German Politician Condemned for Suggesting Connection between Abortion and Infanticide

Follows conviction of former communist secret policewoman for manslaughter of her eight newborn children

By Hilary White

GERMANY, April 17, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - German lawmakers are asking what is wrong with their society after a former member of the communist secret police of East Germany was convicted on eight counts of manslaughter for neglect that resulted in the deaths of each of her newborn children whose remains she hid. One answer to the question, seemingly obvious to some, has been deemed "unacceptable". Wolfgang Boehmer, premier of the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, was condemned for suggesting a connection between liberal abortion laws and Germany's "shocking" increase in infanticide.

This week, 42-year-old Sabine Hilschenz was sentenced to fifteen years in prison after she claimed in court that she had been too drunk to remember either the births or deaths of eight of nine newborn children.

Local politicians reacted to the revelations of the children's deaths with shock, asking how such crimes could have occurred and not been revealed for 16 years.

"We are looking at a crime on a scale that, as far as I can remember, has never been seen in the history of the Federal Republic," the Interior Minister of the state of Brandenburg, Joerg Schoenbohm, said in a statement.

"We have to ask ourselves how this incredible crime remained hidden over all these years. It's a question directed at relatives, neighbours, doctors and the authorities," he said.

But some answers to those questions are more welcome than others and some are calling for Boehmer's resignation after he equated infanticide with abortion.

Boehmer, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Party (CDU) and a gynaecologist, made the connection in early February. He noted to the news magazine Focus that East German laws had let women receive abortions until the 12th week of pregnancy. At the moment, German law, which was harmonized when the two Germanies were re-united, is the same although a woman needs to show that she has undergone "counselling."

Boehmer said the increase in infanticide in recent years "can be explained by the careless attitude towards early life in the new [eastern] states".

"Women decided without even having to give an explanation," said Boehmer. "That continues to have an effect today. It seems to me as if the killings of newborns -- although they have always happened -- are a means of family planning to some."

His suggestion of a correlation between infanticide and abortion has sparked outraged responses. Wolfgang Tiefensee, the federal minister responsible for the rebuilding of the east, said, "I find it outrageous for the past in East Germany and the current crimes to be named in one breath."

"Wolfgang Boehmer has slurred all eastern German women and equates abortion with the murder of children," Claudia Roth, head of the Green party, told daily Tageszeitung. "To be a woman and to have lived in Communist East Germany suffices for him as a reason for abuse and murder. It's not acceptable."

Incidents of infanticide are on the rise but not only in the territories of the former East Germany. The problem is becoming so common that, beginning in 2000, German hospitals began re-introducing the ancient medieval practice of baby-drop cupboards at which a mother could leave a child she felt she could not care for, without legal repercussions.

Last year it was revealed that up to 60 infants are being killed by their mothers every year in Germany. By mid-March six separate news items reported women killing or abandoning their newborn babies. One woman was accused of having beaten her baby to death a few minutes after birth. She told police that she wanted to hide her pregnancy from her "partner".