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[It's good to know that Germans learned a lesson from history. There are a few Americans who need to learn that lesson.]

Germany's Nazi past procludes them from going along with every other European country (except Poland, Ireland and the UK) in making abortion on demand legal.

The Nazis were very pro-abortion.

This is from Precious-Life.com:

When the Nazis came to power in 1933 one of the first acts Hitler did was to legalize abortion. By 1935 Germany with 65 million people was the place where over 500,000 abortions were being performed each year. Although Hitler and his government encouraged Aryan women to produce a lot of children, he left the matter of abortion and all its facets in the hands of a decidely pro- abortion medical establishment. Even in the midst of Nazi propaganda aimed at increasing the Aryan population, scores of Aryan women still chose to abort their unborn children. The medical publication Deutsches Aerzleblatt reported the abortions in Germany each year reached a half-million.

Further, a Nazi decree of October 19, 1941 established abortion on demand as the official policy of Poland. Hitler, however, expressed dissatisfaction with this policy. Abortion, he believed, should NOT be limited to Poland. He therefore ordered that abortion be expanded to all populations under the control of the "Ministry of the Occupied Territories of the East."

On July 22, 1942, the Fuhrer exhibited a highly positive attitude towards abortion as an indispensable method of dealing with the non-German populations in countries under Nazi control. "In view of the large families of the native populations," he asserted, "it could only suit us if girls and women there had as many abortions as possible." Hitler also personally announced that he "would personally shoot" any "such idiot" who "tried to put into practice such an order (forbidding abortion) in the occupied Eastern territories.

Despite contemporary attempts to characterize Hitler as opposed to abortion, the historical evidence clearly and overwhelmingly supports only one possible conclusion: Hitler and his regime were adamantly pro-abortion. To depict Hitler as anti-abortion is a ludicrous as calling him anti-genocide or pro- Jewish. Both Hitler and his government had little regard for human life perceived as subpar, whether born or preborn.

"Questions

1. If Hitler was opposed to abortion, why didn't he demand that Germany's strong law protective of human life before birth (enacted in 1871) be retained?

2. If Hitler was opposed to abortion, why did he leave the matter of abortion in the hands of the most vociferous pro-abortion physicians and medical organizations in Germany?

3. If Hitler was opposed to abortion, why did he permit the establishment of guidelines and procedures for legal abortion in close conformity to those developed by the Berlin Chamber of Physicians, a prominent advocate of permisssive abortion under the guise of health?

4. If the Nazi government had such restrictive laws on abortion, why were there at least half-a-million abortions performed annually in Germany?

5. If Hitler was opposed to abortion, why did he say that 'in view of the large families of native population it could only suit us if girls and women there had as many abortions as possible'?

6. If Hitler was opposed to abortion, why did he order that abortion on demand be instituted as the prevailing policy for all countries under Nazi domination?

7. If Hitler was opposed to abortion, why did he threaten to shoot anyone who attempted to forbid abortions in Nazi occupied areas?

8. If the Nazi government was opposed to abortion, why did it issue an endless series of decrees legalizing the destruction of the unborn throughout the Eastern territories?" At risk of stating the obvious, some (perhaps, many) of the aborted were Jewish.

The following, regarding Germany, is taken from Lifeissues.net. It gets it into the finer details of Nazi policy that I was simplistic about above:

We now turn to Nazi abortion policy. As we have seen, there had been agitation throughout the Weimar period to liberalize/legalize abortion. This resulted in a compromise: Liberalization. Abortion remained illegal but was reduced from a felony to a misdemeanor, making the punishment essentially a fine and not a prison sentence.

Hence, in 1933, in their first year of power, the Nazis passed a law forbidding abortion to Germans, increasing the penalties as they had been before Weimar liberalization.(24) The Nazis wanted to increase the birthrate so as to have soldiers for their military. In March 1934, however, the Hereditary Health Court in Hamburg rendered a judgment which stated that abortion on grounds of racial health was not an offense. In its decision, it referred to a Supreme Court decision during the Weimar democracy seven years earlier, allowing the procedure for "medical necessities."(25) In June 1935 the sterilization law was also amended to allow abortions on eugenic grounds and these abortions had to be followed by sterilizations, dependent -- technically -- on the woman's consent.(26) Thus, sterilization, eugenics and abortion all come together.

