The research project “Abortion trials in democratic Spain: reproductive rights, material and legal cultures of pregnancy termination (1970s-2000s)” (LEGABO) examines the social and cultural history of abortion trials in Spain from the second half of the 1970s until the legalisation of voluntary abortion in 2010. We combine methodological approaches from the history of medicine, gender history, the anthropology of health, the history and philosophy of law and digital humanities to compile and analyse, on the one hand, the legal, medical and media narratives generated during legal proceedings related to the voluntary termination of pregnancy. On the other hand, we study the accounts of the abortion providers and their lawyers.
The preliminary selection of sources includes oral sources, archival sources (including personal archives) and digital sources such as court rulings and articles published in the daily press and available in digital newspaper libraries. We will use these sources to examine the material and legal cultures of abortion in two periods: the late clandestine period (1975-1985) and the period immediately following the partial decriminalisation of abortion in Spain (1985-2010). In addition, we will examine the trials and media debates about them as a potential discursive space for the incorporation of the concept of reproductive rights into public debate and health practice, a concept that was in the process of international debate and consolidation in the 1980s and 1990s.
All in all, we will contribute to the generation of multi- and interdisciplinary knowledge about the history of reproductive health and rights, which can contribute to a better understanding of the current situation regarding access to voluntary termination of pregnancy and its perception in healthcare and society. The LEGABO project proposes a step forward in the consolidation of a line of research into the history of abortion in Spain, which began at the University Institute of Women’s Studies and Gender Research at the University of Granada with the ABLE project in 2021. This research line has been expanded and strengthened thanks to including approaches and methodologies from the philosophy of law and digital humanities in the present research project.