https://hdl.handle.net/10481/7456 Mon, 13 Apr 2026 20:50:50 GMT 2026-04-13T20:50:50Z https://hdl.handle.net/10481/110815 Weaponizing the law: Acción Familiar and ‘pro-life’ strategic litigation in Spain (1985–1990) Ignaciuk Klemba, Agata; Segura-Arenas, Ángela; Mundi-López, María This article explores the history of the Spanish ‘pro-life’ movement during the final decades of the twentieth century. While recent sociological scholarship has characterised the Spanish ‘pro-life’ movement of the 1980s as being dominated by uncoordinated and inexperienced organisations that were dependent on the Catholic Church, our analysis of primary sources, such as legal documents and media accounts, seeks to provide a more nuanced interpretation by examining the impact of Spanish ‘pro-life’ activism on access to abortion following the partial decriminalisation of 1985. To analyse this impact, we focus on Acción Familiar, an organisation that played a leading role in deploying strategic litigation against both abortion regulations and providers. We examine two examples of this strategic litigation: administrative litigation against the Royal Decree that liberalised the abortion marketplace in 1986, and criminal litigation against doctors who performed therapeutic abortions in a public hospital in Pamplona in 1986. Our case study shows that Acción Familiar employed a ‘conventional’ litigation strategy to achieve objectives typically associated with ‘direct action’: the harassment and intimidation of doctors. In doing so, the organisation created symbolic and material barriers to abortion, restricting access to the procedure in Spain within the legal framework of partial decriminalisation (1985–2010), a time when abortion was permitted in certain circumstances. https://hdl.handle.net/10481/110815 https://hdl.handle.net/10481/109558 Criminalization, medicalization, and stigmatization. Genealogies of abortion activism in Poland Chełstowska, Agata; Ignaciuk Klemba, Agata This article explores the long history of Polish abortion activism from the late 1950s to the present day. Using feminist genealogy, we examine how (de)criminalization, (de)medicalization, and (de)stigmatization are addressed in the strategic narratives of three interconnected organizations: the Polish Planned Parenthood Association (PPPA), established in 1957; the Federation for Women and Family Planning (FWFP), established in 1991; and the Abortion Dream Team (ADT), established in 2016. The PPPA, active during the state-socialist period and supported by the state, applauded the legalization and medicalization of abortion while actively discouraging women from terminating pregnancies. The FWFP, which introduced the notion of abortion as a right during the democratic transition and continues to fight for access to legal abortion under current restrictions, leaves the medicalization of abortion largely unchallenged. The ADT encourages women to become their own abortion providers, to share their experiences, and to support other women. Focusing on the underlying spheres of social norms, practices, and networks, they actively work to remove the connotations of danger, sin, irresponsibility, and crime from abortion, fostering a concept of termination as the positive solution to the problem of unwanted pregnancy. Our analysis of the intersecting space between (de)criminalization, (de)medicalization, and (de)stigmatization challenges the idea of progress and modernity in abortion activism and brings to the fore the contextual implications of positioning, goals, and rhetoric. The research behind this article was conducted in two projects: “Birth control cultures in Poland 1945–1989” (National Science Center, Poland, grant no. 2016/21/P/HS3/04080, and the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement no. 665778, principal investigator Agata Ignaciuk, 2017–19) and “CrimScapes: Navigating Citizenship through European Landscapes of Criminalization,” funded by New Opportunities for Research Funding Agency Co-operation in Europe (NORFACE), Democratic Governance in a Turbulent Age (Governance) Joint Research Program, project no. 462-19-020. https://hdl.handle.net/10481/109558 https://hdl.handle.net/10481/109555 Regendering Childbirth: Catholicism, Medical Activism, and Birth Preparation in Post-War Poland Ignaciuk Klemba, Agata; Koscianska, Agnieszka This article examines the work of the gynecologist Włodzimierz Fijałkowski, the key promoter of preparation for childbirth in Communist and early democratic Poland. From the late 1950s until the 1990s, Fijałkowski developed a childbirth preparation training protocol that served as an inspiration for childbirth preparation schools across the country. Through analysis of Fijałkowski’s publications in medical journals, books aimed at both professional and lay readers, visual aids for childbirth training, and archival material, we demonstrate that a specific vision of gender roles and relationships lay at the core of Fijałkowski’s psychoprophylactic project. This vision represented a re-definition and re-essentialization of femininity and masculinity, and motherhood and fatherhood, while simultaneously advocating for radical change in the relationship between women in labor and obstetric professionals. Fijałkowski’s ideas and advocacy were intimately connected with a humanization of the embryo and fetus from the earliest stages of pregnancy, and we show how his work became an important transmission medium for the gradual mainstreaming of anti-abortion ideas within public discourse in late-Communist Poland. https://hdl.handle.net/10481/109555 https://hdl.handle.net/10481/107592 Reproductive Healthcare in Transition: Women Doctors and Abortion Services in Spain (1980s–1990s) Ignaciuk Klemba, Agata This article examines the history of legal abortion in Spain through the experiences of women physicians and gynaecologists who provided abortions following a partial decriminalisation of the procedure in 1985. Through oral history interviews, contextualised through a range of primary sources, including mass media articles, medical literature, and government reports, I analyse the professional and activist trajectories of women doctors between the late 1970s and the late 1980s, a time when the Spanish healthcare system was undergoing significant legal and structural transformation. I argue that this first generation of women doctors faced with the possibility of providing legal abortion services, chose to do so due to their experiences and ideological beliefs. Diverse configurations of left-wing, social justice, and feminist ideals influenced their decisions to practice in hospitals or abortion clinics, as well as their professional and personal interests in, and long-term commitments to, abortion services. https://hdl.handle.net/10481/107592 https://hdl.handle.net/10481/107189 On the Cover: The Politics of Seeing Pregnancy Ignaciuk Klemba, Agata; Santesmases, María Jesús Frida Kahlo’s artistic rendering of childbirth appears on the cover of this issue of Technology and Culture. This essay invites readers to view the history of medicine and technology through images, by tracing multi-sited genealogies of their visual cultures. The shifting representations of pregnancy, miscarriage, and abortion can enrich historical research and teaching on twentieth-century reproductive biomedicine by foregrounding how images produce, circulate, and contest knowledge and power. Yet the different meanings attributed to the same image in different cultures and political regimes underscore that they cannot be fully understood without their historiography and their political work as visual artifacts https://hdl.handle.net/10481/107189