With few doctors willing to commit abortions, Germany eases access to abortion pill

According to reports, both the number of abortions and the number of abortionists have been declining in Germany in recent years. And now, the abortion industry is looking to ease access to the abortion pill in order to drum up business.

Abortion is legal in Germany during the first three months of pregnancy unless the pregnancy is the result of rape or the woman’s health is at risk. (Deliberately ending the life of a preborn child is never necessary.) Committing an abortion outside of the law carries a sentence of up to three years in prison, according to DW. Still, about 100,000 abortions are committed each year in Germany, though that number has been declining.

The German Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) reported in September that abortions in Germany have dropped by 8.5% year over year. In the first quarter of 2021, there was a decline of about 7% — from 26,500 in the first quarter of 2020 to 24,600 in the first quarter of 2021. In the second quarter of 2021, there were 22,900 abortions compared to about 25,100 in the same period in 2020. The steady decline began in 2001.

According to DW, access to abortion has become limited in Germany due to a lack of doctors willing to commit abortions. Many abortionists are now retiring and abortion advocates say that young doctors aren’t being trained to commit abortions. The number of facilities that carry out abortions has been cut in half since 2003.

READ: Thousands march for life in Germany and Switzerland

Christian Albring, head of the German association of gynecologists, claimed that the pro-life activity at some abortion facilities plays a key role in dissuading doctors from committing abortions. “Nobody likes to carry out an activity for which they are publicly attacked and called a murderer,” he said.

As a result, three pro-abortion organizations — Doctors for Choice, Pro Familia, and Balance — initiated a pilot abortion pill project that offered abortions via telemedicine at home during the pandemic. The woman meets via video chat with a gynecologist to take the first pill after sending an ultrasound image and having a counseling session. It’s important to note that dispensing the abortion pill through telemedicine appointments opens the door for women to be coerced into abortions or take the abortion pill while experiencing high risk conditions that may go undetected and undiagnosed. Any ultrasound sent to a doctor via a computer upload can be altered.

The pro-abortion groups hope to now expand access to telemedicine abortions in anticipation of changes to the abortion law in Germany under the new government of Social Democrats, Greens, and neoliberal Free Democrats, which have promised to remove a portion of the criminal code that makes it illegal to advertise abortions.

The abortion pill is known to be four times more dangerous for women than a first-trimester surgical abortion, yet financially profiting from abortion appears to trump the safety of women in Germany as well as in the U.S., where a similar push to expand access to the abortion pill is taking place and where the Biden-Harris administration’s FDA just loosened the drug’s safety protocols.

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