Prague metro poster “95% of women surveyed say terminating their pregnancy was the right decision” | photo A.S.A.P., used with permission

The reproductive justice organisation A.S.A.P. (Abortion Support Alliance Prague), recently approached the company MetroZoom with a request to place posters in the Prague metro. MetroZoom is a subsidiary of BigBoard, the largest provider of outdoor advertising in the Czech Republic.

The campaign was meant to draw attention to manipulative and false information about abortions spread by organisations such as the Pro-Life Movement. “95 per cent of women state that terminating their pregnancy was the right decision,” one of the posters informs, for example. However, after A.S.A.P. and MetroZoom signed a contract and all advertising proposals were approved, A.S.A.P. received an email. According to the company’s new legal assessment, such a campaign promotes “harmful behaviour” and contravenes the law on advertising regulation. Therefore, MetroZoom is cancelling the contract with immediate effect.

The Advertising Regulation Act states that “advertising must not promote behaviour damaging health or threatening the safety of persons...” And abortion, in MetroZoom’s words, threatens the health and safety of the foetus, whose development it terminates.

Although abortions are legal in the Czech Republic, as lawyer Pavel Uhl points out, any law can be interpreted in various ways. When a company uses this interpretation to defend its own business decision, subjecting such an interpretation to authoritative review is generally impossible.

These broad possibilities for legal interpretation are used, for example, by Jakub Kříž, a lawyer for the ultra-conservative Pro-Life Movement. “The mother’s right to kill or have her unborn child killed is established as an exception to the general criminal law norm that otherwise prohibits such action,” he writes in Právník magazine. The effort to reframe the legal understanding of the foetus so that abortion is perceived as murder is the main strategy of the movement against women’s reproductive rights.

“The Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms states that human life is worthy of protection even before birth. But this does not mean protection identical to human life. It is rather protection of the pregnant woman. In other words, it is not seen as protection against the pregnant woman’s decision, but against a third party. When someone kills a woman or harms her, pregnancy is an aggravating circumstance. That, however, is more a question of specific laws than constitutional order. The latter is rather silent on the matter,” Pavel Uhl explains the (non)anchoring of foetal rights in the Czech constitution. “One can argue that the pregnant woman’s right to self-determination and decisions about her own body prevails. This is also a right with a constitutional level. However, there is no judgment or finding that would determine this unambiguously; it’s a matter of discussion,” he adds.

Besides the constitution, ultra-conservatives also argue with the fact that a foetus achieves legal subjectivity already after conception. “A person acquires legal subjectivity at conception if they are born alive. But it is essentially a fiction serving to protect children’s property rights. For example, so that a person can inherit even if their father dies during pregnancy,” Uhl explains.

When asked whether a foetus is a “person” referred to by the Advertising Regulation Act, Uhl responds: “No, in this sense, a foetus is not a person. The term is not, however, the best chosen. The Civil Code now uses the term ’human’, where a foetus before birth is not a human. The term ’person’ also applies to legal entities. The problem is that the Advertising Regulation Act was adopted in 1995, before the reform of private law, but even then, full capacity for rights was acquired at birth.”

It is not surprising that a lawyer for the Pro-Life Movement interprets laws to fit his ultra-conservative view on women’s bodily autonomy and reproductive rights. It is, however, new that this argumentation is being adopted by large corporations such as those under BigBoard. Until now, such attitudes were promoted mainly by conservative legislators, rectors, or doctors, not private businessmen.

Jakub Kříž, who has no problem comparing abortions to “modern slavery”, for example, teaches at the Faculty of Law of Charles University, and at the Catholic Theological Faculty, he is even a member of the Department of Philosophy and Law and an assistant professor. Apart from the university, Kříž also appeared at the congress of the Czech Gynaecological and Obstetric Society. His associates from the Alliance for Family and the Pro-Life Movement work in the Chamber of Deputies or directly advise at the Ministry of Justice.

Ultra-conservative influence is newly spilling over into the private sphere and business. This is partly due to the reaction of Donald Trump and those similar to him to liberal governments. Conservative values are thus becoming increasingly advantageous for business, thanks to which more and more elites of global and Czech capital claim them. Coal baron Pavel Tykač, for example, supports the Alliance for Family. Hundreds of thousands of Euros are also sent to this organisation by co-owner of Parliamentary Sheets and majority owner of Echo Media, Marek Španěl.

Meanwhile in the USA, the era of progressive technology companies is ending; Mark Zuckerberg is cancelling tampons in men’s toilets, while Google is deleting Pride Month or Black History Month from its calendar. For corporations of this calibre, it is more advantageous to abandon any values than to threaten their profits when conservative forces come to power.

A.S.A.P. eventually managed to implement the advertising campaign in the underground in cooperation with another company. At the same time, the organisation has launched a new website that provides information about abortion options in the Czech Republic, shares experiences with Czech healthcare, and refers to other supporting organisations.

Magdalena Dušková is an editor at Alarm.cz and a student of political theories and cultural anthropology. She mainly writes about politics, feminism, and also monitors the conservative and clerofascist scene. Together with Karolína Ježková, she creates the podcast Hysteria. | magdalena.duskova denikalarm.cz