In mid-January, a report in the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger revealed that two Catholic-run clinics in Cologne had refused to perform a gynecological examination on a woman who had allegedly been raped. The reason given for the refusal was that the examination would have involved advice on abortion and the morning-after pill.
Ines Scheibe from the executive committee of the Humanist Association of Germany condemned the incident in an initial statement and called on politicians to make emergency contraception a mandatory service in all state-funded facilities. Later, WDR also reported that this rejection of a rape victim by Catholic clinics was not an isolated case.
A petition initiated by the managing director of Pro Familia in North Rhine-Westphalia, Rita Kühn, to the Federal Minister of Health, Daniel Bahr, and the North Rhine-Westphalian Minister of Health, Barbara Steffens, is now demanding that emergency contraception be guaranteed for women who have been raped in all German hospitals.
The petition requires 50,000 signatures, which are to be collected by February 14, 2013, the day of action against violence against women. Ines Scheibe therefore called today for people to support the petition by signing it and thus send a clear signal.
“This is only a first step, we must not stop there. Because women’s reproductive rights must not only be secured for victims of violence, especially in and through publicly funded institutions,” said Ines Scheibe.
“The criminalization of abortion in our country must be ended in principle in the interests of all women; unhindered and unpunished access to qualified healthcare and medical methods of abortion must be guaranteed everywhere. Any moral stigmatization or legal discrimination against women and doctors who perform abortions should no longer be tolerated.”
Ines Scheibe also emphasized that in an enlightened and humane society, it is not the religious dogmas of individual denominations, but first and foremost well-thought-out social framework conditions that must form the basis of people’s lives: “In which women can exercise their right to sexual self-determination and decide whether, when and how many children they want to have.”
To the petition on Change.org: Emergency contraception for raped women in ALL German hospitals
