Unlearning Eugenics: Sexuality, Reproduction, and Disability in Post-Nazi Europe by Dagmar Herzog

Reviewed by: Unlearning Eugenics: Sexuality, Reproduction, and Disability in Post-Nazi Europe by Dagmar Herzog Jane Freeland Herzog, Dagmar – Unlearning Eugenics: Sexuality, Reproduction, and Disability in Post-Nazi Europe. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2018. Pp. 171. Building on her previous work on sexuality in twentieth-century Europe, Dagmar Herzog's new book, Unlearning Eugenics, further explores the ambivalent impact and meaning of the sexual revolution. In an impressive study that spans the period from the Third Reich to the present day, Herzog examines the intersections of disability and reproductive rights activism and eugenic thinking in post-1945 Europe. The book reveals the long-standing connection between debates about abortion and changing attitudes towards disability in European society. Specifically, Herzog historicizes political strategies currently used by abortion opponents who [End Page 698] justify the limitation of women's rights on the basis of "justice for the physically and cognitively disabled" (p. 3). In doing so, she shows how "unreflected insensitivities" regarding disability—employed on both sides of the abortion debate—have "come to haunt the abortion politics of the twenty-first century" (p. 9). As Herzog rightly points out, such political rhetoric carries even greater weight given the history of eugenics in Europe, embodied mostly violently in the Holocaust and the Nazi T4 euthanasia program. Consisting of only three chapters and an introduction, the book adopts a "lecture format" (indeed, the book is based on a lecture series Herzog gave at Hebrew University in Jerusalem in 2016). Employing this style, Herzog's writing and argument are purposefully broad, with much of the historiographical and evidentiary discussion appearing not in the text, but in the extensive footnote section. While this structure may disappoint readers looking for a typical historical monograph, it allows Herzog to present a complex and intellectually challenging history in a much more accessible manner. Rather than providing definitive conclusions, Unlearning Eugenics instead offers the reader questions. What are the costs, meanings, and consequences of the liberal value change Europe experienced in the second half of the twentieth century? How have the rights of different marginalized groups been played off against each other? And what do contemporary political developments tell us about how the lessons of history have been learned? At its core, then, the book is a call to re-evaluate historically the success of European liberalism. The first chapter examines "previously neglected aspects" of the debates surrounding abortion in Western Europe in the 1960s and 1970s, revealing how they have come to haunt contemporary reproductive rights in Europe (p. 16). In particular, Herzog challenges many of the common assumptions surrounding abortion. By historicizing abortion reform within a longer history of contraception and eugenic thinking, Herzog shows how early opposition to decriminalization was not so much about the protection of life (a much more recent phenomenon), but rather reflected long-standing anxieties about contraception and declining European birth rates. Moreover, Herzog emphasizes the importance of limiting widespread illegal abortion to the successful decriminalization of abortion throughout Western Europe in the 1970s. From this perspective, abortion reform becomes less of a success story for women's rights and seemingly more of an attempt to bring women's reproductive power under the control of the state once more. But the focus of the chapter is on disability and the striking continuities in eugenic thinking and argumentation across Europe even after the defeat of Nazism in 1945. As Herzog shows, feminist, legal and medical arguments in favour of liberalizing access to abortion often emphasized the importance of preventing the birth of disabled children, alongside other eugenic concerns, including fears of overpopulation in the developing world and among Europe's working classes. The legacy of this eugenic thinking has now been challenged by disability rights advocates. But it has also been appropriated by right-wing politicians and NGOs, who are rhetorically instrumentalizing disability rights in the service of promoting a sexually conservative agenda. Importantly, Herzog shows both how this has [End Page 699] shaped European politics and what this has meant for parents and their ability to self-determine the shape of their family. Indeed, Herzog is sensitive to how this new political landscape has complicated the ability to support and...

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