Now everything is going very fast. Only six days after the Bundestag first dealt with the reform of paragraph 219a, the law amending the advertising ban on abortions is already passed this Thursday. It looks as if the coalition just wants to get rid of the issue quickly.
Elisabeth Winkelmeier-Becker does not want to know about it. It has now been discussed over a year, emphasizes the spokeswoman for legal affairs of the Union faction, as last Friday in the parliamentary debate, a left-wing MP complains about the pace of the legislative process. The positions are clear, the draft constitutionally, "because I see no problem at all".
Actually wanted the CDU politician - like her party - the Paragraph 219a not change at all. But now her party has found a compromise with the government partner SPD, which should complement the paragraph. In the future, doctors who perform abortions may publish this on their website. But that's all there is to it: you need to link to additional information, such as the method.
Compromise for the coalition peace
The compromise may pacify the coalition for the time being. He will not end the debate on abortion law. Even if the SPD now supports the change - they would have preferred to completely abolish the 219a. This also applies to the Greens, Left and FDP. They accuse the Union of a misogynist policy that plays into the hands of radical abortion opponents and so-called life-guards. Those who stand in front of the surgeries and distribute plastic embryos. Or show the doctors if they provide too much information on their websites. They would be happy about the bill.
As an example, the Green MP Ulle Schauws in the Bundestag debate last Friday called a mathematics student whose hobby was to show doctors who perform abortions. CDU politician Winkelmeier-Becker fought back: For such people she also has no sympathy - and turned to Schauws: "They seem a bit like the German environmental aid for abortion doctors."
The critics are particularly bothered that the compromise package - at the urging of the Union - includes a study on the health consequences of abortions. The Cabinet Minister for Health Jens Spahn has already approved five million euros for this. The study was "ideologically-motivated," says Hilde Mattheis (SPD). Nicole Bauer (FDP) says it is a "concession to radical life-guards".
REUTERS
Health Minister Jens Spahn
Really? Formally, the Union tries to differentiate itself from the life-support movement. And indeed, their direct links with politics, especially with the Union, have become less and less over the past few years, and proximity is no longer as pronounced as it used to be.
In the Union, hardly any Bundestag members are members of associations of the movement or address greetings to the "march for life", the annual event to which the umbrella organization of the movement, the Federal Association right of life, thousands protesters against abortions on the street calls. In 2010, members of the Federal Government had even sent greetings with Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, Ronald Pofalla and Annette Schavan.
Today, the new Conservatives are no longer considered life-guard figureheads: Minister of Health Spahn was hailed by abortionists for his planned study of abortions in Christian media. But he has also campaigned for pre-implantation diagnostics to be paid by health insurance companies. That did not absorb the movement well.
Parliamentarians act for Life-Guys Association
But in the dispute over the paragraph 219a shows how important the subject is still for a party that calls itself Christian and this bears in the name. Nine members of the Bundestag of the Union appear in a video of the Lebensschutzverein Durchblick, referring there under the slogan "For life and not for killing" position against a change or abolition of the advertising ban. The association has already initiated various life-support activities, including the "Embryo Offensive", in which small plastic models of embryos were distributed and sent.
He has just made a statement, says one of the CDU politicians, Patrick Sensburg, on demand. He does not know the club. He does not like it when people prevent access to practices and put pressure on women. But: "Life is one of the central issues in our society."
Comment on the topic
Another one that can be seen in the videos is Uwe Schummer. The former representative for people with disabilities sees himself as a "life-protector", he is a member of the "Christian Democrats for Life", to which the CDU leadership only last year withdrew the status as a special organization of the party. Schummer also says: He just gave an interview.
The opposition and women's rights activists are annoyed by such performances by CDU parliamentarians. They see it as an attempt to reverse the gains of women's rights in order to steal new right-wing themes. For the AfD also tries to collect the protection of life for itself.
"No longer ideological"
Social scientist Kirsten Achtelik, who published a book on the life-protectorate last year, describes the lobbying of the movement as a cultural struggle. However, this is no longer so strong in the CDU instead: "The CDU members who are located in the right-wing movement, are no longer organized in clubs and no longer ideological," she says.
"I do not think there's a real lawyer in either the CDU or the CSU." This sentence tweeted recently one of the most famous and radical abortion opponents, Klaus Günther Annen, after a performance of CDU MP Philipp Amthor in the TV talk show "Anne Will" on abortion law.
Annen has published one of the most detailed lists of doctors doing abortions on the Internet so far - and compared them to killers. A number of them have already indicated Annen. Abortions, he says unequivocally on his side, are comparable to the Holocaust, to Nazi euthanasia. He does what the whole scene does: be loud even though you are in the minority. On Twitter follow Annen just seven users.
Law of life movement sees itself on the upswing
How many people are organized in the movement, can be difficult to verify. However, after the one-year debate, at least the association sees itself on the upswing. The brochure "turning point § 219a StGB", it stands on the side of the association, would have many Bundestag members "gladly accepted and reordered". They had been given a "well-founded and clear collection of arguments" and, finally, the required scientific study on the psychological consequences of abortions had been commissioned.
Of abortion opponents Annen he had never heard, says the 26-year-old CDU man Philipp Amthor. The blonde man with the horn-rimmed glasses is considered conservative hope of the CDU. The issue of abortion law is important to him, so he has also given his face for the see-through campaign. "You are not born to a human, but as a human," says Amthor.
It's a sentence they've all said before: the rights activists with the plastic embryos and the members of the party with the C in their name. Amthor studied law. He likes to argue with the constitution and is careful to use the right words. "I'm far from giving any instructions to women," he said at "Anne Will."
Amthor: It's about paragraph 218 again
Recently, Amthor was really touched. After being the only man in a women's round at Anne Will and defending his party's position, a young girl wrote to him. Her mother told her during the show that the consultation had moved her mother not to abort at the time.
Show him, says Amthor, that this solution, that 218 and 219a are not meaningless. He would like to stick with it. Instead, however, the debate is trying to break the compromise: it is again about paragraph 218, the prohibition of abortion.
And this dispute, Amthor also knows, is highly emotional. The CSU deputy Alexander Hoffmann repeated in the Bundestag, what he had already said at the club's perspective in the video. An abortion should not be normal. One thing is overlooked in the debate: "The real problem is not solved with abortion."
From the plenum, a member of parliament calls out angrily, "This is our belly!"
Anger lies in the plenary hall. The Paragraph 219a debate has been heated for more than a year - on both sides. Even with the compromise, the dispute is not over yet.
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