News

By Hilary White

  FRANKFURT AN DER ODER, Germany, April 16, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A court in Frankfurt an der Oder, Germany has sentenced a German woman to 15 years in prison for having killed eight of her newborn children between 1992 and 1998. The court ruled that, although a ninth child had also been killed, the time in which she could be charged for that crime had lapsed since 1988.

  42-year-old Sabine Hilschenz, a divorced unemployed dental assistant in the eastern state of Brandenburg, was found guilty of eight counts of manslaughter in 2006 for killing her children as they were born. The case is said to have shocked the German public and, since Hilschenz and her former husband had been members, under the communist regime, of the Stasi (East German secret police) it is raising questions about the long-term social effects of communism.

  Hilschenz told investigators that she had not actively harmed the children but that they had died of neglect and that she had been too drunk to remember either their births or their deaths. The children’s remains were discovered buried in flower boxes around the woman’s apartment and in an empty fish tank in the garage of her parents’ property in the town of Brieskow-Finkenheerd.

  During the trial, Hilschenz revealed that her husband had refused to have more than their first three children. She said that she had delivered her fourth baby in the toilet of their apartment, where it died. Her husband allegedly did not notice that or the subsequent eight pregnancies and secret births.

  And yet, under German law, the same children could have been legally killed before birth up to 12 weeks gestational age. German law allows abortion on demand in the first trimester of pregnancy, and the abortion can be paid for by the state if the woman is judged to be on a low income. In 1988 when Hilschenz’s fourth child was born, under East Germany’s communist regime, abortion was legal on demand up to 12 weeks. 

  In 1976, West Germany legalized abortion up to 12 weeks of pregnancy for reasons of medical necessity, sexual crimes or serious social or emotional distress, if approved by two doctors, and subject to counselling and a three-day waiting period. As of 1992, after the two countries were re-unified, a new law was passed permitting first-trimester abortions on demand, subject to counselling and a three-day waiting period.

  German women, moreover, have long had recourse to abortion in other countries near by such as the Netherlands, in which few or no legal restrictions exist.

  Editorial: Infanticide Goes Mainstream and Why Prolife Arguments Need an Update
  https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/feb/08022203.html

  SHOCK: Newborns Who Suffer are “Better off Dead” – “World’s Most Prestigious” Bioethics Journal
  https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/feb/08022201.html