A Reform of Abortion Paragraph 218 has likely reached a dead end for this legislative period. The FDP will not participate in a special meeting of the Legal Committee, as confirmed by the committee’s deputy chair, Thorsten Lieb, in an interview with the online news portal “T-Online”. This, given the negative stance of the AfD and CDU/CSU, seems to lack the necessary majority.
A special meeting is a prerequisite for the bill to be put to a vote in the plenum. “Lieb can confirm that the FDP will not agree to a special meeting of the Legal Committee”, a spokesperson for the FDP’s parliamentary office stated in response to a request for comment.
The bill, proposed by a cross-party group of 328 lawmakers, aims to make it generally no longer illegal to terminate a pregnancy up to the end of the 12th week of gestation. Under the proposed plans, health insurance companies would be able to fund such terminations.