National politics/local identities: Abortion rights activism in post-wall Berlin

Feminist Studies

Volumn 25, Issue 3, 1999, Pages 601-631

  Wuerth, Andrea ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 0033197350     PISSN: 00463663     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/3178659     Document Type: Review

References (70)

1. For a summary of these events, see Konrad H. Jarausch, The Rush to German Unity (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994).
2. Paragraph 218 of the Federal Criminal Code makes abortion a criminal offense in which both the pregnant woman and physician are punishable. The West German law allowed abortions in exceptional circumstances knows as "indications." These included cases of rape or incest; when the pregnant woman's health is seriously threatened; when evidence exists that the fetus is not developing normally; or in cases of social hardship. Indications were determined by a state-approved counselor or physician other than the physician performing the abortion, and abortions must occur within the first trimester.
3. "Die sind tierisch hinterm Mond," Der Spiegel, 14 May 1990, 70.
4. Andrew Parker, Mary Russo, Doris Sommer, and Patricia Yeager, introduction to Nationalisms and Sexualities, ed. Andrew Parker et al. (New York: Routledge, 1992), 6, 7.
5. Nira Yuval-Davis, Gender and Nation (London: Sage, 1997), esp. 40-46. The centrality of race and ethnicity for reproductive politics is suggested both by the silence surrounding women of color, immigrant women, and foreign women (noncitizens) and by the fact that the Christian Democratic German government was attempting to tighten restrictions on immigration and asylum at the same time that it was attempting to restrict access to abortion. These proposed policies encourage the reproduction of an ethnically defined citizen population and the reduction of the noncitizen population which has consisted increasingly of Second and Third World people. Anti-immigration policies, legitimated by references to the West's inability to accommodate a rapidly "expanding" Third World, suggest how Third World women's bodies are "disciplined" by these First World national discourses.
6. Homi K. Bhabha, "DissemiNation: Time, Narrative, and the Margins of the Modern Nation," in Nation and Narration, ed. Homi K. Bhabha (New York: Routledge, 1990), 304.
7. R. Radhakrishnan, 'Nationalism, Gender, and Narrative," in Nationalisms and Sexualities, 78.
8. In this article, I have used national identity in two ways. In some cases, I take the term to mean the "official" German national identity (singular) in government discourse, which ignores differences between East and West. Especially when I am discussing feminist activists, I use the term in the plural, drawing on John Borneman who has argued that, prior to the Wende (turning point) of 1989, the citizens of the two German states had developed national identities as West Germans and East Germans. See John Borneman, Belonging in the Two Berlins: Kin, State, Nation (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992).
9. V. Spike Peterson, "The Politics of Identity and Gendered Nationalism," in Foreign Policy Analysis: Continuity and Change in Its Second Generation, ed. Laura Neack, Jeanne A.K. Hey, and Patrick J. Haney (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1995), 183.
10. "Wirklicher Durchbruch," Der Spiegel, 3 Dec. 1990, 22. See also Hannelore Roensch, "Der bessere Schutz ungeborener Kinder im vereinten Deutschland-Chance und Verantwortung der CDU," in Paragraph 218: Zur aktuellen Diskussion, ed. Andrea Hauner and Elke Reichart (Munich: Knaur, 1992), 117.
11. "Wirklicher Durchbruch," Der Spiegel, 3 Dec. 1990, 22. See also Hannelore Roensch, "Der bessere Schutz ungeborener Kinder im vereinten Deutschland-Chance und Verantwortung der CDU," in Paragraph 218: Zur aktuellen Diskussion, ed. Andrea Hauner and Elke Reichart (Munich: Knaur, 1992), 117.
12. Der Einigungsvertrag: Deutschland ist eins (Bonn: Presse- und Informationsamt der Bundesregierung, 1990), 14.
13. Robert G. Moeller, Protecting Motherhood: Women and the Family in the Politics of Postwar West Germany (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993).
14. I present a detailed discussion of the abortion debate in the immediate post-Wall period in "Re-Unification and Reproductive Rights: Abortion in the German Public Sphere, 1989-1990," Working Paper (Center for European Studies, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, July 1997). This paper is available on the Internet at www.unc. edu / depts / eucenter / publications.html.
