Research project

The project analyzes the reform of the abortion law (§218) during the German unification period as result of a decade-long public debate on reforming the outdated abortion law in West Germany. In the early 1990s the reform of §218 was accelerated by the idea of integrating East and West German criminal codes and was vastly influenced by legal experts such as a research group dedicated to abortion law at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law. The study will show how they became an important player in the “legal unification” of Germany. Their aim was to incorporate and balance strong opposing ideas of abortion, which were already part of decade-long debates between numerous groups (such as churches, pro-lifers, women’s rights movement etc.) and they planned to create a law reform they called the “third way”, which was essentially set between “pro life and pro choice” advocates. Additionally, this project investigates how GDR experts became less and less influential and were overruled by Western experts and consequently, the law reform did not lead to a liberal abortion policy many women’s rights groups had hoped for. Instead, §218 stayed in the criminal code and the liberal GDR law, which had basically legalized abortion already in 1972, became no further option.

Overall, the legal reform of §218 can be described as a balancing act for German society in times of great transformation. The influence of legal experts and their underlying science communication and lobbying strategies have never been investigated. Moreover, the case of §218 enlightens the entanglements between politics, public and scientific experts during the post-socialist transformation period and historicizes the legal reform in the perspective of bio/body politics as part of negotiation processes between experts, politics and the public sphere.