The Humanist Association of Germany – Federal Association criticizes the current regulation in the German Criminal Code as stigmatizing and outdated and calls for a new legal regulation of abortion as well as comprehensive health care for unwanted pregnant women. Below you will find a statement by Katrin Raczynski, Federal Board Member of the HVD.
“It is no longer acceptable to us that abortions are in principle punishable under Section 218 of the German Criminal Code. The current regulation is stigmatizing, degrading and unsettling – which is why it must be rejected. No woman should be obliged to undergo counseling in accordance with Section 219 StGB in the name of protecting life, i.e. to carry an embryo to term. Instead, a comprehensive and voluntary psychosocial counseling service should be available to all women considering an abortion.
Bild: HoffotografenIn terms of structural policy, it must be ensured in future that abortions can be carried out across the board in accordance with the best possible medical standards. This also includes the deletion of Section 219a, which regulates the so-called ban on advertising abortions, from the Criminal Code in order to ensure that unintended pregnant women have low-threshold and safe access to information about the medical procedure and the doctors performing it.
We support the activities of the international ‘Safe Abortion Day’ and we emphatically call for a new legal regulation in Germany that takes full account of women’s reproductive freedom, the current state of biomedical knowledge, changing social values and ideological pluralism.”
