Overview

• The Elsa study shows 4.5 million people—5.4% of the population—need to travel more than 40 minutes to reach an abortion provider, with 85 counties lacking adequate services.
• Southern and western states such as Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate face the most severe shortages of abortion facilities.
• Eighty-three percent of women who have had an abortion report feeling stigmatized, and nearly half must pay procedure costs out of pocket.
• The SPD parliamentary group calls for obliging public and publicly funded confessional hospitals to perform abortions and for steps toward decriminalizing the procedure.
• CDU/CSU leaders oppose removing abortion from the criminal code, leaving concrete legislative changes on coverage and legal status unresolved.