Between Liberalization and Bodily Control: Abortion Rights in Socialist States during the Cold War, 1960 – 1989

This paper explores the concept of female bodily autonomy in state socialist societies during the Cold War. Focusing on three case studies – Cuba, East Germany, and Vietnam – it traces how international scientific and political exchanges across the socialist bloc resulted in shared understandings of family planning, reproductive health, and women’s rights. In the mid-1960s to mid-1970s, abortion laws were liberalised in all three countries under the leadership of authoritarian communist parties: Cuba decriminalised abortions in 1965 in order to combat high maternal death rates; in East Germany, abortions within the first trimester were legalised quasi overnight in March 1972; resulting in a steep increase in procedures in consecutive years; and Vietnam – where abortions became widely available after the end of the Vietnam War in 1975 – continues to have one of the highest rates to this day. Given the authoritarian character of all three regimes, these findings might at first sight challenge ideas about the intersections between democratic politics and reproductive rights. In fact, in the midst of a wave of abortion activism in the West in the 1970s, communist parties insisted that women in socialist societies had more bodily autonomy than on the other side of the Iron Curtain. This paper critically interrogates this idea by highlighting persisting pro-natalist agendas in socialist societies and the clear restrictions of bodily autonomy of female migrant workers who came to East Germany during the 1970s and 1980s.