“Darn Women, Why Don’t They Go See a Doctor Earlier?” Gynecologist Benjamin Ipavec’s criminal case from 1929
Keywords:
Benjamin Ipavec, Kingdom of Serbs,Croats and Slovenes (SHS) / Yugoslavia, abortion, gender history, biographiesAbstract
This cultural history paper focuses on a suspended criminal case that took place before the Maribor District Court in 1929 against a respected Maribor gynecologist, Benjamin Ipavec, on account of the suspicion that he was carrying out illegal abortions. Ipavec’s court file, which is held by the Regional Archives Maribor, illustrates the plight of women who had to rely on their own resourcefulness in case of unwanted pregnancy. Abortion was initially illegal in the state of Yugoslavia. In the late 1930s, low birthrates became a highly politicized issue within the Slovenian People’s Party. The party referred to the decreasing birth rates as a moral disease of the nation, abortion became the white plague, and the doctors who performed it, murderers and the most abhorrent plague upon the nation.
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