For the first time in German history, abortion was legal. But one cannot ignore the roots reaching back almost fifteen years to the beginning of the Weimar democracy, during which time arguments had been made that unborn life was not that important so was therefore expendable. Despite the racial theories behind this decision there were some non-Nazis who approved because of the allowing of choice.(27) In 1938 the government announced that Jews could have abortions at any time, since this could only benefit the German people.(28) The Jews, as well as "unfit" Germans, had a "choice" most Germans did not. This meant that the Nazis saw abortion as a very useful weapon against undesirables; e.g. as an act of elimination.

During World War II the Nazis used sterilizations and abortions (also birth control and even the promotion of homosexuality) extensively in eastern Europe to carry out their eugenics policies. The specific aim was to keep eastern females available for slave labor while at the same time weakening eastern nations by hampering the reproduction of Slavic peoples.(29) Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, a chief architect of the Holocaust, and personal friend of Adolf Hitler, once stated that the tragedy of abortion for German women was that afterwards women often could not have children. Not in the loss of an "individual life," as he put it.(30) The Nazis used the word "parent" to describe pregnant women and the fathers of the unborn(31) and the word "child" to describe the unborn themselves.(32) Nazis forbade abortion in order to preserve German unborn but allowed, even encouraged, the destruction of non-German unborn.(33)

Eugenics is a discredited science today.(34) There is also shock felt and experienced today about tricked and forced sterilizations of the past. Abortion, however, is now legal in most democracies, with the boast from those who believe in its legality that there is "choice" in the matter, that what the Nazis did was wrong because things were forced. We must ask constantly: Choice? Freedom? To do what? Sterilization (forced or voluntary, for eugenic reasons or not) prevents a life from happening. Abortion, on the other hand, takes a life that has already happened because an unborn is the other patient in any pregnancy(35) and is no longer considered by science a mere maternal appendage.(36) The Nazis, experts in killing, knew this.

Fifty years ago, the democracies knew this also. At the one War Crimes Trial involving abortion, the prosecutor, in his summation, called abortion an "inhumane act" and an "act of extermination" and stated that even if a woman's request for abortion was voluntary abortion was still a war crime and a crime against humanity.(37) The men doing the abortions were found guilty at this trial of "encouraging and compelling abortions" and were sentenced to 25 years in prison.(38) Concerning abortion, the United States, a democracy, is doing today what it once condemned Germany for doing.

In looking at the Nazis and abortion, and abortion in general, many:

* Tend to focus on the Nazis taking a choice from women, not on the Nazis considering the procedure a very effective way to kill. The German Supreme Court has made the connection between abortion and killing in two of its decisions [1975, 1993(39)].
* Tend to focus on the issues of church-state, morality vs privacy, not on human rights, the thing that binds us all. Abortion has been called a crime against humanity.
* Tend to focus on themselves, not others. There are two lives involved in every pregnancy.
* Tend to want to be called "centrists," "moderates," "mainstream," not "extremists." Prochoice, not pro-life, is closer to fascism. Remember also that democracies can do horrible things.

The resentments and legitimate grievances Germany had after World War I roughly parallel women's resentments and grievances over a long period of time. Germany was not fully part of the family of nations; women were not fully part of humanity. But just as there was no excuse for Hitler, who made Jews, Slavs and others scapegoats for Germany's problems, there is no excuse for abortion, which makes the unborn scapegoats for women's problems. In both cases, the Nazis after World War I, and modern feminists of the last thirty years, it is as if both were saying, "We have been wronged for so long we cannot do any wrong." Hitler was Germany's doing wrong; abortion is modern feminism's perverting feminism's original message.