Head of German Catholic laity wants to ensure that abortion is available throughout Germany

 How the issue of abortions is troubling the Catholic Church

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Catholic Church: The Catholic Church takes a particularly strict stance in dealing with abortions.

The Catholic Church takes a particularly strict stance in dealing with abortions.

The Government coalition wants to strengthen women's self-determination and the Church is heatedly debating its position.  The President of the Central Committee of German Catholics is being criticised - because of a sentence with explosive content.

There is hardly a topic that makes the waves in the Catholic Church beat as high as the question of abortions.  Fuelled by the overturning of "Roe v. Wade" in the USA, but also by liberalisations of abortion law already passed or planned by the Government coalition, the debate is now once again being bitterly fought within German Catholicism.  The latest trigger was an article by the President of the Central Committee of German Catholics (ZdK), Irme Stetter-Karp, in Die Zeit.  In the article, Stetter-Karp spoke out in favour of retaining the mandatory counselling in pregnancy conflicts stipulated in Section 218 of the German Penal Code. "The life of a child can only be protected if the mother can say yes to her child in a self-determined way," writes Stetter-Karp.  And: an abortion is "not a regular intervention and must not be treated as such".

None of this sounds particularly conflictual.  The President of the largest Catholic lay body promotes the protection of unborn life and counselling opportunities for women.  So why the fuss?  The debate ignited over a sentence at the end of the text: "At the same time, it must be ensured that the medical intervention of an abortion is made possible throughout the country." The Bishops' Conference reacted indignantly: This position, according to which a nationwide offer of abortions is necessary, contradicts the position of the German Bishops' Conference, press spokesman Matthias Kopp declared.

The conservative women's initiative Maria 1.0 even demanded Stetter-Karp's resignation.  Four conservative participants in the Synodal Path followed up with a guest article in Die Welt on Tuesday: The demand that abortions should be equally accessible as far as possible everywhere in Germany is "ultimately based on the idea of a merely superficial supply mentality in which fair distribution (across the board) is the decisive criterion - without orientation towards the good", wrote the theologians, Katharina Westerhorstmann and Marianne Schlosser, the philosopher of religion, Hanna-Barbara Gerl-Falkovitz and the journalist Dorothea Schmidt of Maria 1.0.

When the Pope ordered the withdrawal of counselling in 1998, Stetter-Karp struggled hard with her church.

Stetter-Karp had previously defended herself against the criticism which has, at times, been massive: if a woman decides to terminate her pregnancy after counselling, it must also be possible to have it carried out.  This is what the law provides for.  Medical care in Germany is not guaranteed nationwide in this respect.  "All the rights to self-determination are of no use if the obstacles are insurmountable," said Stetter-Karp.

Abortion and concern for women in distress have long been issues for Stetter-Karp.  In 1998, Pope John Paul II decreed that church counselling centres should withdraw from pregnancy conflict counselling.  Stetter-Karp struggled with her church at the time, as she told the Süddeutsche Zeitung in May.  She was an employee of the Rottenburg-Stuttgart Diocese at that time, risked her job and founded the civil association, "Donum Vitae" with many other Catholic lay people, which still issues the necessary counselling certificates for abortions without punishment and, according to its own description, counsels "towards life", but at the same time "respects the freedom and dignity of women".

Due to the Biblical prohibition of killing and the human dignity derived from the image of man in the image of God, the Catholic Church takes a particularly strict stance in dealing with abortions. Pope Francis only recently again compared abortions to murder for hire.  "Human life is to be absolutely respected and protected from the moment of conception," the Catechism states in Section 2270. Canon law provides for excommunication in Canon 1397 § 2 for anyone who performs or participates in an abortion.  That the Holy See has in the past been happy to turn a blind eye to clerics involved in abortions is, of course, another matter.

The attitude towards abortion is closely connected with the Catholic doctrine of the animation of the foetus, that is, the question as to when unborn life has a soul at all.  However, this doctrine did not always exist in this form: it was not until 1869 that Pope Pius IX, in the Bull, "Apostolicae Sedis", abolished the interpretation that had applied until then, according to which there was a difference between the inanimate embryo of the early weeks of pregnancy and the animate foetus.  The background to this was Pius' decree of 1854, according to which the Virgin Mary was already immaculately conceived, that is, already free from all original sin in the womb.  She must therefore have possessed a perfect soul from the beginning.

The Protestant Church also supports the protection of life.  However, it considers abortions to be justified in individual cases, for example if the physical or mental health of the mother is in danger, or if the pregnancy was the result of rape.  In the Jewish faith, the soul does not enter the body until the 41st day of pregnancy; moreover, the life and health of the mother have priority.  It is similar in Islam.

After the abolition of Paragraph 219a, 218 is now to be revised as well

After the Government coalition won the election, much was written about the dwindling influence of the churches on politics and society.  Nowhere is this cultural change more visible than in abortion law: in the coalition agreement, the reforms are only under the heading "reproductive self-determination". Critics say that this completely ignores the constitutional need to protect the unborn child.  The abolition of Paragraph 219a, the ban on advertising abortions, will probably not be the end of the matter. Federal Minister for Women's Affairs, Lisa Paus has already announced her intention to revise Paragraph 218.  The Green Party wants to set up a commission to review the paragraph by December.

The core issue is whether abortions still have to be regulated in the Penal Code in the future.  Up to now, abortions up to the twelfth week have been a criminal offence, but after certified counselling they remain exempt from punishment.  It was a hard-won compromise that some in the Catholic Church in Germany swallowed rather reluctantly 30 years ago.  At the time, Cologne Archbishop, Cardinal Joachim Meisner complained of "unchristian, even anti-Christian tendencies".  Now the Catholic Church is in the paradoxical position of having to defend a regulation today that it grudgingly accepted at the time.

"We actually have a very good situation in Germany.  I don't know of any legislation in the world that tries in such a differentiated way to keep the legal interests of both the unborn child and the woman in mind," says Regine Hölscher-Mulzer, a consultant for pregnancy counselling at the Social Service of Catholic Women.  However, according to Hölscher-Mulzer, the social debates also show "that the existing regulation is less and less shared or understood".  She hoped that the commission for the examination of Paragraph 218 would have equal representation and that church and disability associations would also be involved.