Abortions: Legalization in Germany for the time being failed

A legislation for the legalization of abortions in the first twelve weeks has failed for the time being. The Legal Committee of the Bundestag decided not to make any vote on the corresponding draft law in the Bundestag. A special meeting of the committee would have been necessary for this – for which, among other things, by resistance from the Union and the FDP, there was no majority. The committee had debated the controversial matter until evening.

The draft for the legalization of abortions is “incompatible with the standards that the Federal Constitutional Court set out for a regulation of the termination of pregnancy,” said CDU legal politician Günter Krings on the evening.

Disappointment, on the other hand, at the SPD and the Greens, who had significantly promoted the draft law. “The fact that the Union and FDP are not willing to enable usual parliamentary processes is not worthy of the parliamentary practice of our high house and a fatal signal for our democracy,” said the women’s policy spokeswoman for the Green Group, Ulle Schauws, and the SPD legal politician Carmen Wegge in the evening in a common statement. Without the support of Union and FDP in the legal committee, there might have had a “random majority with the AfD” in order to bring the draft to the vote. “We don’t cross this red line,” both made it clear.

Previously, several constitutional lawyers, doctors and scientists had commented on the controversial draft law in a three -hour hearing. The draft, which 328 members of the Bundestag had submitted as a so -called group application in autumn 2024, stipulates to regulate pregnancy abortions up to the 12th week after conception outside the criminal code. An expert commission made a corresponding recommendation in April.

So far, an abortion in Germany has been generally ill. This is regulated by the paragraph 218 in the Criminal Code – which the application initiators wanted to abolish by law. Nothing will become of this before the Bundestag election and most likely until the establishment of a new Bundestag.

In the committee meeting it became clear how far the positions are partly apart among experts in the same discipline. In particular, the constitutionality of legalization and the question of whether it is unintentional pregnant women in Germany actually have to do with larger bottlenecks in medical care.

For example, while the lawyer Frauke Brosius-Gersdorf argued that the previous judgments of the Federal Constitutional Court would not stand in the way of legalization, the lawyer Frauke Rostalkski spoke of an “unconstitutional” approach of the application initiators. The AfD MP Beatrix von Storch warned of a “lighting of society”, should there be a legalization of abortions.

Others, such as the scientist Rona Torenz, argued that the current legal regulation cemented the stigmatization of those affected and doctors who have interrupts. She also referred to the sometimes three -digit sums that women would have to pay for the procedure.

The initiative of the 328 MPs also aimed to make pregnancy dropouts into the standard service of health insurance companies in the future – and at least to relieve those affected financially.