The title of the specialist congress, which was streamed onto the Internet from Berlin, accentuated the historical dimension of the state ban on abortion: “150 years of Section 218 of the Criminal Code”. The rather heterogeneous planning group of associations, universities and health organizations, including the Humboldt University, the Arbeiterwohlfahrt and Pro Familia, had no festive event in mind, but also no purely academic exercise. The interdisciplinary scientific lectures and discussions were supplemented by stories from women affected about their criminalization and stigmatization, as well as reports by German and international activists about their actions against the abortion ban. The aim of the conference was to show new ways through a change of perspective,which do not lead to the old rigid controversy between the protection of life and the right to self-determination. The final declaration of the organizers calls for a departure from criminal law as a place of regulation, so that a modern, comprehensive legal regulation of abortion can be found for “Germany”.

How demanding the project of a change of perspective is, also in view of the committed opposition, which from the beginning, and especially in the Weimar Republic, campaigned for the abolition of Section 218 of the Criminal Code or at least for fundamental reforms, was already outlined in the historical presentations at the beginning. In her lecture on the development up to 1945, the political scientist and lawyer Sabine Berghahn traced the connection between the threat of punishment and a conservative national population policy, but also dealt in detail with the disagreement between the left opposition and the various factions of the women's movement over the question of what the ban on abortion should be opposed.

As early as the Weimar Republic, the political decision to maintain the abortion ban, which is subject to punishment, instead of opting for a time limit solution, was given concrete form by the case law. In two rulings in 1927 and 1928, the Reichsgericht established a medical indication that granted the pregnant woman and doctors a state of emergency beyond the law and thus impunity if the abortion alone was able to free the pregnant woman "from the danger of death", thus making it the legislature easy to remain inactive despite the pressing protests and calls for more far-reaching reforms. Until the early 1970s, the punishable abortion ban was maintained in the GDR and in the Federal Republic, albeit for different reasons,as the historian Dagmar Herzog and the health scientist and former chairwoman of Pro Familia Daphne Hahn clearly demonstrated in their video dialogue. While a deadline solution was decided and implemented in the GDR in 1972, the Federal Constitutional Court overturned the deadline solution passed by the German Bundestag in 1974 with a narrow majority. This decision found its continuation in the second decision of the Federal Constitutional Court of 1993, with which the "justifying time limit regulation with consultation obligation" decided by the Bundestag in 1992, which should ensure the necessary approximation of the abortion law after reunification, declared unconstitutional and the basis for the 1995 resolved regulation of the abortion ban was taken.

The United Nations has already warned Germany

While in the prevailing German legal, political and also social discourse with these two highest court judgments, which are passed almost twenty years apart, the terrain for realistic reforms appears to be narrowly defined, a look at international developments opens up perspectives for action. In this sense, the two lawyers Paulien Schmid from the Legal Team of Doctors for Choice and Valentina Chiofalo from the Free University of Berlin spoke about “human rights perspectives and the end of the long silence”. With reference to the so-called reproductive rights, which include the right of individuals and couples, human rights committees of the United Nations are free from discrimination, coercion and violence to determine the number,to decide the interval and time of the birth of their children, demanded access to safe and legal abortion and criticized the German legal situation.