Paragraph 218
독일 형법 제218조
The article of the German penal code that punishes abortion. In force from 1871 with the penal code of the North German Confederation, it sent pregnant women and those who helped them to prison. In the Weimar years it was the target of a campaign by the left parties, doctors and writers; penalties were reduced in 1926, and the Nazis added the death penalty in 1943. East Germany legalised abortion in 1972, and reunified Germany left it unpunished, subject to counselling, from 1995.
In depth
Paragraph 218 of the Reich penal code (promulgated 15 May 1871, in force 1 January 1872) took over the text of the North German Confederation’s code unchanged.
Paragraph 218. A pregnant woman who intentionally aborts her fruit or kills it in the womb shall be punished with penitentiary of up to five years.
If there are mitigating circumstances, prison of not less than six months shall apply.
The same penal provisions apply to anyone who, with the pregnant woman’s consent, has applied or administered to her the means of abortion or killing.
§. 218. Eine Schwangere, welche ihre Frucht vorsätzlich abtreibt oder im Mutterleibe tödtet, wird mit Zuchthaus bis zu fünf Jahren bestraft.
Sind mildernde Umstände vorhanden, so tritt Gefängnißstrafe nicht unter sechs Monaten ein.
Dieselben Strafvorschriften finden auf denjenigen Anwendung, welcher mit Einwilligung der Schwangeren die Mittel zu der Abtreibung oder Tödtung bei ihr angewendet oder ihr beigebracht hat.
Paragraph 219 set up to ten years for anyone paid to supply the means, and Paragraph 220 at least two years for an abortion without the woman’s knowledge or will. From 1905 Helene Stöcker’s League for the Protection of Mothers called for repeal, but in 1908 the general assembly of the Federation of German Women’s Associations rejected Camilla Jellinek’s motion to abolish it.
In the Weimar Republic 81 USPD deputies moved to repeal Paragraphs 218 to 220 in July 1920, and 55 SPD deputies proposed leaving abortion by a doctor in the first three months unpunished. The KPD brought repeal and amnesty bills in 1922 and 1924; none passed. A law of 18 May 1926 reduced ordinary abortion from a felony to a misdemeanour, replacing penitentiary with prison and lowering the minimum to one day. In 1927 the Reich Court allowed a doctor to terminate a pregnancy to avert a present danger to the woman’s life or body that could not be averted otherwise.
The German Medical Assembly of 1926 estimated 500,000 to 800,000 illegal abortions a year with some 10,000 deaths. The struggle peaked in 1929, when Käthe Kollwitz, Alfred Döblin, Kurt Tucholsky and the film Kuhle Wampe took up the subject and Friedrich Wolf’s play Cyankali caused a furore. When Wolf and the physician Else Kienle were arrested in February 1931, accused of performing abortions for profit, mass protests led by the KPD set up “fighting committees against Paragraph 218” in almost every large city. A “committee for self-accusation”, with Einstein among its members, called on women and doctors to denounce themselves en masse. The movement faded after the two were released.
On taking power in 1933 the Nazis again punished advertising or offering abortion, and the 1935 amendment of the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring allowed “eugenic” sterilisation and abortion. A Reich Central Office for Combating Homosexuality and Abortion was set up in 1936. From 1943 abortion that “continuously impaired the vitality of the German people” carried the death penalty, while forced abortions were performed on women forced labourers. The death penalty was abolished in 1945.
East Germany allowed abortion only on medical grounds from 1950 and legalised it within twelve weeks in 1972. In West Germany the Stern cover “We have had abortions!” of 6 June 1971 became a milestone of the campaign. A twelve-week rule passed in 1974 was struck down by the Federal Constitutional Court in 1975, and from 1976 abortion went unpunished only on medical, criminological, embryopathic or social-hardship grounds. After reunification a law of 1995 made abortion within twelve weeks after counselling unlawful but unpunished, and in 2022 Paragraph 219a, which barred doctors from informing the public about abortions, was repealed.