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Ideology, Family Policy, Production, And (Re)Education: Literary Treatment Of Abortion In The Gdr Of The Early 1980s, Heinz Bulmahn

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

The decision by the Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe of placing restrictions on the right to an abortion will profoundly affect German women's right to choose. This decision is a culmination of efforts to errode the right to choose for West as well as East German women. In the former GDR, even though liberal abortion laws allowed women access to free abortions, for ideological reasons, the government devised policies that discouraged abortions as a means of birth control. This policy becomes particularly apparent in the early 1980s when the East German government, confronted with a declining birth rate, faced the dilemma …