Abortion and the Christian influence on health care in Germany: Quo vadis?

Background: Quantitative and qualitative data on abortion care in Germany seems to point towards both heterogenous access and quality of care within the country. Experts see availability and access to abortion as partly limited by Christian, particularly Catholic influences within the regions. What kind of Christian influences on abortion care do experts in the field observe? How do these observations influence their assessment when it comes to the future of abortion care in Germany? Are there cross-European relations of provision? This paper aims to give answers to these questions. Methods: 42 semi-structured telephone interviews with experts from the fields of gynaecology and abortion counselling were conducted Germany-wide between 9/2020 and 5/2021. The author then conducted a qualitative content analysis on the basis of the interviews’ transcripts. Results: Experts in the field described different spheres of influence of Christianism within German society and subsequently abortion care on a personal, cultural, institutional and political level. Christian stakeholders are considered to influence political institutions as well as political decision-making. Conservative and right-wing parties such as the German Christian Democratic Party and the Alternative for Germany are pushing for more restrictive policies on abortion. According to the experts, anti-abortion activists manage to negatively influence access to and availability of abortion care on local and political levels. Both in the context of anti-abortion movements and that of political parties the interviewees referred to international developments and interdependencies such as socio-political change around abortion law in the US and Poland. When describing their outlooks on future developments and/ or fears when it comes to abortion care, they feared a general backlash, due to an uprising of right wing movements in Germany. Discussion: The experts’ observation of an interdependency of abortion care and Christian influences seems to be in line with former international studies on the topic. International interdependencies on political levels as well as when it comes to patient movements across European borders have partly been described but also need further investigation. The findings raise the question whether joint solutions to similar issues can be found on a European level.