Workshop on Reproductive Rights Event

The workshop is a joint event with the Stefan Cross Centre for Women, Equality and Law.

 

Abstracts:

Dr Caroline Rusterholz, University of Cambridge: Access to Contraceptive Information and Methods in Twentieth century Britain, a Fight for Sexual and Reproductive Rights 

This paper retraces the work done by members of sexual health charities, such as the Family Planning Association and the Brook Advisory Center, in improving access to contraceptive information and methods for married women and later unmarried people in Britain. This paper argues that charity members played a key role in changing legal access to contraception through the setting up of clinics in interwar and postwar Britain specifically dedicated to provide contraception and to counsel women about their sexual health. This paper also looks at the opposition charity members faced and what this opposition reveals about norms around 'good' sexuality. In all, this paper shows that contraceptive information and access has always been a contentious topic. 

 

Dr Audrey Lebret and Professor Janne Rothmar Herrmann, University of Copenhagen: Reproductive technologies and the evolution of European socio-legal conceptions of family 

This working paper engages with how the legal conception of family has configured in the regulation of assisted reproductive technologies, comparing two European countries, France and Denmark. It shows that although both countries had different legislative developments and at a different pace, the evolution and the contestation of reproductive rights were based on similar understandings of the concept of family.