Constructing bodily citizenship in the Czech Republic

The construction of women’s bodily citizenship in the Czech Republic followed a different path from this of the countries in Western Europe, due to the relatively recent transition to democracy and especially the absence of women’s movement. The first legalisation of abortion in the Czechoslovakia came relatively early - in 1957. However, this did not occur as a result of pressure from civil society and the feminist groups. While attempting to show how the bodily citizenship was negotiated and constructed, I focus on the framing of the debates that preceded the changes in abortion and in prostitution legislation in the Czech Republic since the 1950s. Discourse analysis of media and expert articles, parliamentary debates and other documents shows that abortion in the Czech Republic was framed as a medical issue since the 1950s, not an issue of women’s rights or bodily citizenship. Prostitution was constructed as something exogenous to “socialist society” and the prostitutes as the others, the non-citizens. In spite of existing alternative discourses, this original discourse now hinders the possibility of reframing the issues of bodily citizenship in terms of women’s rights and is reflected in the status quo of the legislation.