The number of abortions is increasing and the birth rate is continuing to decline in Germany. Women not only encounter personal challenges, but also digital hate being in this situation. Helpers such as grief counselor Simone Streif and head of the pro familia counseling center Jana Rabsztyn experience pressure from the outside as well.
A digital nightmare: Women face hate and threats due to their dicision to have an abortion
It’s Monday afternoon and there’s a tense and depressed mood in the room. In front of us, a laptop, Simone Streif is telling us about her experience with her patients in a video chat: “I know about women who have come to me and have actually been called murderers.” Simone Streif is a grief counselor who guides and supports women through the period after an abortion. She describes her vision like that: “I want to free them from this burden and help them let it go.”
I know about women who have come to me and have actually been called murderers.
Simone Streif
She would like to remain anonymous for her own protection and that of her family. Simone Streif does not want to have her home address or her face published. “The anti-abortion community is very strong across Europe, is very well networked, very
financially strong, very fundamentalist and (…) I am personally afraid of that” says Simone Streif when talking about keeping herself anonymous. According to Streif, hate on the internet not only has an impact on women who are affected themselves, but also have “an impression on all the women reading and seeing this and who then know what to risk”.
Many women in Germany have these experiences and fears, on the grounds that 103.927 abortions were carried out in Germany in 2022. Jana Rabsztyn, head of pro familia in Wilhelmshaven, sees the reasons as job losses, short-time work, inflation or special health and family circumstances. However, these are just assumptions and experiences from the expert, considering the lack of official statistics for terminating a pregnancy.
Declining birth rate: Are women in Germany consciously deciding not to have children?
Grief counselor Simone Streif also shares her experiences: “Perhaps one of the most common reasons is the lack of resources that are available to women. According to Jana Rabsztyn, financial difficulties are a trigger for social insecurity and women are unable to imagine pregnancy and raising a child in such a situation.
Simone Streif also tells us about women who have decided against pregnancy due to health risks or pre-existing conditions. Another reason is that mothers might feel like they can’t bring another child into the family because they’re afraid of not being able to satisfy the other children’s needs as well. In addition to that, women often lack a support network because relatives live too far away and “often contraception has also failed and the woman never wanted to have children, or not at this point in time”, says Simone Streif.
Midwife Leona Jansen also suspects that the healthcare system is not totally free of involvement in this development: “(…) the delivery rooms are closing, numbers of hospitals are becoming fewer (…)”, many women are afraid that they will not have a midwife or will not be able to reach the hospital in time for the delivery, she adds, “(…) especially for the first child, it is important for many to have a certain security.”
If you look at the development of the birth rate in Germany, you realize that this suspicion is not unfounded. The number of live births in April was 62,491 in the period from 2019 to 2021, in April 2022 this figure fell to 57,444 and in April 2023 it was only 53,668. Based on these results and the trend in abortions, it could therefore be concluded that more and more people in Germany are consciously deciding against having a child.
Faced with hostility and pressure: a permanent decision
In Wilhelmshaven, pro familia provided 291 pregnancy conflict counseling sessions in 2022. Rabsztyn is certain that no matter what reason led to the decision, no woman “decides on it lightly and recklessly”, as these women are usually in an emergency situation.
Midwife Leona Jansen confirms how difficult it is to make this decision. In her day-to-day work, she encounters women who are certain that they don’t want to keep the child, but still decide against an abortion. This is often due to the confrontation with different opinions and views. These women would want to carry and deliver the child, but do not want to keep it. Jansen reports: “There are various alternatives to an abortion that are offered to women during a consultation.” In Germany, for example, there has been a confidential birth since 2014; with this type of delivery, the identity of the woman remains completely secret, she is treated but no medical data is recorded. Simone Streif confirms that there are women who regret their “motherhood” in retrospect. She points us to the hashtag #regrettingmotherhood. There are thousands of posts under this hashtag on Instagram. Among many posts, you can find a lot of hostility towards women who regret their pregnancy.
The grief counselor suspects that some of these women were also faced with the decision of whether to carry the pregnancy to term or terminate it some time ago. She also suspects that these women may have been influenced in their decision by their environment. In order to support women in this decision-making process, there is mandatory pregnancy conflict counseling in Germany prior to abortions. Without such counseling, an abortion may not be performed in accordance with §219 StGB. Jana Rabsztyn, who carries out such counseling, emphasizes: “(…) it is actually the case that there are legal requirements that no one may influence a pregnant woman in her decision”.
A silent battle in the shadow
Even the helpers are often put under pressure from the outside. For example, Rabsztyn is regularly asked by others “(…) how many did you convince or were you unable to convince?”. As mentioned at the beginning, grief counselor Simone Streif also has to face similar questions and comments. When an influencer made her abortion public on social media this spring, Simone Streif was also confronted with hate on the internet. However, due to her anonymity, Simone Streif does not take the digital hate personally: “These people have hate, but certainly not against me. But I think if my face was out there, it would be different.”
Support in turbulent times: Offers of help for women in emergency situations
Women who find themselves in an emergency situation can call 116 016 throughout Europe for help and support. Information and advice can also be found online, on social media provided by local organizations and volunteers. Helplines in European countries for violence against women can be found under these links:
https://ec.europa.eu/justice/saynostopvaw/helpline.html or https://findahelpline.com/
RESEARCH | ARTICLE – Annika Knoke, Sandra Krauter and Emily Jeschin, Jade University of Applied Sciences, Germany
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