Abortion and gender relationships in Ukraine, 1955–1970

Abstract

This article examines socio-cultural conditions underpinning the so-called abortion culture in Soviet Ukraine. Unlike previous studies on abortion in the Soviet Union which primarily used country-level data, this study employs original sourcesin-depth biographical interviews and archival materialsto investigate local conditions and the manner in which decisions regarding abortion were made. The author studied couples whose reproductive years comprise the period from 1955 to 1970, when modern contraceptives were not readily available but abortion was legal. Two localities in Ukraine, the cities of Lviv and Kharkiv, are included in the investigation. The findings suggest that local patriarchal gender regimes and their associated spousal dynamics define when and how women exercise their agency in birth control and abortion decisions. In couples where spouses communicated about birth control and abortion decisions women sought abortions less. Those women did not feel a need to exercises their agency as the husband took over both responsibilities. When abortion was practiced as a routine family size limitation method, spouses did not communicate about birth control and abortion, and the two were practiced solely as a husband's and wife's responsibilities, respectively. Those women sought abortion to fulfill their own goals, and at the same time to maintain the dominant patriarchal order in marital relationships as they understood it. Additionally, peer networks seemed to be the crucial element reinforcing women's agency in these processes.

‘Two children to make ends meet’: the ideal family size, parental responsibilities and costs of children on two sides of the Iron Curtain during the post-war fertility decline

“…20 Unlike in Switzerland, where women were able to openly exercise their agency in birth control decisions in order to achieve the desired family size, in Ukraine women often presumed ignorance in birth control. As couples typically practised withdrawal, which was perceived as men's responsibility, and was a method that frequently failed, women did however exercise their agency to seek abortions, often in order to continue working (Hilevych, 2015). This was especially prevalent when pregnancies following the first birth were unintended.…”

“…There has been a long-standing assumption that women, because they carry the burden of pregnancy, have been the driving force behind fertility limitation practises (Gittins, 1982). Recent oral history studies on Western and Eastern Europe, however, have challenged and complicated this narrative by showing how responsibility for birth control could be gendered depending on the cultural, social and institutional context (Claro, 2016;Fisher, 2006;Hilevych, 2015;Rusterholz, 2015b;Szreter & Fisher, 2010). Moreover, it has been argued that a shift in contraceptive methods took place in the second half of the twentieth century; traditional methods, such as withdrawal, which was deemed to be mainly a man's responsibility, are said to have been replaced by modern and primarily women-controlled methods of birth control (Cook, 2004), such as the contraceptive pill in post-war Western Europe and abortion in Eastern Europe.…”

“…In Switzerland, women accepted that they carried the responsibility for both traditional and modern methods, and gynaecologists often played a crucial role in informing women of these possibilities (Rusterholz, 2015b). 18 In Ukraine, while men continued to be perceived as responsible for birth control, it was often women who were responsible for the final decision on whether to keep the pregnancy or terminate it through abortion (Hilevych, 2015). As oral history accounts illustrate, in the post-war decades, Swiss and Ukrainian women, either openly or in a more nuanced way, started to carry the actual costs and burden of birth control, which could be seen as a latent factor in increasing the perceived costs of childrearing, especially among women.…”

“…For this reason, the Ukrainian informants often tried to postpone having a second child by at least five years (for more on this topic see (Hilevych, 2016a)). Furthermore, the informants were especially cautious about pregnancies following their second birth, which most frequently resulted in abortions, sometimes even without the husband's consent (see also (Hilevych, 2015)). The experience of Varvara, who worked for her entire life in a factory, married a worker in 1957 and had two children, born in 1958 and 1963, illuminates her decision to have an abortion after falling pregnant again after her second child in order to continue working:…”

Strong families and declining fertility : a comparative study of family relations and reproductive careers in Soviet Ukraine

“…An important aspect of this family pattern was that a grandmother rather than the husband was seen as a major helper with infant care. As a result, the realisation of limited possibilities for receiving grandparental support in case of a second birth, which also coincided with other uncertainties related to a female double burden, motivated many of the female informants from Kharkiv to adopt a waiting strategy of delaying the transition to second birth, with abortion among the main means of birth control (Hilevych, 2015). Additionally, women often also learned from each other about the benefits of adopting a waiting strategy.…”