2025 was not an easy year to fight for liberal abortion rights. In February, a parliamentary initiative to abolish Paragraph 218 in the Bundestag failed, and in July a campaign prevented the legal scholar from being elected Frauke Brosius-Gersdorf appointed Federal Constitutional Judge. She had previously spoken out in favor of reforming abortion rights. How to continue afterwards? The doctor Alicia Baier has written a well-founded and angry book on the current state of the debate.
„maternity is seen as the natural and social mission of people capable of childbearing. Anyone who evades this is not making a private decision, but rather is questioning a social order,” writes Alicia Baier at the beginning. This patriarchal order taboos menstruation, trivializes sexualized violence and declares the uterus after menopause to be worthless. But nowhere is “the perfidious appropriation of the childbearing body more evident than in the discourse surrounding abortion.”
Vicious circle of stigmatization and undercare
Like countless feminists before her, the doctor advocates for new regulations on abortion in order to “get the patriarchy out of the uterus.” According to Section 218 of the Criminal Code, abortions up to the 12th week after conception are only exempt from punishment and are not legal. Baier traces the vicious circle of stigmatization, lack of knowledge and undercare in the entanglement of political and medical contexts.
Alicia Baier: “Patriarchy in the Uterus.” Droemer Verlag, Munich 2025, 352 pages, 22 euros
Abortions take place in Germany around 100,000 times a year, 280 times a day. However, abortions are usually not considered basic health care for pregnant women. Only a minority of doctors and clinics offer abortions, many fear the high bureaucratic burden and the fear of stigmatization, others lack the training or generally reject abortions.
Abortions occur around 280 times a day in Germany – and yet only a minority of doctors and clinics offer abortions
Baier knows the problem: “I still remember a woman from Bavaria who had to call over 20 practices just to have the age of her pregnancy determined in an ultrasound. As soon as she said that she urgently needed to know the week of pregnancy because she was planning an abortion, she was turned away. ‘We don’t want anything to do with that’ was one of the sentences that was said on the phone.”
And if an offer is found, there is often a lack of freedom of choice, as readers find out. The gentler medical abortion method is used less often than is medically possible. And although the suction method is established for surgical procedures, doctors continue to use the outdated and riskier scraping method in around a sixth of cases.
A matter of days
The precarious state of care is caused by the legal hurdles that unintentionally pregnant women and doctors have to overcome: abortion before the 14th week of pregnancy, i.e. the 12th week after conception; the legally required consultation and subsequent 3-day waiting period; the long distances and the high own costs.
It shows the double standards: society exerts legal and time pressure, but at the same time prevents abortions from taking place earlier through waiting periods and shortages of care. Baier therefore suggests foregoing legal deadlines entirely: “In my opinion, at no point in pregnancy should it be okay to place the fetal right to life above the basic rights and health of pregnant women by law.” Even in countries like Canada or the Netherlands with no or significantly later deadlines, most abortions take place before the 9th week, according to the author.
Politically clearly positioned
Baier is not just a doctor but also a chairwoman the “Doctors for Choice” she founded. The Germany-wide network of doctors, students and people from other health professions is committed to dealing with pregnancies independently. The doctor has also been exposed to threats for just as long Abtreibungsgegner:innen affected.
She doesn’t allow herself to be intimidated by this: And so Baier is demanding more depth from the Union party when it comes to “life protection” – for example for children born – or is taking a stand against the conservative-oriented German Society for Gynecology and Obstetrics. She accuses him of often resembling abortion opponents in his choice of words and political positioning.
What would have to happen
Knowledgeable, sensitive to discrimination and controversial, Baier shows how half of the population is denied their autonomy and ability to reflect through criminal law. She consistently considers marginalized positioning. Above all, her experiences from everyday medical life expand the discourse to include a realistic, empathetic position.
What has to happen now? In addition to decriminalization, the author calls for the removal of barriers to access, the compulsory discussion of the subject in medical studies and the abolition of the institutional right to refuse. This sometimes legitimizes things entire clinics, which is why they should not carry out abortions. Despite the setbacks of 2025, it is clear that there is no shortage of suggestions, nor is there a lack of resilience and tenacity of a further generation of feminists.