History and current status of abortion techniques in Spain

Discover the first session of the seminar “Regards croisés sur la petite enfance” 2024-2025: History and current status of abortion techniques in Spain: medicine and activism in access to abortion (1965-2022).

The seminar looks at early childhood as a social, historical and cultural construct. Theories and knowledge relating to the conception, birth and development of children are analyzed in terms of their interactions with their environment and gender norms. Against this backdrop, the seminar will explore the boundaries of this age category and address the question of its temporality according to medical, international, anthropological or historical standards.

This presentation looks at the history of abortion techniques and the controversies they have generated in Spain. Under Franco's regime, Spanish gynecologists introduced vacuum curettage. Two decades later, activists would do the same, thanks to the influence of the French experience. The partial decriminalization of abortion in 1985 and the advent of medical abortion in the early 2000s widened access to abortion, without lessening the medical and social controversy.

• Maria-Mundi Lopez: PhD student at the University of Granada (Spain) and member of the ABLE project: Aborto no punible en España: ciencia, asistencia y movimientos sociales (Non-punishable abortion in Spain: science, care and social movements).
• Discussant: Michel Christian: historian