CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2012
| Author | Császár, Ivett |
|---|---|
| Title | Stealthy restriction: Abortion discourse and the new constitution in Hungary |
| Summary | Stating that life shall be protected from the moment of conception, the new constitution of Hungary, which entered into force on 1 January 2012, laid down the basis and ensured the possibility of a more rigorous legislation on abortion. In my thesis I am examining the social and political context in which the possibility for a tight biopolitical control on the population became imaginable. Considering abortion as a discursive field in which claims for power are legitimised, I am placing the debate in the wider historical and current political context. Since the attitude to abortion indicates a vision of society, abortion regulation becomes a primary scene of the contest for power. I am arguing that the present debate on abortion is a concomitant of the restructuring of political life since the Parliamentary elections in 2010. Winning the elections with a sweeping majority, the governing party, which is the largest party on the political right wing, is devouring other right wing parties in its quest for power, at present the Christian democratic party, and at the pressure of the more and more popular far-right it is appropriating the discourse and agenda of the far-right party. Abortion regulation necessarily falls victim to this power game, as neither the nationalist, nor the religious agendas have any concern for women’s reproductive rights. By way of abortion regulation the state controls the social through the biological life of its population. Since a liberal political structure allows for more freedom of the individual as opposed to a system with authoritarian aspirations, I am, therefore, challenging Giorgio Agamben and Ruth Miller’s claim that on the biopolitical plane left and right, liberal and authoritarian lose their meaning and enter into a “zone of indistinction.” |
| Supervisor | Pető, Andrea |
| Department | Gender Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2012/csaszar_ivett.pdf |
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