysis of debates on childcare and reproductive health policies, we argue that although pronatalist framing has been used several times in support of women´s interests, it has always been patriarchal and exclusionary.