Dr Vesna Leskošek

The history of the fight for abortion and reproductive rights in Slovenia

Dr Vesna Leskošek, lecturer at the Faculty of Social Work, University of Ljubljana and member of a research group at the Faculty of Social Sciences.

Abstract

The historical analysis of the struggle for the right to abortion shows both the complexity and importance of reproductive rights and the consequences of denying them. The Slovenian case is interesting because the movement for the right to abortion took place quite early. It also shows how the right to abortion affects the entire life course of women. It affects family relationships, the opportunities they have for education and paid work, what they can do, the way they pursue their interests, ambitions and aspirations, and the autonomy they have in all these areas.
The historical overview of the abortion struggle in Slovenia has shown that it contributed not only to the legalisation of abortion, but also to the development of broader reproductive rights. It also contributed to the development of policy of de-familiarisation, as the state partially took over care responsibilities while creating conditions for family planning and inclusive parenthood. In this context, abortion is only a small part of a complex and inherently multisectoral field that involves social protection, the fight against poverty, labour market regulation, social policy, housing policy, the establishment of kindergartens, sex education in schools, etc., in addition to health care. This positive approach of providing people with the conditions for a dignified life and the state sharing the care responsibility with the family, as well as the liberalisation of abortion, also led to a gradual decrease in the abortion rate, particularly after 1974, when the new federal constitution was adopted, in which the right to abortion became unconditional up to the tenth week of pregnancy.
An important result of the historical analysis is the realisation that the liberalisation of the right to abortion leads to fewer abortions because it is structurally contextualised. This involves the efforts to create conditions in which women choose to have children, which is only possible if they can rely on the state to protect their autonomy and share responsibility for care.

Bio

Vesna earned her PhD in 2001 with a dissertation titled The first-wave feminism in Slovenia from 1890 to 1940. She decided to do a research on women’s movement because, as a feminist activist herself, she was looking for information about women’s struggles in the past, which she could not find in the official Slovenian history because women were largely erased from it. Despite all the efforts to revive the memory of women’s historical contribution to the country’s development, she argues that this is basically a never-ending struggle.

The issue of abortion and reproductive rights is one that has been silenced and has to be brought to light as these rights are threatened and attacked by the extremist and populist right in today’s Europe. On this topic, Vesna and her co-authors have published a monograph titled Abortion and Reproductive Rights in Slovenia: A Case of Resistance (Routledge, 2024). She has also worked extensively on the issues of violence against women and children and more recently on old-age poverty, which is predominantly female in Slovenia.

In 2022, she was awarded the Golden Plaque by the University of Ljubljana for her academic contribution to the development of the institution.