Law on the interruption of pregnancy in the German Democratic Republic

With its adoption, a fundamental revision of the law on abortion was introduced in the GDR in the form of a time limit solution, in contrast to the previously applicable indication-based regulation.

[3] In the Third Reich, the view on the normative basis of the ban on abortion changed fundamentally, as the killing of the expectant or unborn life was no longer the primary justification.

After the end of the Second World War, the legal situation in the individual states of the Soviet occupation zone was replaced between 1945 and 1948 by new regulations with extended indication models.

[11] In March 1965, an internal circular of the Ministry of Health, without changing the text of the law, extended the application of Section 11 to include a criminal and a social indication.

[14] Both in the context of legal history[4] and in an international comparison[15], the recognition of the decision to terminate a pregnancy as a woman's right was particularly new; a comparable formulation can only be found in the regulation adopted in Denmark one year later.

The joint decision of the GDR Council of Ministers and the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Socialist Unity Party on the planned law, announced on December 23, 1971, came unexpectedly,[17] and there was hardly any public discussion beforehand or afterwards.

[18] In a pastoral letter read from all pulpits on January 9, 1972, the Catholic Church emphasized that it was the task of every state to provide special protection for developing life.

[25] The proportion of votes against was less than three percent of the total number of representatives in the Volkskammer, which was elected through a single list of the National Front with a fixed distribution of seats.

[26] In the reporting of Neues Deutschland, the most important daily newspaper in the GDR as the nationwide central organ of the SED, the outcome of the vote was described as an "absolute majority" and it was emphasized that "the rights and dignity of women were fully guaranteed".

[31] An organized right-to-life movement did not exist in the GDR; corresponding protest activities remained marginal and limited to individuals, especially Christians in social and medical professions.

[35] The new version of the legislation on abortion in the GDR also put pressure on the social-liberal coalition under Chancellor Willy Brandt and Justice Minister Gerhard Jahn in the Federal Republic of Germany in their efforts to reform Section 218 StGB.

[42] The number of authorized abortions in the GDR, which had been 860 in 1962 and thus three years before the 1950 extension of the indication regulation, initially rose significantly to around 119,000 in 1972 immediately after the introduction of the deadline solution, but had already fallen again to around 83,000 by 1976.

[44] Immediately after the law was passed, hospitals in the GDR were often overwhelmed due to insufficient equipment; in the Women's Clinic of the Charité in Berlin, for example, the procedure was initially performed in several shifts.

[44] The increase in abortions caused by the new regulations and the free distribution of contraceptives introduced at the same time led to a persistent population decline in the GDR until the end of the 1970s due to the resulting loss of births and had a corresponding effect on the age structure in the following years.

[46] As a result of this development, a series of birth-promoting social policy measures were adopted by the state from the early 1970s, partly at the same time as the law on interrupting pregnancy, which included in particular regulations to improve the situation of families with children and working mothers.

[49] For the newly formed Independent Women's Association, which ran in the Volkskammer elections in March 1990 in an electoral alliance with the East German Green Party, the retention of the current regulation on the time limit was a decisive issue.

[50] On the one hand, the CDU campaigned on the basis of the rejectionist stance of its 14 MPs in the 1972 vote,[51] but also stated in its election manifesto that "abortion bans and threats of punishment ... are not an aid to life".

[52] His statements on the connection between abortions in the GDR and the frequency of infanticide in East Germany, which he qualified a few days later in an interview in the newspaper Die Welt,[53] were largely rejected by politicians of all parties.

[54] However, there were also different comments from psychiatrists and political scientists as well as approval from some affected women, church representatives and pro-life initiatives such as the CDU organization Christian Democrats for Life with regard to his statements on the GDR legislation on abortion.