A founding member of the West German Green Party, she made a taboo-breaking speech in the Bundestag in 1983 on the subject of abortion and marital rape, challenging for the first time the sexism women encountered in the legislature.

In her first two terms she worked on social legislation, such as decriminalizing abortion, child protection laws, and anti-violence measures, but she opposed the anti-pornography movement on the basis that its use was a personal decision.

[1] Schoppe was one of the founders in 1979 of the Green Party faction in Diepholz,[2] which favored environmental protection and opposed war.

In the speech, she pointed out that legislating abortion allowed politicians, who were mostly male, to make health care decisions for women.

[1] Her first term in office was marked by her advocacy for women's equality, elimination of the criminalization of abortion, and legislation which addressed family violence and protected children.

[22] Schoppe was elected to a second term in office in 1987, for a full four-year period, and returned to her appointment on the Committee for Youth, Family and Health.

Other issues on their agenda were changes to guardianship laws to protect the rights for children in foster care and liability legislation to prevent owners from dodging responsibility for endangering a child merely by posting a sign that danger existed or that land was restricted.

[27] Unlike some of her colleagues, she did not favor German withdrawal from NATO, but was in support of curtailing the presence of nuclear weapons throughout Europe.

[29] A wave of protest against antisemitism in Germany had begun in 1985, prompting discussion in the party on its policies and its stance toward Israel.

[35][Note 2] Gerhard Schröder became Minister-President of Lower Saxony and head of the Red–green alliance, a coalition of the Social Democrats and Greens, in 1990.

[16] She also worked to create national coordination offices for parental leave policies and mediation, which included career planning and training to enable returning mothers to be ready for re-employment.

[40] The compromise legislation, which allowed abortion within the first trimester if performed by a physician after mandatory pro-life counseling, was sent to the Constitutional Court, in 1993.

The court ruled that the law was unconstitutional because it failed to protect the life of the unborn child, and declared abortion to be illegal, but unpunishable.

The court declared that only in the case of medical emergency, fetal deformity, or rape, could a physician perform an abortion after mandatory counseling and that health insurance could not pay for the procedure without the doctor's consent.

[41] Schoppe refused to accept the ruling, and not only attacked the court's decision, vowing to continue the fight,[42] but argued that the 1974 legislation itself had been designed to mitigate abuses of sterilization and abortion which had been hallmarks of the earlier fascist regime.

She pointed out that "women were neither the perpetrators of that regime, intent on exterminating whole peoples, nor would their individual decisions to terminate a pregnancy augur a return to totalitarianism".

[44] Schoppe was forced out of the minister's office in 1994, when the Social Democrats won the election,[1] and the Green's state women's caucus branded her as a "pseudo post-feminist", characterizing her work in the ministry as having concerned itself with "self-help groups for prostitutes" and members of the "housewives' association".

Schoppe supported German involvement in the Bosnian War, although previously she had opposed military-based foreign policy.

[45] Schoppe's maiden speech to the Bundestag became "legendary",[10] and is seen as an important landmark for the feminist movement in Germany, as she was the first to bring the demands of women to parliamentary discussion.

[16][45][46] Her speech also introduced the Bundestag to the topic of marital rape,[16] which was finally made a criminal offense in Germany during her third term in office in 1997.

[15][16] Schoppe was one of the first women's affairs ministers in West Germany,[47] and built her office in Lower Saxony from having no employees to 72 staff members.