Germany: AfD MP Causes a Stir With a Pro-Life Speech

After her first words, she was stopped and reprimanded by the vice-president of the Chamber who told her that she could not speak as she had just done. But what had she said? This: "Dear Madam President, dear survivors. I note that none of you have been victims of abortion. You were all born.”

Barabara Otte-Kinast (CDU), who was chairing the meeting, immediately reacted to tell her that she could not speak in this way. In fact, it was the term “survivors” (Die Überlebenden) that was targeted, because it is used in particular in the expression Holocaust-Survivors, the meaning of which is obvious. Thus, it is not permitted to speak of “abortion survivors” without being corrected. 

Without being disconcerted, the MP continued: “Dear people who have not been aborted, who were all born.” Then, targeting gender theory: “Not from a parent X or Z, but from a woman, from your mother. You were not born like just anyone, but as human beings. I warmly congratulate you on this, because not everyone is so lucky.”

In the sequel she was reprimanded again when she recalled, against the abortion propaganda that describes unborn children as "clumps of cells," that each human being begins life with "exactly two cells": "one cell from his mother, one from his father. By the time a person reaches adulthood, he has about 37 trillion cells."

Then Mrs. Behrendt alluded to the abortions that take place each year in Germany, first stating that according to current legislation, they are not punishable, but they remain illegal. Then she reports the official figures: more than 100,000 unborn children are killed each year. From 1996 to 2023, 1,833,821 abortions were performed, again according to official data.

She continued by stigmatizing a selective society: "We are all survivors of a system that deprives more than 100,000 people each year of the most fundamental right: the right to life. A two-tier society: that of the born on one side, and that of the unborn on the other," stressed the AfD MP.

This intervention was made in the context of a vote in Parliament on a proposal from the SPD and the Greens aimed at "strengthening self-determination in matters of pregnancy." It is a proposal that called for the legalization of abortion in the first twelve weeks of pregnancy for the whole of Germany. Although it was adopted, abortion remains governed by the German penal code.

Mrs. Behrendt concluded her intervention by explaining that there should not be "more abortions," but that parents should be helped to keep the children they have conceived, whatever the circumstances.

This speech has the merit of clarity and the reactions it produced show that it hit the mark. That is a rarity today.