15. "Treaty of 31 August 1990 between the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic on the Establishment of German Unity (Unity Treaty)," The Unification of Germany in 1990: A Documentation (Bonn: Press and Information Office of the Federal Government, 1991), 83.
16. Margarethe Nimsch, "Abortion as Politics," German Politics and Society 24/25 (winter 1991/1992): 128-34 (emphasis mine).
17. Rita Suessmuth, a popular Christian Democratic representative, is considered an outspoken and progressive voice on some social and women's issues. While she served as minister for family, women, and health in the mid-1980s, she spoke out in favor of AIDS research and education and employment policies for women, among other issues. When Chancellor Kohl "restructured" his cabinet in 1988, Suessmuth was given the ceremonial position of president of the Bundestag; her ministry was split into two separate ministries, headed by two women who defended the Kohl government's proposal to further restrict access to abortion.
18. The text of the law is lengthy because it contains details about each social program and subsidy available for expectant mothers. "Pregnancy conflict counselors" are required to list these state resources in a counseling session with any woman who seeks an abortion.
19. "Schwangeren- und Familienhilfegesetz," Deutscher Bundestag, 12. Wahlperiode (Drs. 12/605: 14 May 1992), 1.
20. See especially, Nanette Funk and Magda Mueller, Gender Politics and Post-Communism: Reflections from Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union (New York: Routledge, 1993); Ellen E. Berry, Post-Communism and the Body Politic (New York: New York University Press, 1995); and "Germany and Gender," Special edition of German Politics and Society 24/25 (winter 1991-92). Slavenka Drakulic's How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed (New York: Harper Collins, 1993) also can be regarded as a contribution to the debate, because she discusses Eastern European perspectives on Western feminism.
21. See especially, Nanette Funk and Magda Mueller, Gender Politics and Post-Communism: Reflections from Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union (New York: Routledge, 1993); Ellen E. Berry, Post-Communism and the Body Politic (New York: New York University Press, 1995); and "Germany and Gender," Special edition of German Politics and Society 24/25 (winter 1991-92). Slavenka Drakulic's How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed (New York: Harper Collins, 1993) also can be regarded as a contribution to the debate, because she discusses Eastern European perspectives on Western feminism.
22. See especially, Nanette Funk and Magda Mueller, Gender Politics and Post-Communism: Reflections from Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union (New York: Routledge, 1993); Ellen E. Berry, Post-Communism and the Body Politic (New York: New York University Press, 1995); and "Germany and Gender," Special edition of German Politics and Society 24/25 (winter 1991-92). Slavenka Drakulic's How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed (New York: Harper Collins, 1993) also can be regarded as a contribution to the debate, because she discusses Eastern European perspectives on Western feminism.
23. See especially, Nanette Funk and Magda Mueller, Gender Politics and Post-Communism: Reflections from Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union (New York: Routledge, 1993); Ellen E. Berry, Post-Communism and the Body Politic (New York: New York University Press, 1995); and "Germany and Gender," Special edition of German Politics and Society 24/25 (winter 1991-92). Slavenka Drakulic's How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed (New York: Harper Collins, 1993) also can be regarded as a contribution to the debate, because she discusses Eastern European perspectives on Western feminism.
24. Niederschrift ueber die 304, Sitzung des Ausschusses fuer Jugend, Familie, Frauen und Gesundheit, am 17. April 1991 in Berlin, Rotes Rathaus, Berlin, 21 May 1991. (Official transcript of a Senate Committee Hearing).
25. For a discussion of the notion of "locality," see Inderpal Grewal and Caren Kaplan, "Introduction," in Scattered Hegemonies: Postmodernity and Transnational Feminist Practices, ed. Inderpal Grewal and Caren Kaplan (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994).
26. Juergen Habermas has coined the phrase "Deutschmark-nationalism" which has both a material and a symbolic dimension. Habermas states: "In the sensitive web of an interdependent world economy which knows no national boundaries, market power itself becomes the national clarion" (89). The deutsch mark, he suggests, also is the "symbolic expression" of the post-Wall German "national consciousness" (90). See his "Yet Again: German Identity - A Unified Nation of Angry DM-Burghers?" New German Critique 52 (winter 1991): 84-101.
