One of the curious aspects of the historiography of abortion in Germany is that it is a commonplace to assert that Weimar saw Germany enact some of the most liberal approaches to abortion in Europe while the postwar FRG had some of the most stringent anti-abortion legislation in Western Europe. Now both of these truisms can obscure more than they enlighten; Weimar reformism sometimes came packaged with eugenicist precepts or other illiberal ideals and focusing only on FRG statutes ignores the wider Europeanization of health care. These two extremes though leaves abortion in the Third Reich in an ambiguous position. One one hand, there were lines of continuity between Third Reich and Weimar over the darker aspects of sexual reform. Conversely, the Third Reich did reintroduce legislation restricting abortions and the abortion rates for Aryan Germans did plummet under Hitler. On a broad level though, the Third Reich was hostile to abortions and those abortions it did encourage were in sync with the racialist ideology of the NSDAP.

Imperial Germany had codified restrictions against abortion and abortion providers in §218-220 of the German penal code. Weimar reformers in the 1920s advocated for a decriminalization of abortion and a consolidation of these various laws. In 1926, the Reichstag consolidate §218-220 into a single law, §218, which reduced sentences, made provisions for medical-based abortions, and carried penalties for abortions carried out without the consent of the mother or for profit motives. The KPD had made the abolition of §218 entirely one of its minor issues in the 1930s. The KPD adapted this stance partly for tactical reasons. Making abortion an issue would highlight bourgeois hypocrisy, put the SPD on the defensive as it championed §218, and possibly win over working-class women voters. Furthermore, the KPD's leadership also hewed towards the idea that legalizing abortion was one step towards creating a society that would not need abortions.

The NSDAP did seize upon the affiliation of the Weimar left with looser abortion laws or even the complete legalization of abortion as an electoral issue. Goebbels's propaganda would periodically claim that the various sexual clinics were send of vice and there were exposes in NSDAP newspapers on the alleged horrors of Soviet abortion clinics that robbed women of their motherhood. It thus was no real surprise that the Reichstag under Hitler's chancellorship reintroduced §219-220 into German law in May 1933, closed down various sexual health clinics, and purged the German medical establishment of abortion advocates. Himmler likewise ordered the Gestapo to take a special interest in abortions and the head of the SS linked abortion with Jewish attempts to denude Aryan women of their fecundity. The SS launched a visible and public campaign against abortionists in 1937, and increased some ninefold the number of prosecutions for violating the strengthened anti-abortion legislation. Ironically, this restriction of abortion was part of a larger movement that the NSDAP framed as "freedom of choice" for medical health as it shuttered local health offices and centralized German healthcare. When the state reopened some of these health centers, the emphasis was not on preventative care or birth control, but rather focused on encouraging births, natal care, and genetic health.

This centralization of medical health became one of the corners where abortion in the Third Reich prospered slightly. The strengthening of doctors' hands in the care of their patients meant that it became the prerogative of medical professionals, not their patients, to decide when abortions were warranted. Abortions could be justified in the case of women who transgressed various National Socialist norms such as loose morals, cavorting with racial undesirables, or other crimes against National Socialist womanhood could find themselves subject to forced abortions if pregnant prior to their sterilizations. Women could also game the ideological system to gain an abortion by claiming that their ability to bear future children was at risk because of their current pregnancy or that the fetus was racially compromised. But the majority of abortions performed under the Third Reich were often not consensual. While the state did restrict Aryan women's rights to an abortion, the state took a liberal approach to non-Aryan women. The influx of non-German forced workers into the Reich meant that a number of these non-German women were subject to all sorts of sexual exploitation. Pregnancy for these women not only undermined the goal of Aryans winning the "motherhood race" but also cut into their productivity. Doctors at various industrial concerns' clinics would often perform abortions for these forced workers. The consent of the women for these operations was never an issue.

Nonetheless, even given various back-alley abortions, the abortion rates for German women fell precipitously under Hitler's rule. The state had eliminated most of the avenues Weimar women had for this procedure and it rejiggered the German health system to minimize women's access to issues of sexual health. Abortions had to take place on terms set by the state and the barriers for an abortion were quite high. Although the Reich's legal authorities seldom enforced the 1943 expansion of the law giving the death penalty to abortion providers, it was clear that the state was opposed to abortion.

Abortion under the swastika represented the worst aspects of both its Weimar predecessors and FRG descendants. For all of its natalist language and Christian moralizing, the FRG's strictures against abortion were still bounded by legal norms and procedures. This was not the case with the Third Reich which bent or ignored laws to suit the state's purposes. By the same token, Nazi approaches towards abortion encapsulated Weimar's reformism at its most controlling. Weimar's at times highly paternalistic approach to women's sexual health would still acknowledge issues of women's consent and education on sexual matters. These were two issues that never factored in a substantive manner during the Third Reich's restructuring of women's health care after its seizure of power. The Third Reich was only amenable to abortion as it applied to the supposed genetic health of the whole Aryan population. Individual women's choices in this matter were irrelevant to the Third Reich's highly-selective encouragement or broader restrictions of abortion.

Sources

Grossman, Atina. Reforming Sex: the German Movement for Birth Control and Abortion Reform, 1920-1950. Oxford: Oxford U.P., 1998.

Pine, Lisa. Nazi Family Policy, 1933-1945. Oxford: New York, 1999.

Stephenson, Jill. Women in Nazi Germany. London: Routledge, 2015