Fertility control in Soviet Russia, 1920--1936: A case study of gender regulation and professionalization

This thesis is about the debates among medical professionals over fertility control in Soviet Russia during the period 1920--1936. Analysis of these debates shows that the handling of fertility control was equally a function of the professionalization of doctors and the regulation of gender by both doctors and the state. The meeting point of gender regulation and professionalization was the medicalization of reproduction, the process through which doctors enlarged their field of expertise by expanding into spheres traditionally deemed non-medical and/or private.;Undergirding all the case studies are the doctors' assumptions about women and maternity, which coloured their professional views on both their immediate spheres of competence and larger issue of the health of the nation. But women were not only essential to the state as reproducers of future generations of builders of communism; they were also integral to economic growth strategies. The medical debates on fertility control helped shaped the balancing act that women performed between their roles as reproducers and producers.;Two groups of doctors are under consideration: obstetricians/gynaecologists and practitioners of the new medical field "protection of maternal and infant care" (OMM). The dissertation is built around three case studies to illuminate different aspects of fertility control and medicalization. The chapter on abortion, which was legalized in 1920, focuses largely on gatekeeping measures employed by doctors to interpret and contain a public policy with which they did not entirely agree; the most effective measure was the use of a professional language of indications. The main concern of the chapter on contraception is to illustrate medical conservatism over birth control and professional interest in searching for a magic contraceptive bullet; this professional interest in research and development served to legitimate contraception and to contain the degree of harm done to women's reproductive potential. The chapter on protective labour legislation finds the ob/gyns and OMM practitioners working as junior partners of specialists in occupational health in research on the impact of labour (particularly industrial) on women's ability to bear children. Here we see, in a crude parody of Marxism, how economics came to determine the outcomes of medical research.