Jevrejka, žena, obrazovana i politički angažovana: dr Rahela Štraus o abortusu u Vajmarskoj republici
Jewish, Female, Educated and Political: Dr. Rahel Straus on Abortion in the Weimar Republic

Summary/Abstract: The article concerns reproductive rights debate in Weimar Germany and its Jewish community. It refers to the activity of Dr. Rahel Straus, a pioneering female gynecologist, Zionist woman and advocate of the recognition of women’s needs. Born in 1885, Dr. Straus was involved in promoting women’s health issues and the national Jewish agenda in the first half of the twentieth century and later was a devoted physician and peace activist in Israel. At the turn of the 1920s and 1930s she was involved in the struggle against penalization of abortion in the Weimar Republic. She wrote a guidebook for Jewish women concerning sexual education, and lectured for women participating in the Summer School organized by a middle-class Jewish women’s organization Jüdischer Frauenbund. In her article published in Jüdischer Frauenbund’s magazine she advocated women’s freedom to decide on their bodies, and a need to provide them with legal access to termination of pregnancies, framing the issue in terms of social justice and class inequality. Her argument, which was part of the historical debate concerning reproductive behavior, provides an important point of reference for contemporary critique of body politics in Israel and also other nation states.

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