The Woman’s Body in Expert Discourses on Abortion in Interwar Czechoslovakia

Abstract This study examines the conceptualization of the woman’s body in the medical and juridical discourses that significantly influenced debates concerning the legalization of abortion on demand during the First Czechoslovak Republic (1918–1938). Drawing on critical discourse analysis, the study argues that in these expert discourses, scientific and ideological elements converged to advance the body politics of the time, and that nationalistic factors – previously neglected in the Czech scholarship – played a substantial role in shaping views on the woman’s body. The study further reveals the links between eugenics and social welfare practices aimed at preventing the reproduction of so-called “undesirable” individuals in arguments about the legalization of abortion. Finally, it asserts that agitation against lay abortionists, ostensibly framed as an effort to protect women’s health, may actually have been part of a broader attempt by the medical profession to assert control over women’s bodies.