Sexual Self-Determination is a Human Right!
Living and loving without paternalism
Christian fundamentalists gather every year in September in Berlin together with leading members of the right-wing populist party “Alternative for Germany” (AfD) in front of the Federal Chancellory to begin their “March for Life.” They want to bring back policies that have recently been eliminated in Ireland and are still normal in Poland: They demand an absolute ban on abortions and criminal prosecution of women and the doctors involved. According to their worldview, abortion is “prenatal infanticide” and murder. They talk about a “babycaust” and diminish the horrors of the actual Holocaust by comparison.
The fundamentalists’ “pro-life” worldview contains a total control of women* and the reestablishment of the “old order” with a heteronormative nuclear family as its center. As a consequence, girls* and women* should not be allowed to make decisions about their own lives and bodies. These fundamentalists are disgusted by gender equality and by diverse ways of life, for example stepfamilies, same-sex or temporary partnerships, single parents, or flat sharing with or without children.
The same fundamentalists also try to overwhelm doctors — like Kristina Hänel — with indictments according to § 219a of the German Criminal Code. According to this paragraph, first implemented under National Socialism, doctors may not publically declare or advertise that they perform abortions. The fundamentalists defame doctors as “mass murderers,” attack them online and attempt, sometimes successfully, to prevent family planning clinics from being opened.
These anti-abortion activists organize militant activities such as “sidewalk consultations” in front of clinics and intimidate women who are looking for help. They pressure clinics to stop offering abortion services. They spread lies about how pregnancies work, about biology in general and about the psychological consequences of abortions.
These activists also agitate against sex education in schools. They instrumentalize disability by associating the right to an abortion with prenatal selection due to genetic illness or disability.
In Ireland, the pro-choice movement had a great success despite the resistance of Christian conservatives and fundamentalists: A constitutional ban on abortions has been removed.
We want to stand against these reactionary groups and their growing political and social influence in Germany.
This is why we call every year for demonstrations against the “March for Life” at the Brandenburg Gate. More information about this year’s demonstration is on our homepage.
We demand:
- The immediate repeal of §219a of the German Criminal Code and free access to information about abortion
- Comprehensive information about and cost-free access to birth control
- Cost-free access to “Plan B” as emergency birth control
- Unlimited access to legal abortion and the repeal of §218 of the German Criminal Code
- Training in abortion methods in medical schools
- Gender- and culture-sensitive sex education for all
- Comprehensive legal recognition for all forms of cohabitation and partnership
- Social and economic support from the state and necessary infrastructure for anyone who decides to have a child so that they can freely plan their own lives
Sexual self-determination is a human right!
Everyone must be allowed to make their own decisions about family planning and their sexuality without discrimination. They must all be supported in using their rights—independent of their origin, gender identity, sexual orientation, oder social, economic and health situation.
This is how you can support us:
www.facebook.com/PRO.Familienplanung
www.instagram.com/prochoice_de/
*Spelling with an asterisk is an attempt to make identities beyond the gender binary visible. Spelling women* with an asterisk indicates that not only cis-gender women can be pregnant. People with a uterus are not all women, and not all women can have children. The asterisk stands for people who are not included, or don’t want to be included, in the gender binary. The category of “women” is still used as a social construct, not as a biological category, in order to represent the ideological projections and constructions of the “pro-life” activists.
(Source: “Kulturkampf und Gewissen. Medizinethische Strategien der »Lebensschutz«-Bewegung” von Kirsten Achtelik / Eike Sanders / Ulli Jentsch)