Joachim Volz looks into the camera in green surgical clothing. “My Catholic employer might like that,” says the chief physician at the Lippstadt Clinic. “Of course I’m not giving up.” He then calls on viewers to take to the streets with him on Thursday “against the Catholic ban on abortion and for the autonomy of my patients.” The demo is scheduled to start in the morning at Hammer Marktplatz – and end in front of the State Labor Court, where Volz is taking his clinic to court for the second time.
Volz heads the perinatal center at the Lippstadt Clinic (NRW). He has also been carrying out medically indicated abortions there for years. Those that, according to the law, are “medically indicated” “to avert a danger to the life of the pregnant woman or the risk of serious impairment of the physical or mental health of the pregnant woman”.
Unlike abortions in the event of unwanted pregnancies, these are expressly not illegal in Germany. However, after the merger of his Protestant clinic with a Catholic provider, Volz received instructions at the beginning of 2025 to no longer perform abortions – except in narrowly defined medical emergencies. The clinic referred to the special rights of the churches in labor law and the ethical criteria agreed in the new social contract. Volz complained. “Sending the patients away instead of helping them, I can’t do that and I won’t do that,” he told the taz last August.
The Hamm labor court rejected his claim in the first instance and argued that the Employers can make such requirements. Volz appealed. For him it’s not just about his own case, but about fundamental things.
The medical responsibility
The medically induced abortion is “an essential part of a coherent medical responsibility structure” and a “heart of gynecological care,” says a letter from the doctor, which is available to the taz. “Medical practice is not a modular system of arbitrarily prohibited individual activities.” In addition to Volz, the letter was signed by a number of leading prenatal doctors in Germany: Wolfgang Janni, Karl Oliver Kagan and Ingo Gottschalk.
The Lippstadt case is not the only one in which Catholic moral concepts are affecting women’s health care these days. In Flensburg, for example, the Protestant Diako Hospital and the Catholic Malteser Hospital are merging. The consequence: At the future Fördeklinikum, abortions will not be carried out in the event of an unwanted pregnancy.
“The unborn child has the same right to life and the same dignity as the mother,” said Malteser spokeswoman Franziska Mumm German medical journal. An abortion is therefore “fundamentally not an appropriate way” to deal with a pregnancy conflict.
The Pregnancy Conflict Act states: “No one is obliged to participate in an abortion.” A circumstance that providers or chief physicians repeatedly enforce for entire clinics. The Greens are now calling for legal clarification that this “nobody” in the law only refers to natural persons – and not to hospital management or providers.
Greens demand better care
Freedom of conscience is an “individual right,” says a motion that the parliamentary group plans to submit to the Bundestag in the coming week of the session. “A right to force other people to follow one’s own conscientious convictions is inconceivable.”
The Bundestag should ensure that hospital mergers do not “lead to a deterioration” of the already continuously deteriorating supply situation, according to the application. The Bundestag should ensure that hospitals employ enough staff who are prepared to carry out abortions. And it should oblige the states to fulfill their legally regulated supply mandate.
“We want clinics to have to offer abortions if care is not otherwise guaranteed,” says Ulle Schauws, women’s policy spokeswoman for the Green Party, to the taz. “It is untenable that a Catholic operator of a hospital like the one in Lippstadt rejects women and refuses them help even in life-threatening situations.” Schauws will demonstrate on Thursday alongside Joachim Volz, as will the Green parliamentary group leader Britta Haßelmann.