Today is International Women's Day and it is an interesting time to contrast the abortion situation in America with the policies of Hitler.

In recent times, conservative US politicians and judges have made a series of laws and judgments that are placing what some women feel are extreme restrictions on access to abortion.

Similar policies existed in the Third Reich. As discussed in the previous blog, Hitler was very keen on advancing the Aryan race while eliminating other races. Hitler felt that German women had an important part to play in this mission.

On 26 May 1933, Hitler brought in a series of changes to German criminal law that sought to simultaneously prevent doctors from conducting abortions with Aryan women while also allowing the same doctors to conduct sterilisations and other experiments on people who were not of Aryan origin.

Art. 219a was effectively a Code of Conduct for doctors, similar to the Code of Conduct gaslighting in the open source world. That law told the doctors they can't give women information about abortion. The law was subsequently repealed in 2022.

The more significant article of the law is Art. 226a. The gazette tells us that it was legislated on 26 May 1933 and published 29 May. The law states:

Wer eine Körperverletzung mit Einwilligung des Verletzten vornimmt, handelt nur dann rechtswidrig, wenn die Tat trotz der Einwilligung gegen die guten Sitten verstößt

In English:

Anybody who carries out bodily harm with the consent of the injured party is only acting unlawfully if the act violates common decency despite the consent.

An abortion would appear to violate the Nazi concept of common decency. Yet sterilizing and euthanizing people who are not from the Aryan race, for the Nazis, was not violating common decency.

The Nazi concept of consent was quite broad. One doctor had apparently euthanised more than 30 non-Aryan patients within six months of the new law.

An interesting point to note is that FSFE modified the constitution to sterilize the fellowship on the date 26 May 2018. The Fellowship was the body of volunteers. When the fellowship was founded, we were told it was a vehicle for activism. If the fellows can not vote in meetings and elections then they can't achieve anything at all. Therefore, it is ironic that the fellowship was mutilated and sterilized in this way on the anniversary of the Nazi-era law permitting sterilizations. Read more about canceled elections.