Questions & Answers about Germany

HEALTH CARE, HEALTH ISSUES AND SOCIAL WELFARE

Health Issues

Is abortion legal?

After years of conflict on the issue of abortion, the German Bundestag passed legislation regulating the termination of pregnancy at the end of June 1995.. Under the terms of the new law, abortion is prohibited. However, a woman who has an abortion during the first trimester will not be prosecuted as long as she undergoes counseling that must seek to persuade her to carry the pregnancy to term. An abortion is fully legal if the pregnancy is the result of rape or if completing the pregnancy would endanger the woman's health. The doctor performing the abortion likewise remains free from prosecution.

The issue of choice is a highly charged one in Germany, and understanding it requires a quick historical review. In western Germany, abortion has been illegal except under certain conditions during most of the postwar period. The German Democratic Republic, on the other hand, legalized it during the first trimester in 1972, and an entire generation in eastern Germany grew up viewing abortion as a right. Because the issue was so sensitive, the unification treaty between the two German states excluded it and simply specified that a new, all-German law was to be drawn up by the end of 1992. When that time came, the Bundestag passed a law that in effect decriminalized abortion. A group of parliamentarians immediately challenged this law, and in 1993 the constitutional court ruled in their favor. Abortion should remain illegal, the court decided, but in an effort toward compromise, it also specified that if a woman chooses abortion after seeing a pregnancy counselor, she should not be prosecuted. The current law is based on that ruling.

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