A new academic volume on family planning and reproduction was just published. „Children by Choice? Changing Values, Reproduction, and Family Planning in the 20th Century” edited by Ann-Katrin Gembries, Theresia Theuke, Isabel Heinemann (De Gruyter Oldenbourg Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston 2018) contains contributions on changing concepts and practices in European countries on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Dr Agata Ignaciuk authored one of the chapters in this volume, titled: „Paradox of the Pill: Oral Contraceptives in Spain and Poland (1960s–1970s).
The chapter discusses the differencial impact of the contraceptive pill on value changes related to family planning in Spain and Poland during the 1960s and the 1970s. In Spain, the introduction of the pill in the early 1960s boosted medical and social acceptance for contraception in – and despite of – the context of a legal ban on contraceptive propaganda that lasted between 1941 and 1978. In Poland the pill, introduced around the same time, failed to promote a similar value change. The author ponders on the possible roots of these differences, and bases her argument on rich historical research.