Discussion on Abortions in the Russian Empire: Private Life and New Identity

Abstract

The article devoted to the discussion on abortion that ensued in Russia in the early twentieth century. It presents the opinions of three expert groups — medical, legal and feminist communities, who viewed the growing tendency in the number of abortions as an acute social problem and looked for ways to solve it. The situation in Russia of that time described in discussion by the expansion of the social roles of women, the formation of a new female identity, the further separation of the private and public spheres, a change in the attitude of population dominant groups representatives to a physical love, children, personal (civil) rights. The author concludes that the spread of modernist views on the family, the role of women among representatives of educated groups, initiated the formation of a new reproductive culture and contributed to Russia's demographic modernization.