Since World War II, abortion policies have remained remarkably varied across European nations, with struggles over abortion rights at the forefront of national politics. This volume analyses European abortion governance and explores how social movements, political groups, and individuals use protests and resistance to influence abortion policy. Drawing on case studies from Italy, Spain, Norway, Poland, Romania, Russia, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the European Union, it analyses the strategies and discourses of groups seeking to liberalise or restrict reproductive rights. It also illuminates the ways that reproductive rights politics intersect with demographic anxieties, as well as the rising nationalisms and xenophobia related to austerity policies, mass migration and the recent terrorist attacks in Europe.

Since World War II, abortion policies have remained remarkably varied across European nations, with struggles over abortion rights at the forefront of national politics. This volume analyses European abortion governance and explores how social movements, political groups, and individuals use protests and resistance to influence abortion policy. Drawing on case studies from Italy, Spain, Norway, Poland, Romania, Russia, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the European Union, it analyses the strategies and discourses of groups seeking to liberalise or restrict reproductive rights. It also illuminates the ways that reproductive rights politics intersect with demographic anxieties, as well as the rising nationalisms and xenophobia related to austerity policies, mass migration and the recent terrorist attacks in Europe.

"...A compelling and horrifying account of how Polish institutions intervened and gained command over women's lives." -Joanna Regulska, coeditor of Women and Gender in Postwar Europe: From Cold War to European Union After the hope and enthusiasm that followed the collapse of Poland's state socialism in 1989, political forces that had lain concealed emerged and established a new religious-nationalist orthodoxy. As the Catholic Church emerged as a political force in the Polish government, it precipitated a rapid erosion of reproductive rights, especially the right to abortion, which had been relatively well established. In The Politics of Morality, Joanna Mishtal explores this expansion of power by the religious right, along with the little-studied implications of the new reproductive governance for women. She examines the contradiction between an emerging democracy on one hand, and a declining tolerance for reproductive rights, women's rights, and political and religious pluralism on the other. At the same time, women resist these strictures by pursuing abortion illegally, defying religious prohibitions on contraception, and forming advocacy groups. Surveillance, control, and abuse of power are persistent themes in this revealing ethnography, which will speak to scholars of women's rights, political history, and Eastern Europe.

"...A compelling and horrifying account of how Polish institutions intervened and gained command over women's lives." -Joanna Regulska, coeditor of Women and Gender in Postwar Europe: From Cold War to European Union After the hope and enthusiasm that followed the collapse of Poland's state socialism in 1989, political forces that had lain concealed emerged and established a new religious-nationalist orthodoxy. As the Catholic Church emerged as a political force in the Polish government, it precipitated a rapid erosion of reproductive rights, especially the right to abortion, which had been relatively well established. In The Politics of Morality, Joanna Mishtal explores this expansion of power by the religious right, along with the little-studied implications of the new reproductive governance for women. She examines the contradiction between an emerging democracy on one hand, and a declining tolerance for reproductive rights, women's rights, and political and religious pluralism on the other. At the same time, women resist these strictures by pursuing abortion illegally, defying religious prohibitions on contraception, and forming advocacy groups. Surveillance, control, and abuse of power are persistent themes in this revealing ethnography, which will speak to scholars of women's rights, political history, and Eastern Europe.