I agree so much. The current government isn't perfect by any means but Jesus cut them some slack. They are at power after 16 years of consecutive conservative rule. You can't change everything within one year. Moreover, they've taken over a country in the middle of a pandemic, then the biggest European war since WWII started and now there's that whole mess in the middle east. Like, I am also not 100% on board with everything but for a coalition of 3 vastly different parties who rule for the first time, and under all the conditions inherited and newly acquired, they are really doing a decent job.

Germany moving too fast? What are they? Snails?

It's still way too slow, FDP does their best to slow us down.

And the Selbstbestimmungsgesetz! Finally you don't have to answer F U N questions about e.g. ypur sexual preferences in order to be allowed to change your name and gender entry.

The headline really is misleading. Abortion is allowed and performed regularly before 12 weeks pc/14 weeks pm. It is more of a formal change because an outdated paragraph makes it a crime, yet it is decriminalized and not prosecuted.

The more problematic part of that paragraph was that "advertising abortion" is illegal, i.e. mentioning that you perform abortions in your office on a website etc was illegal and could still be criminalized. That put people in a position when they had to call office after office to ask whether they perform abortions instead of just googling it. That was a hassle and impractical and punishing women when they are in a vulnerable place to begin with. (Hell I can't even make a phone call to make a regular doctor's appointment.)

But the first part is mostly about language. Abortion being a crime that is not punished implies that women, despite having legal access to abortion, still do something wrong (and de facto illegal) in the eyes of the state and the law.

*than the less restrictive states in the US.

What sets the US apart is how wildly the laws vary by state, with 10 states currently allowing no exceptions for rape, incest, or life of the mother, i.e total, or near-total, bans.

In contrast, while many countries in Europe limit abortions to a point between 12 and 20 weeks, there are almost always exceptions and circumstances where an abortion can be granted medical approval.

It's really just social safety nets that Europe is more liberal about. Many things are fairly conservative. The protected designation of origin laws are a pretty good example.

Yeah at least in theory lol, some of those countries aren’t even very religious, would expect looser rules on this

I think that’s a bit of a far stretch and misleading to say it’s illegal but rarely punished etc.

It's illegal but not punished if those conditions are met. It's a legal detail due to the constitutional court saying, more or less, that you can't just legalise the killing of a human if it's not self-defence and at-will abortions can't count as self-defence as noone infringed on the woman's rights.

The state is required to combat abortions, but social and welfare means have precedence over criminal punishment. Germany has a very low abortion rate (5.4/1000 women), that's about half that of Poland (which is Catholic) and 1/3rd to 1/4th (depending on the numbers you look at) of the US rates, and that's with abortion being illegal in a lot of US states and probably getting undercounted. 1/10th of Cuba.

It is illegal but decriminalized under those conditions. Still have a lot of pre conditions to fullfill