Sometimes everything has to go very fast in the family planning center in Hamburg-Altona - even if the message comes by fax. The sender: a clinic of the city. The message: A woman has had a baby and wishes a confidential birth.
Do not waste time now. An employee of the team goes to the hospital, leads a consultation and fills out the necessary documents with the woman. If necessary, directly in the delivery room, as psychologist Marina Knopf says: "And then sometimes only 20 minutes remain, to explain to the women, how a confidential birth takes place and what we now have to settle."
Confidential birth - since May 2014, women in Germany can choose this type of delivery. They get their child in a hospital or with a midwife, nevertheless, they can remain anonymous for the time being after the birth. They release the child for adoption and deposit their name, age and address in an envelope. Until the child's sixteenth birthday, the data remains locked up, then the child can seek contact with the birth mother.
If a mother wishes to have a life with her child, she can revise her decision until the adoption process is completed. The costs for the confidential birth takes over the federal government. This Tuesday, the Ministry of Family Affairs celebrates the fifth anniversary of the law.
Anniversaries are always the time to take stock. There were 570 confidential births in Germany from May 2014 to April 2019, says a spokesman for the Ministry of Family Affairs. 126 of them in 2018. So the offer is accepted. "The law works," says Family Minister Franziska Giffey (SPD).
But what effect does it have? Here the balance is not so clear. If you ask people who deal with confidential birth in their work, you will get mixed answers.
Sarah Heidi Engel / SPIEGEL ONLINE
Marina Knopf has been working in the family planning center in Hamburg-Altona for 29 years
Psychologist Marina Knopf has been advising pregnant women in the Family Planning Center Hamburg-Altona for 29 years. The confidential birth law has changed her work, Knopf says. At the start there was a large information campaign of the Federal Government, including help phone and own homepage. That had a positive effect, so Button. More women were in the office hours and would have consulted. Pregnant women who thought they were alone realized that there are people who can help them.
The family planning center has looked after nine pregnant women in recent years who wanted a confidential birth. The women came loud button from all social classes, including young people, students and women in their thirties. "We initially thought that mainly pregnant women would contact us who are in a threatening situation," says Knopf. But that did not come true. Rather, it was women who for a variety of reasons would keep their pregnancy secret from family and friends.
Above all, a hope was connected with the start of the law, says Knopf. "That it eliminates anonymous births, prevents child exposure, and closes baby flaps." But that did not happen. Rather, the law has created a new need that did not exist before. The result: "The number of children with unknown parents has risen in recent years."
This is also criticized by the children's aid organization Terre des Hommes. With the confidential birth, only one additional offer is created alongside another. Still, women can give birth to their children anonymously or take the baby in one of about 100 baby flaps across Germany. To this day, women use these options.
And despite these offers, it leads to child killing, continue to be exposed babies. Although there are no official numbers. However, Terre des Hommes raises an annual minimum number of cases through media research. In 2017, at least 19 dead and 4 living infants were discovered, in 2018 there were eleven dead and four live newborns.
A compromise - but not more
Anne-Kathrin Will, research associate at the Institute of European Ethnology at the Humboldt University in Berlin, has collected the statistics for Terre des Hommes. She calls for the abolition of the baby flaps, which were set up from 2000, so that women in distress can deliver their child safely and anonymously. "That was well meant then," says Will. "But mothers and children are left alone with this solution." The child did not know where it came from, the woman received no support.
The confidential birth is therefore a compromise for Will - but nothing more. She wants something else - that pregnant women get help in emergencies. "We need more advice," she says. But especially in rural areas, there are fewer and fewer contact points or reduced their consultation times, because in the area will be saved. Some women, even in times of the Internet, would not know that they could attend open consultations in times of need. That is not only due to lack of advertising campaigns. Society also needed to be more transparent with the topic. "Everyone can come in this emergency," says Will. "When we talk more about it, others dare to seek help."
How decisive the advice for women is, knows Marina Knopf from her daily work. Of the nine pregnant women who initially wanted a confidential birth, five later changed their minds. They chose a life together with their child - even if the circumstances seemed difficult at first.
It remains to be seen how the first children from confidential births will handle the information about their birth mothers from the envelope. "We are curious to see if eleven years into our counseling center, the first young people with questions," says Knopf. One thing is certain: "Our door is always open."