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this post was submitted on 01 Nov 2023
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So... the punishment for doing something dangerous is life in prison? Someone who is administering an abortion themselves is desperate and probably not aware of services available to them. They're the most vulnerable in society; someone your government should be helping and protecting.
Further, this opens every single women who has had a miscarriage up to scrutiny. I don't know if anyone has been jailed for miscarrying in the UK, but it happens in the US through similar laws, and it is tragic and barbaric.
From the article:
Here's a particularly egregious example (This woman attempted to commit suicide by rat poison and survived, her baby did not).
While I agree you probably shouldn't use drugs while pregnant, obviously this won't stop someone with an addiction. It just causes further harm to marginalized people to criminalize this stuff. These laws are used to hurt the poor and the addicted, and social services are better spent preventing these sort of things instead of punitive action.
Life is nuts, over here in Germany the maximum for the woman is one year or fine. I don't think there's actually been a case like that and if there was judges would find every mitigating circumstance they possibly could. I mean German courts regularly acquit women who kill their child within the first days of its life by ruling temporary insanity, they're not known to not be understanding when people face exceptional circumstances they had no way to prepare themselves for.
It's gotta be on the books though as the availability of punishment-free at-will abortions hinges on the managed procedure in the first place, the state's constitutional duty to protect life requires it to minimise the number of abortions and welfare and said procedure (counselling where you'll be told about all those welfare programs, three days cooldown) as well as absolutely zero demand for or providers of back-alley abortions is the way it's done (providers, btw, face up to three years, six months to five years if against the will of the woman or putting her in danger)
It's kinda "but I would have gotten the building permit anyway, I'm legally entitled to get one!' -- "but you still got to apply for it" territory. Life, as said, is a nuts punishment for that kind of thing.
On the flipside authorities still might want to investigate miscarriages simply to make sure that noone else slipped the woman something.
The state would find it's money better spent through education and access to contraception, and opportunities for women.
I will also point out that fetuses are not people, so you are not protecting life by minimizing abortions by restricting abortions directly. If you are unsure of whether you feel if a fetus is a person or not, consider a hypothetical example: Consider a woman who has been told that they would be unable to carry a child to term. She conceives anyway, hoping the doctor is wrong. She endures multiple miscarriages against the advice of her doctor. Is she also a murderer?
These laws are written by people who cannot even imagine the lives that these women live. A cooldown period means multiple trips to the doctor. It means taking at least 2 days off work. It means finding child care and transportation for not just one day, but two. It also means obtaining the procedure is harder to hide, if she's in a situation where she needs to do that. It's incredibly burdensome and paternalistic.
I am not going to make any judgement of your character or insult you in any way. However, I do need to say this: comparing a woman's control over her own body to needing to obtain a building permit is DEEPLY REPULSIVE.
Does Germany also criminalize self harm (cutting)? Overeating? Recklessly engaging in sports without protective equipment? Should we not also give out fines and force people in front of judges for these activities?
No threat of law will stop back-alley abortions. These women are already knowingly risking their lives when they do this outside of the medical system. They would risk death. That is what it means to them.
All those, and more, are being done.
The right to life starts at nidation as that's when nature choses to attempt to bring a particular life to fruit, go argue with the constitutional court (you can safely skip everything from after the guiding principles to section C, that's the main reasoning the rest is context). Human dignity extends even further, protecting e.g. against bullshit pre-implementation diagnostics.
"X is not a person" is a rather weak argument in general. As that's the US reasoning I'll point you towards various adult people that the US has, in the past, not considered persons. That kind of reasoning is absolutely incompatible with the German constitution and the time frames Roe vs. Wade use to decide whether someone is a person or not are absolutely arbitrary: A foetus develops as, not to, a human.
Completely bullshit argument. Consider that she's lost in a desert with her kid without water, she carries it back to safety but it doesn't survive the trip. Is she a murderer?
You can't get counselling at the same place you get the abortion, conflict of interest. Also why would you take days off, counselling doesn't take longer than shopping (make an appointment!), don't you have weekends also why would taking a day off be an issue.
None of those involve another person.
Indeed, threat of punishment can't do that. That's why there's a flurry of social programmes and decriminalised abortions available. Believe it or not but back-alley abortions aren't a thing there, and neither is forbidding women to use highways to get to an appointment.
Generally speaking the whole thing is 99.99% uncontroversial in Germany. There's occasionally talk about details, e.g. Bavaria not getting its shit together when it comes to making sure that enough gynecologists provide abortions, but nothing that rocks the core foundations of the whole thing.
Then in my example you would consider that women to be a murderer.
Laws protecting fetuses should involve protecting women against domestic violence, and the suffering caused by losing a pregnancy through violence/another person's negligence. Also, I'm not terribly concerned with what international courts and governments think about fetuses being people, I think they're wrong.
A person can sustain it's own life without needing the body of another person (so I do not support late term abortions if the baby is able to live outside the womb, naturally). The US's terrible history with respecting human rights (slavery, indiginous peoples, immigrants) don't have much to do with fetuses, because fetuses depend directly on another, specific human body to survive.
If you don't consider this to be a good argument, that's fine. I know this is something people feel strongly about, and I'm not convinced anyone can be persuaded in an internet comment.
If she knowingly went into the desert without supplies and dragged her child there, or put herself in a situation where she was unprepared in a desert, yes she is a murderer. Not complicated.
