Her partner is pulling the curtains. It's dark outside, he does not want anyone to watch her secretly. Kristina Hänel considers this exaggerated. "But when the next public appointment is due, then it comes back, the fear, I know that now."
Hänel describes this scene from the fall of 2018 in her book "The Political is Personal", which has now appeared in the Argument Verlag. It is a diary. The "Diary of an 'abortion doctor'", as it says in the subtitle. The word abortion doctor is quoted. Kristina Hänel does not like this term, she writes, because it reduces her professional activity inappropriately to abortions. Kristina Hänel is a general practitioner in Gießen, she offers riding therapy for children and worked for many years in the rescue service. From autumn 2017, however, it will increasingly become known to the public as an abortionist, as the woman who fights against Paragraph 219a of the Penal Code.
With a yellow envelope on her kitchen table on August 3, 2017 everything started. Kristina Hänel learns that she is accused of appearing before the district court Gießen, because she writes on the website of her practice that she also carries out abortions. Clause 219a punishes this as prohibited advertising. Hänel already knows that she is being reported because of this, but until now the procedures had been discontinued each time. Now she has to go to court. And Hänel starts to fight.
"I break the silence"
The 62-year-old understands her commitment as a fight for women's right to information. Hänel wants women to be fully informed about abortion options, even among doctors who make this demolition. For Hänel, the 219a is a "secrecy clause". So she goes public. "I break the silence, I break the taboo." That's how she sees it.
In many cases the debate about paragraph 219a was reported. But now it can be read, as it has meanwhile passed the woman who has triggered this debate.
A publisher rejected her manuscript for publication because it contained nothing new, she writes. When Hänel arrives, "they find it boring". The complaint against her, her petition to the Bundestag, the trial before the district court, the trial before the district court - all this is not new. But her book is not boring.
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Kristina Hanel
The Political is Personal: Diary of an "Abortion Doctor"
Publishing company:
Argument publisher with Ariadne
Pages:
250
Price:
EUR 15,00
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Because Kristina Hänel describes what it means to become a public person. It provides insights into the work of journalists, from the perspective of a woman who comes into the focus of the media. It describes the inner life of political organizations, of associations and institutions, in which not all agree and there is a dispute over content and power struggles. She writes what it's like for a defendant to experience her own lawyer as incompetent and looking for a new lawyer.
Kristina Hänel experiences support and solidarity, but also hostility and hatred. She gets nightmares. She dreams that "the 'abortion opponents' want to shoot me on their way to the courtroom."
It hits them when abortion opponents equate abortions with mass murder. Time and again she writes about her children and grandchildren and about the girls and boys with and without disabilities who treat her. Kristina Hänel loves children, and she feels it necessary to emphasize this in her book again and again.
Debate about 219a
Women never make the decision against a child easy, that's their experience. She describes cases from her practice, those in which a termination of pregnancy occurred, even those in which women chose the child. The idea that women could be seduced by doctors to a demolition, she considers absurd. Hänel argues for recognizing women as mature citizens.
Kristina Hänel contributed to the reform of Article 219a. From now on, doctors are allowed to announce on their website that they are carrying out pregnancy breaks. But how they do that and what methods they have, they must not publish themselves in the future. Instead, they should refer to websites of the Federal Center for Health Education or Pro Familia. The law requires the state to provide comprehensive information. Kristina Hänel is not enough, she demands the abolishment of paragraph 219a. Your fight continues.
Against the judgment of the district court Hänel had appealed. Her book ends with the trial before the district court casting. "My most beautiful process," she calls him. She mentions the Femen activists who were shirtless in the stairwell protesting. And she is pleased with the personal words of the presiding judge, which she quotes and with which he has clearly positioned himself "as a citizen" against paragraph 219a.
The board had to convict them according to the law, he said, and advised her, "You must bear this verdict like a title of honor in the fight for a better law." Hänels statements in court, including those of her lawyer, can be read in her book, including the written judgment of the district court, against which it has appealed. Their goal remains the Federal Constitutional Court.
But actually it is not the legal way that she seeks. "In any case, I think that the outcome will be decided on the street, not in the court and not in the parliaments," writes Hänel. It's about public discourse. And her book is a contribution to that.