27. The Central Round Table became defunct when Germany was officially unified in October 1990.
28. Tatiana Boehm, "The Women's Question as a Democratic Question: In Search of Civil Society," in Gender Politics and Post-Communism, 151-59.
29. For an excellent analysis of policies for women in East Germany, see Myra Marx Ferree, "The Rise and Fall of 'Mommy Polities': Feminism and Unification in (East) Germany," Feminist Studies 19 (spring 1993): 89-115.
30. See Borneman.
31. The campaign began when the popular newsmagazine Stern featured a cover story in which more than 300 women declared, "We have had an abortion!" See, Alice Schwarzer, "How It All Began: I Have Had an Abortion," in German Feminism: Readings in Politics and Literature, ed. Edith Hoshino Altbach et al. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984).
32. I would like to emphasize that many of these feminists endorsed mandatory counseling in 1992 which they would not have done in 1990. I suggest that the decision to back off of their original goal must be questioned - and was, by many activists from the East.
33. Kirsten Thietz, ed., Ende der Selbstverstaendlichkeit? Die Abschaffung des Paragraphen 218 in der DDR: Dokumente (Berlin: Dietz, 1992).
34. Before the opening of the Wall, Gabrielle Grafenhorst attempted to break this silence by conducting interviews with women who had had abortions, an enterprise which was constantly hindered by the secret police. The book, published after the opening of the Wall, was originally entitled Abbruch-Tabu (Abortion taboo). The second edition is called: Abtreibung: Erfahrungsberichte zu einem Tabu (Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1992).
35. Thietz.
36. The group was founded by women from the Social Democrats, its youth organization (Jusos), and women's organization (AsF); the Greens (West) and Democracy Now (East); the renamed East German Communist Party (PDS) and its women's association (LISA); the feminist women's health center (FFGZ), women's health organizations (Pro Familia, the equivalent of Planned Parenthood in West Germany, and Frau und Familie in East Germany); the renamed Communist Party women's organization (DF,e.V.) and the Independent Women's Association (UFV). Funding for activities came from voluntary contributions of the participants, from UFV membership dues, and mostly from subsidies for the UFV from the city of Berlin. See UFV, Financial Reports, 1991, 1992, UFV-Archiv, Berlin, 1991-92.
37. Myra Marx Ferree, "The Time of Chaos Was the Best: Feminist Mobilization and Demobilization in East Germany," Gender and Society 8 (September 1994): 597-623.
38. Frauenpolitischer Runde Tisch, "Offener Brief an die Abgeordneten aller Fraktionen im Bundestag und in den Laenderparlamenten," May 1991, UFV-Archiv, Berlin, 1991.
39. Brigitte Kiechle, Selbstbestimmung statt Fremdbestimmung: Zur aktuellen Auseinandersetzung um den 218 (Frankfurt: Isp-Verlag, 1991), 62.
40. Grafenhorst, Abtreibung, 14.
41. This article is based upon interviews with ten of the members of the Women's Political Round Table who represented ten different local parties or organizations. I have reproduced portions of these conversations in this section. I have referred to activists with pseudonyms.
42. Frauenpolitischer Runde Tisch, transcripts of monthly meetings, January-September 1991, UFV-Archiv, Berlin, 1991.
43. Christel Wietusch, personal transcript, Paragraph 218 Kongress an der Humboldt Universitaet zu Berlin, 23 July 1991, UFV-Archiv, Berlin, 1991.
44. "2.000 kamen zur bundesweiten 218-Demo," Tageszeitung, 22 June 1992, 4.
45. Baerbel Birkmeyer, West Berliner Paragraph-218 Gruppe, interview with author, Berlin, 17 Nov. 1992.
46. Rita Langbehn, Paragraph 218-Koordination, interview with author, Berlin (West), 15 Dec. 1992.
47. Amanda Kessler, SPD and Jung Sozialisten (Jusos), interview with author, Berlin (West), 9 Nov. 1992.
48. Lydia Heyman, SPD and Arbeitskreis Sozialdemokratischer Frauen (AsF), interview with author, Berlin (West), 24 Nov. 1992 (emphasis mine).
49. Kessler interview. The National Coordinating Group of Women against Paragraph 218 was a feminist network staffed by volunteers from a few local, autonomous, anti-Paragraph 218 groups, who organized meetings in which these local groups could coordinate demonstrations and other campaigns against Paragraph 218.