If she did not have the mental faculties to know that deserts are dangerous, she is not a murderer. Such a woman would probably require a guardian to care for her (perhaps she is mentally disabled) and that person is now guilty of neglect/manslaughter.
If they were both kidnapped and dropped off in the desert, then there is still a murderer: The person who kidnapped them.
I suppose there is also the fourth option: She was forced to flee across the desert due to circumstances in her home country. This is a tragedy. This happens at the border between Mexico/USA. The US government is at fault for forcing refugees across an unsafe crossing. My government has built border walls in cities in the USA, so refugees die in the desert. This is by design, they did this knowingly. People used to illegally cross the boarder in civilized areas. Nobody knows how many people die in the desert, nor do they care. They care more controlling the bodies of their citizens than they do for our neighbors in the south. My government is cruel and oppressive, Germany is a much nicer place I'm pretty sure.
Even worse. More planning to be done. I mean, I guess counseling would stop people from getting abortions on a whim, because they're having a bad day. Oh wait, actually people don't do that because they're painful and mentally straining already, not to mention the societal judgement etc. (By the way, I have had a miscarriage when I was young. It was painful, I literally thought I was dying, and while I have not had an abortion, I am guessing the pain is about the same. Nobody is having abortions because it's an easy choice.).
My job would require this. Laws in Germany are likely different, with more worker protections. In America, low-wage workers generally don't get paid time off or sick leave, so cooldown laws here are tough on people without resources. It's probably less of a problem in Germany, where your government cares for your working class (I assume). However, a waiting period is still a barrier to reaching services.
But involving the justice system in another person's (bad) choices always produces good results, no? That's why you were arguing self-administered abortions should be criminalized in Germany, so the justice system can help them. It's true these examples I gave don't involve harming another person, but again, I don't consider a fetus to be a person.
I find it incredibly difficult to believe that the criminalization of the acts of desperate women to be uncontroversial... I'm betting if you polled people, or spoke to people outside of your social circle, you'd find that these ideas aren't so unanimously accepted.
That's already the case what are you on about.
I'm not terribly concerned what you think about fetuses being people: Not only are you wrong your arguments also are just as poor as the Roe vs. Wade reasoning.
Which would mean that personhood starts at the age of what, six or so? Certainly not before birth. Which means you're arguing for severely late-term abortions.
See I don't infantilise women like that, I don't think that women take the better part of nine months to make up their mind.
No. She got lost. Don't change my fucking argument. Getting lost in the desert and having a miscarriage both fall under "shit happens": No blame. Moreover, saying "women with certain medical conditions are not allowed to get pregnant, they must be sterilised" is fucking inhumane. Nature doesn't always follow our aesthetic preferences and the woman's desire to have a kid is just as valid as everyone else's, and murder isn't about aesthetics but intent. A woman getting pregnant is not intent to kill that doesn't even start to make sense.
The medical system, of course, would try to coax her into pre-implantation diagnostics, adoption, and whatnot. Which is where that particular problem belongs: In the medical and social, not legal, realm.
Counselling is meant to inform about all the medical stuff (if necessary), and show up possible paths forwards. If "having a bad day" means "got fired from job, partner got fired, too, and also the washing machine broke and flooded the apartment" then yes that's very much a thing that counselling is meant to address: Physical and financial security won't be an issue for the kid. The state got your back.
...that's an America problem. We don't have American conditions in Germany so don't try to make them an argument.
Helping pregnant women is not task of the justice system, that's responsibility of the health and social services. No court is getting involved.
In fact side note: The constitutional court considered resolving the rights conflict between growing and existing life on a case-by-case basis before court, they very quickly and emphatically dismissed that notion as being a privacy nightmare and thus the final call -- whether the rights conflict can be resolved in favour of the woman -- is up to the woman. Counselling makes sure that she's got all the relevant information to make that call, and the three days cooldown provide time to make it as well as bring heart and mind into alignment.
And before you think otherwise: It is illegal to pressure women during counselling.
If you're starving and walk into a bakery and steal bread you'll also get sentenced -- to a slap on the wrist, and the court is going to make sure that you'll get the help necessary for that to not occur again, help that was available to you and you should have accepted before you got into that situation. Likewise, states are required to make abortions accessible so women not having ready access to them doesn't occur. (Hence also my railing about Bavaria, our local backwater. Though the situation there is probably still better than in random blue US states).
On the flipside, if a woman goes ahead and says "I don't like the way Germany regulates abortions, I'm going to spend two weeks educating myself about abortions and another two to get the supplies, then do it myself just to show them who's boss" -- that is what the upper end of the punishment range is for. In that time span you could've gotten that abortion using regular channels, easily.
Oh and just for completeness' sake: All this is about at-will abortions, abortions for medical or criminal reasons are covered by self-defence,
There's no point looking at the US for examples. UK is a different country and works differently. You are reminding me of some pro guns Americans, who say that since guns are banned in the UK (they are not, they are controlled) we have stabbings all day long, while in reality there are more stabbings per capita in the US. Or another common example of Americans thinking that self defence is illegal here and if you kill a burglar you'll go to jail. While in reality there will be a proper hearing in the court and you'll walk free because you were using reasonable force to protect yourself and your family.
A lot of systems are crumbling in the UK due to Tory mismanagement, but the courts are still working as intended and do protect people, sometimes even from themselves.
Christ, this makes me sick.