LAUSR

The objectives of the debates on birth control and thus of the concepts of family planning had changed in East Central Europe after World War I as a result of the founding of nation states. The respective dominant as well as non-dominant national groups colored them nationally by focusing on the development of their own nation. A particular example of the inherent national coloration of the transnationally effective discourses on birth control is the Polish-Jewish women's weekly Ewa. In the late 1920s, when a nationwide marriage and abortion law was being negotiated under the conditions of an authoritarian regime in Poland, Ewa took up these debates in order to sketch a specific Polish-Jewish image of the family. The publication also embraced birth control as a national challenge, but did so under a Zionist banner. The article assesses Ewa's important contributions to tracing and influencing the understanding of birth control and the images of modern families and women in the Polish-Jewish milieu during the interwar period.