Pro-Life Policies in Nazi Germany

by Peach Pie

Peach State Voice (Atlanta)

July 27, 2010

Dr. Ernst Rudin

The term "Freedom of Choice" as it pertains to abortion was invented by a Nazi SS propagandist as a means to entice Polish women to have abortions and use contraceptives. The Nazis wanted to ensure that there were less births of what they considered “untermensch” or unfit for life.

The Nazis came to power in 1933 and one of Hitler's first official Acts was to legalize abortion. While abortion rights were liberalized during the Weimar Republic the Nazis purposefully identified those they felt unfit to reproduce. Two years later in 1935 Germany a nation of 65 million people was performing 500,000 abortions each year on German women deemed healthy and fit to reproduce. The Nazis encouraged Aryan women to produce children and subsequently made it illegal for a healthy German woman to receive an abortion.

The Nazis left the dirty little matter of abortion and all its facets in the hands of a decidedly pro-abortion medical establishment set up in April 1933 by Dr. Ernst Rudin the head of the Nazi Society for Racial Hygiene. During the Weimar Republic [inter war years] marriage, sex and eugenic counseling centers were established. The Nazis used these files to target certain people for sterilization. Within a year of coming to power, the Nazis had started some 250 eugenic courts whose function was to decide who was worthy to procreate. These eugenic courts took applications from social workers and physicians urging sterilizations. These social workers and physicians were given the right to determine what female was unfit to reproduce and sterilized or a child that was unfit to live and destroyed.

On July 22, 1942, Hitler embraced the idea of abortion as an indispensable method of dealing with the non-German populations in countries under Nazi control. Hitler stated;

“They may use contraceptives or practice abortion--the more the better. In view of the large families of the native population, it could only suit us if girls and women there had as many abortions as possible. Active trade in contraceptives ought to be actually encouraged in the Eastern territories, as we could not possibly have the slightest interest in increasing the non-Germanic population."¹

On November 25 1939, the Reich Commission for the Strengthening of Germandom (RKFDV), an SS organization, issued this following decree in Poland:

"All measures which have the tendency to limit the births are to be tolerated or to be supported. Abortion in the remaining area of Poland [which was illegal under Polish law] must be declared free from punishment. The means for abortion and contraceptive means may be offered publicly without police restriction. Homosexuality [which was illegal under Polish law] is to be declared legal. The institutions and persons involved professionally in abortion practices are not to be interfered with by police."²

This order was put into place immediately upon occupation in all countries deemed un Aryan composed of mostly Slavs to the east. The Nazis were particularly brutal after they forced millions of Jews into ghettos throughout Poland. In a diary of a Polish Jew living in the Shavli Ghetto named E. Yerushalmi this entry was made for 13 July 1942:

"In accordance with the Order of the Security Police, births are permitted in the ghetto upon up to August 15, 1942. After this date it is forbidden to give birth to Jewish children either in the hospitals or in the homes of the pregnant women. it is pointed out, at the same time, that it is permitted to interrupt pregnancies by means of abortions. A great responsibility rests on the pregnant women. If they do not comply with this order, there is a danger that they will be executed, together with their families."³ All pregnant Jewish women arriving at concentration camps were immediately sent to the gas chambers.

During the Nuremburg Trials after the war, almost all the Nazi defendants were accused of "crimes against humanity" and part of those 'crimes' were promotion of abortion.

The most outspoken German critic of the Nazis was Dietrich Bonhoeffer; a German Lutheran pastor, theologian, and pro-Life advocate wrote:

"Destruction of the embryo in the mother's womb is a violation of the right to live which God has bestowed upon this nascent life. To raise the question whether we are here concerned already with a human being or not is merely to confuse the issue. The simple fact is that God certainly intended to create a human being and that this nascent being has been deliberately deprived of his life. And that is nothing but murder."⁴

Bonhoeffer wrote this poem:

"They came for the Jews,
and I [Germany] did not object, as I am not a Jew.
They came for the Catholics,
and I [Germany] did not object, as I was not a Catholic.
Finally, they came for me, and there was no one left to object."

Dietrich Bonhoffer was executed by the Nazis on April 19, 1945, in the shadows of Berlin burning and a mere three weeks before the war ended.

In conclusion, the Nazis were not anti-abortion. They converted entire hospitals to abortuaries. They were just selective on who should get an abortion and who should not. We must ask constantly what the terms “Freedom” of “Choice” actually mean.

Abortion prevents a life that has already happened, because the unborn is the second life to consider in any pregnancy. The Nazis, experts in killing, knew this and exploited it. When you make exceptions on what child may or may not be aborted, you are picking and choosing what life has value and what has none. No human has the right to pick and choose what life has value.

1 Harvest of Hate, 1954, pp. 273-4

2 Secret Nazi Plans for Eastern Europe, 1961, p.171

3 Pinkas Shavli, 1958, p.88

4 Ethics, pp.175-6