The 1973 Petition for Maintaining Freedom of Abortion in Hungary (1. rész)

Abstract

This article focuses on the largely forgotten petition-action against the restriction of women’s right to abortion that took place in Hungary in 1973. Documents recently rendered public from the Hungarian National Archives (MNL) and the State Security Archives (ÁBTL), documents from the Blinken OSA collection as well as interviews carried out in 2015-16 with 19 participants of the petition-action by the author allow her to present the history of the petition. The transcriptions of the interviews can be studied in the Blinken OSA Archives (HU OSA 432 Suzanne Kőrösi Collection of Interviews). The current article is Part I of the research. It discusses the Hungarian Popular Republic’s population policy from 1956 to 1973, its conservative evolution that led to the restriction of women’s right to abortion, and the organization of the petition against it in a repressive political context.
Part II, which will be published in the 2020 Fall issue, is based on the interviews. It focuses on what free abortion meant for women and men in Hungary in the 60’s and 70’s and on the ideological roots of the petition-action and the participants’ motivations and the sanctions the participants had to cope with during the year that followed the petition-action.