50. Erika Klein, SPD-Ost/SPD and Arbeitskreis sozialdemokratischer Frauen, interview with author, Berlin (East), 19 Mar. 1992.
51. Susanne Kinsig, Buendnis 90/Alternative Liste/UFV, interview with author, Berlin (East), 18 Jan. 1993.
52. Ibid.
53. See, for example, Conny Matzke, "Sag mir, wo die Frauen sind," Weibblick (May 1992): 2-3.
54. Birkmeyer interview.
55. For an analysis of these policies, see Ferree, "Rise and Fall of 'Mommy Politics.'" For an East German perspective, see Hildegard Maria Nickel, "Women in the German Democratic Republic and the New Federal States: Looking Backward and Looking Forward (Five Theses)," in Gender Politics and Post-Communism, 138-50.
56. For an analysis of these policies, see Ferree, "Rise and Fall of 'Mommy Politics.'" For an East German perspective, see Hildegard Maria Nickel, "Women in the German Democratic Republic and the New Federal States: Looking Backward and Looking Forward (Five Theses)," in Gender Politics and Post-Communism, 138-50.
57. For a summary of these issues see "Kein Einigland von Schwestern: West-Emanzen und Ost-Muttis," Ypsilon (spring 1991): 18.
58. West German feminist Alice Schwarzer, for example, in an interview with an East Berlin daily, claimed that her endorsement of the moderate reform of Paragraph 218 "fell on deaf ears in East Germany." She also stated: "Unfortunately women in the East - and I'm not saying it's their fault - just do not have more than twenty years of experience of public debate with the political parties like we do." See "'Die Frauen im Osten sind Opfer demagogischer Kraefte,'" Berliner Zeitung, 8 Nov. 1991.
59. As cited by Christine Kulke, Heidi Kopp-Degethoff, and Ulrike Ramming, Wider das schlichte Vergessen: Der deutsch-deutsche Einigungsprozess, Frauen im Dialog (Berlin: Orlanda Frauenverlag, 1992), 14 (emphasis mine).
60. Langbehn interview.
61. As Atina Grossmann points out, many symbols and slogans of the campaign against Paragraph 218 in the 1920s, spearheaded by the Communist Party, were discovered and appropriated by West German feminists in their abortion rights campaign in the early 1970s. See Atina Grossmann, Reforming Sex: The German Movement for Birth Control and Abortion Reform, 1920-1950 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995). But such socialist feminist images and slogans were employed less and less over the course of the 1970s and disappeared by the 1980s as the issue was recast mostly as an issue of sexual and reproductive autonomy. For an overview, see Frauenforschungs, -bildungs, und -informationszentrum, ed. Frauen Begehren Selbstbestimmung! (Berlin: FFBIZ, 1992).
62. As Atina Grossmann points out, many symbols and slogans of the campaign against Paragraph 218 in the 1920s, spearheaded by the Communist Party, were discovered and appropriated by West German feminists in their abortion rights campaign in the early 1970s. See Atina Grossmann, Reforming Sex: The German Movement for Birth Control and Abortion Reform, 1920-1950 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995). But such socialist feminist images and slogans were employed less and less over the course of the 1970s and disappeared by the 1980s as the issue was recast mostly as an issue of sexual and reproductive autonomy. For an overview, see Frauenforschungs, -bildungs, und -informationszentrum, ed. Frauen Begehren Selbstbestimmung! (Berlin: FFBIZ, 1992).
63. Elisabeth Menschner, Demokratischer Frauenbund, e.V., interview with author, Berlin (East), 15 Jan. 1993.
64. Ibid.
65. Ibid.
66. The significance of this term is emphasized by Borneman, 313-33.
67. Christina Thuermer-Rohr, Verlorene Narrenfreiheit; Essays (Berlin: Orlanda Verlag, 1994).
68. Kulke, Kopp-Degethoff, and Ramming.
69. Christiane Schindler and Sybill Klotz, "Angekommen in der Realitaet bundesdeutscher Verhaeltnisse," in Keine Opposition: Nirgends? ed. Thomas Klein et al. (Berlin: Christian Links Verlag, 1991), 75.
70. Kulke, Kopp-Degethoff, and Ramming, "Introduction," Wider das schlichte Vergessen.