📖 When the private becomes political: the politics of having children. Abortion debate in Hungary, combining a biopolitical and a feminist approach.

In my book I examine how political ideology on abortion – expressed in the Hungarian abortion debate of 2010-2012 – impacts the distribution of related resources, and how this distribution in turn effects that ideology. To understand the interaction of abortion practice and policy I utilize a multilayered analysis, utilizing a biopolitical and a feminist approach and viewing the issue on a national and international level as well. Through a biopolitical analysis, I argue that in the abortion debate women are configured as mothers, primarily reproductive citizens responsible for reproducing the nation. Abortion as an issue isn’t a literal issue, but serves as a subject through which the state legitimizes itself as having the authority of defining public friends and enemies. In my second approach, I examine the interaction of contemporary Hungarian ideologies on abortion policy and abortion practice, and the disconnect between these elements.