By Jonathon Van Maren, European Conservative.
The nomination of a Constitutional Court judge who stated a child does not have human dignity before birth has reignited the abortion debate.
On July 11, the abortion debate in Germany suddenly and unexpectedly exploded.
It was the final day before the Bundestag’s parliamentary summer recess, and the nomination of three new judges to the Federal Constitutional Court was slated for a vote. Judicial candidates are nominated by political parties and must receive a two-thirds majority. The process is routine and usually proceeds without incident.
One of the candidates, Frauke Brosius-Gersdorf, is a professor of public law at the University of Potsdam who had advocated for the liberalization of Germany’s abortion laws. As First Things reported, Brosius-Gersdorf wrote in 2024 that “The assumption that human dignity applies wherever human life exists is a biological-naturalistic fallacy. Human dignity and the protection of life are legally decoupled.”
Abortion is illegal in Germany but, since 1995, has been permitted up until 12 weeks of pregnancy, and about 100,000 abortions occur every year. The German pro-life movement has been growing in strength over the past several years, and several organizations lobbied parliamentarians with their concerns about Brosius-Gersdorf. The Christian Democratic Union, which holds the “inviolable dignity of human beings in every phase of their development” as one of their party’s values, pulled their support for her nomination.
“She wants to implement a graduated right to life for unborn children according to their age—until 12 weeks, no right to life if the mother decides to have an abortion,” Alexandra Linder, the leader of Germany’s main pro-life federation Bundesverband Lebensrecht (BVL) told me. “We informed the Christian-Democratic parliamentarians, and they voted against her.”