Despite promising an overhaul of Germany’s dated legislation on abortion, the outgoing government missed the opportunity as the country rushes towards an early election. Silence, stigma, shame, high costs and an odyssey of legal conditions await women seeking to end an unwanted pregnancy in Germany. Abortion is illegal in Germany and exempt from punishment only within the first 12 weeks and only with mandatory counselling and a required waiting period. The only other main exemptions are if the pregnancy puts the woman’s life in danger, or in cases where the pregnancy is the result of rape.
The outgoing coalition government vowed to overhaul the abortion law, which goes back over 150 years, to when it was first written into Germany’s penal code, at the start of its term in 2021, but failed to do so. While there might have been time to change the law by September 2025 — the original date planned for the next election — the snap poll called for 23 February all but put paid to activists’ hopes for change.
The first steps by Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s centre-left coalition to fulfil their campaign promise were not taken until 2023, with the establishment of an expert commission to examine the extent to which abortions could be regulated outside of the penal code. The commission recommended legalising terminations during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. Women would still be obliged to undergo counselling but would not have to wait three days between counselling and the procedure as is currently mandatory.
The commission also proposed that if an abortion is carried out without a counselling certificate, only the doctor – not the woman – should be liable to prosecution.
Months passed and finally, frustrated civil society groups took the rare step of commissioning their own lawyers to draft a law based on the experts’ suggestions. Lawmakers later produced a similar draft, but by then it was already late 2024. The draft was slated to be debated by parliament’s legal affairs committee on 10 February, the day before the end of the parliamentary period. Activists said that although there is a majority in parliament for reform, it would be virtually impossible to pass the legislation in that time frame. And indeed, the bill fell, and the centre-right opposition took the opportunity to slam the government for the “scandalous” move to introduce the draft law so close to an election. There was “no urgency to provoke a completely unnecessary further major socio-political conflict,” said Christian Democrat leader Friedrich Merz in December.
SOURCE: Daily Finland, by Allison Williams, 30 January 2025. File Photo: Sebastian Gollnow/dpa.