German court fines 2 gynecologists for abortion ad

BERLIN — Two German gynecologists have been fined by a Berlin judge for promoting abortion services on their website, running afoul of a Nazi-era law that makes it a crime to advertise the procedure in detail.

The law, known as 219a, was revised this year to allow doctors to state whether they offered abortions, but language that is considered to go beyond simply listing the service was still forbidden.

The ruling Friday is the first time that a fine was handed down since the law — which was largely ignored for years — was changed. Anti-abortion activists had brought the case to the public prosecutor, according to local news reports.

Abortion is legal in Germany through the first 12 weeks of a pregnancy.

The two physicians, Bettina Gaber and Verena Weyer, who run a joint practice in , an upscale neighborhood in West Berlin, were fined a total of 2,000 euros, about $2,250. The public prosecutor had sought a fine of 7,500 euros. The maximum sentence is two years in prison.

At issue were words and phrases on the clinic’s website that included “in a protected atmosphere” “anesthesia-free” and “drug-induced.”

The language first appeared on the clinic’s website in February 2018. Even so, the judge found, it was still in violation of the new, milder law. As of Saturday, the abortion wording — slightly tweaked and attributed directly to Gaber — remained on the website.

The gynecologists’ defense lawyer criticized the law, at one point calling it “pure nonsense” and asking the judge to drop the case.

But a spokeswoman for the court, Lisa Joni, said in an interview that the law was very clear and that the judge had no choice but to pass down the fine.

“She didn’t think the case was grave, so she erred on the side of a light fine,” Joni said.

Hundreds of protesters gathered outside the courthouse with placards with messages of support for the doctors, such as “Raise your voice!” or “My body, my choice!” according to news reports. Many gynecologists and women’s rights activists had insisted that the law be scrapped rather than revised.

The judge, Christine Mathiak, noted that even though the law had been changed recently, the wording still went beyond simply telling patients what services the clinic provided.

“Whether this law suits me personally and whether it makes sense is not the subject of this legal proceeding,” Mathiak said.

The fine comes as abortion rights are coming under fire in both Europe and the United States. The Norwegian Parliament passed a bill recently to restrict the country’s liberal abortion laws.

Last month, legislators in Alabama passed a law that would outlaw almost all abortions in the state, even in the case of incest or rape, and that would punish doctors who perform the procedure. Days before, Georgia’s governor signed a law effectively banning abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, when doctors can usually start detecting a fetal heartbeat.

The physicians in Berlin have one week to file an appeal.