Barriers to legal abortion: perspectives of German women and health experts on cross-border abortion travel

Abstract

"We are committed to protecting and promoting sexual and reproductive health and rights," is one of the slogans used by German politicians abroad to promote their newly introduced feminist foreign policy (Auswärtiges Amt, 2023, p. 40).1 Meanwhile, German women2 have been traveling abroad for decades to receive basic sexual and reproductive health services denied to them at home.3 In the early 1980s, about 50% of abortions in the Netherlands were performed on German women (Lorenz, 2013). Although the numbers have declined in recent decades, 1,125 German women still traveled to the Netherlands for abortions in 2020, representing the largest group of non-Dutch women who had abortions performed in that country (Dutch Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport, 2022).