The doctor is on trial for "promoting" abortions
On the website of General Practitioner Kristina Hänel different services are listed that patients can use in their practice: ECG, pulmonary function examination, pregnancy assessment, family planning and abortion. Anyone who clicks on Abortion will be redirected to a page where he or she will get information about abortions.
Inform forbidden: doctor must go to court
For this, the doctor must answer on Friday before the district court Giessen, because according to prosecutors, it violates paragraph 219a of our Criminal Code "Advertising for termination of pregnancy". It states among other things:
Anyone publicly offering, announcing (...) means, objects or procedures that are suitable for discontinuing pregnancy, pointing to this suitability, will be punished with imprisonment of up to two years or a fine.
Totally understandable, because as is clear from the previous paragraph 218, the abortion itself is fundamentally a criminal offense:
Anyone who terminates a pregnancy is punished with imprisonment of up to three years or a fine.
Informing about how to terminate a pregnancy would, according to our criminal code, be similar to tutorials showing how to deal with this thing that cracks bicycle locks.
Abortion only possible thanks to additional clauses
Okay, that may be a bit exaggerated. Abortion in court today is not quite as illegal as a bicycle theft (more!). Because additional and hard-won clauses and modifications of the two paragraphs make it quite possible for women in Germany? well informed - to decide for abortion and to have it professionally performed by a doctor or a doctor.
This may work well in practice, but in principle, an abortion is just a violation of law, and thus can processes such as the one against Kristina Hänel theoretically be instigated again and again? which can make life difficult for even the most upright physician.
70,000 people are on Hänels side
That's why the doctor now does not just want to win her case, but sits down? as well as the association Pro Familia - for the abolition of Paragraph 219a. To this end, she has launched a petition, which has now signed about 70,000 people.
On Friday, the doctor Kristina Hänel has to defend herself in court because she informs on her website that she carries out abortions (reason is paragraph 219a). Thanks to #changedotorg, 70,000 people are already behind them, including us. But it's about more than solidarity: it's about women's rights, health & freedom of information. There is still so much to happen. Abortions are also still prohibited in Germany (with exemptions that protect against prosecution). So, in a sense, I too am a criminal - just like about 100,000 more women per year. # 219a #prochoice
A post shared by NIKE VAN DINTHER | JANE WAYNE (@nikejane) on Nov 21, 2017 at 2:07 pm
By the way: At Hänel, it's not the public prosecutor's office who came up with the idea of running their case. As the Frankfurter Rundschau reports, it was civilian custodians who revealed their alleged violation of the law. According to her lawyer, her client collects between 20 and 30 ads per year from Christian fundamentalist abortion opponents.
Our Abortion Law - a legacy of the Nazis
Understandably, abortion is always emotionally charged and central to some ideologies. How we personally stand for that is one thing. But the law would have to regulate such a topic clearly? in accordance with the principles of our modern, enlightened society, in which every human being has the right to a self-determined life and the free development of one's own personality.
But instead, the legislature is stuck to a roughly 150-year-old paragraph nucleus, which he adjusts from time to time, depending on the volume of the protests or mood of the government. Not even the younger sister of 218, paragraph 219, who by the way is a Nazi original of 1933, does not seem to need real reform and modernization in the opinion of the legislator.
But maybe the Hänel process will do something. In any case, it would not have been possible without the Nazi addition.
Here you can support her petition.
