| Written by Dorothy Cummings,
|
Views : 288  |
Contemporary Germans have a reputation for stolidity, but nothing brings a German city to life like an international soccer victory. Thanks to the German soccer team’s great performance in the 2006 World Cup, my favourite memories include riding through the jubilant streets of Frankfurt in a minivan packed with flags, seminarians and bottles of beer.
The unspoken taboo against displays of patriotism had lifted. The seminarians and I honked, cheered and shouted “Deutschland, Deutschland, Deutschland gewinnt!” Crowds cheered and waved back. I kissed a complete stranger. My Canadian war vet ancestors turned over in their graves. My friends and I were a noisy crew — until the car approached Frankfurt’s Jewish Museum. Suddenly, we all fell silent.
The 1933-1945 regime has cast a long shadow over Germany, particularly in the West. In the East, some Germans consider themselves the primary victims of the Second World War, probably because of the 40 years of socialist repression that followed. But in the West, Germans have long contemplated German responsibility for the millions of deaths caused by the Second World War. They abhor violence. Most of my male German friends declared themselves pacifists to opt out of military service. They worked in state social services, like hospitals, instead. Having learned from history, Germans have a sincere respect for human life. Canada could learn from them.
Abortion is illegal in Germany, de jure if not de facto. The German Constitution guarantees the right to life, and in 1993 the Federal Constitutional Court ruled that the constitution protects the life of the fetus from conception. However, it also ruled that abortions in the first trimester do not have to be punished by law, so long as the women seeking them receive state-regulated counselling — counselling that argues for the life of the unborn baby. Indeed, the Roman Catholic Church in Germany once offered such state-endorsed counselling.
John Paul II believed that the German church, by issuing the necessary counselling certificates, was complicit in abortions. The German bishops at first argued that their services encouraged many women to keep their babies, and German Catholics formed their own pro-life (but certificate issuing) counselling service, Donum Vitae. However, in 2006 the German bishops asked parishioners to no longer work with Donum Vitae. On one hand, the church cannot be considered complicit in any way with abortions that occur in Germany. On the other hand, it means that fewer abortion-minded women hear the Gospel of Life.
So although unborn babies in Germany are still in danger of death, it is clear the German state recognizes that unborn babies have rights and that abortion is a serious moral problem. The issue is divisive, and no one pretends otherwise. Germany’s Green Party lobbies for fewer restrictions, and the Roman Catholic Church in Germany is still divided over how best to serve the cause of life. Abortion is a thorny problem, and few in Germany would pretend that it isn’t. Even in Communist East Germany, abortion-on-demand was restricted to the first trimester. But, as we all know, there are absolutely no restrictions on abortion in democratic Canada.
Henry Morgentaler, the private abortionist and abortion rights activist whom some powerful Canadians have chosen to honour, famously suffered the loss of his family and freedom to the Nazis in the Second World War. However, he was also the beneficiary of German war reparations: as a Jewish survivor, he was entitled to a scholarship at a German university. He accepted one and went to a German medical school. In 1950, he left Europe for Canada.
This is in many ways a pity: not only has Morgentaler played a pivotal role in cheapening Canadian life, he was not on hand to witness West Germany’s decades-long examination of conscience and rejection of indignities to human life. Take eugenics, for example. Contemporary Germans are horrified by eugenics, and there are stringent limitations on research involving embryos. And yet Morgentaler, himself the victim of eugenic policies, had no problem declaring at the University of Western Ontario on June 16, 2005, that abortion has reduced the incidence of violent crime.
This statement was not only a cynical rejection of free will — assuming that many babies, had they been allowed to live, would have of necessity become violent criminals — it was another negation of the right of every human being to have a chance at life.
And it seems a terrible irony to me, the granddaughter of a man who fought the Germans in the Second World War, that Canadians can now learn something about respect for human life from Germany. However imperfectly this is respected, the German state recognizes that every human being (including the unborn human child) has the right to life. How sad that the Canadian state does not.
Recommend this article... |
Opinion 
(0 vote)
