This article examines the work of the gynecologist Wlodzimierz Fijalkowski, the key promoter of preparation for childbirth in Communist and early democratic Poland. From the late 1950s until the 1990s, Fijalkowski developed a childbirth preparation training protocol that served as an inspiration for childbirth preparation schools across the country. Through analysis of Fijalkowski's publications in medical journals, books aimed at both professional and lay readers, visual aids for childbirth training, and archival material, we demonstrate that a specific vision of gender roles and relationships lay at the core of Fijalkowski's psychoprophylactic project. This vision represented a re-definition and re-essentialization of femininity and masculinity, and motherhood and fatherhood, while simultaneously advocating for radical change in the relationship between women in labor and obstetric professionals. Fijalkowski's ideas and advocacy were intimately connected with a humanization of the embryo and fetus from the earliest stages of pregnancy, and we show how his work became an important transmission medium for the gradual mainstreaming of anti-abortion ideas within public discourse in late-Communist Poland.
