By Gudrun Schultz
GERMANY, December 20, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The Christian Democratic Union and Christian Socialist Union have jointly announced plans to change current abortion laws, making it illegal to obtain an abortion after 23 weeks into a pregnancy.
Johannes Singhammer, the parties’ spokesman for women’s affairs, said plans would “change the scandalous practice in Germany,” in an interview with the Munchner Merkur, Bavarian daily press.
“No sensible human being can remain calm when a child, which could live, is aborted shortly before its birth, just because it is handicapped, ” Singhammer said. “We must urgently rethink the value of life.”
The draft banning late-term abortion may be presented to the German parliament as early as next year. Although in theory German law protects the life of the unborn, in practice abortion is available at any time during pregnancy, under a law allowing abortion when the mother’s life is threatened. Abortion is technically illegal in the country, but abortions are not punished, regardless of when they occur in the pregnancy (see Abortion Laws in Germany at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_Germany).
In 2004 Germany offered an alternative to abortion or abandonment by introducing “drop hatches” in hospitals of several cities, which allow mothers of unwanted babies to leave them safely and anonymously inside the hatch, where an alarm alerts hospital workers of the child’s presence (see LifeSiteNews coverage at: https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2004/feb/04021606.html).