User:Littlebee97/Forced abortion

Forced abortion is a form of reproductive coercion that refers to the act of compelling a woman to undergo termination of a pregnancy against her will or without explicit consent. Forced abortion may also be defined as coerced abortion, and may occur due to a variety of outside forces such as societal pressure, or due to intervention by perpetrators such as an intimate partner, parental guardian, medical practitioners, or others who may cause abortion by force, threat, or coercion. It may also occur by taking advantage of a situation in which a pregnant individual is unable to give consent, or valid consent is questionable due to duress. This may also include instances in which abortion is neither justified by medical or hospital treatment, which does not include instances in which the pregnant individual is at risk of life threatening injury due to unsustainable pregnancy. Similar to other forms of reproductive coercion such as forced sterilization, forced abortion may include a physical invasion of female reproductive organs, therefore creating the possibly of causing long term threat or injury preventing viable future pregnancies. Forced abortion is considered a human rights violation by the United Nations due to its failure to comply with the human right to reproductive choice and control without coercion, discrimination, and violence.

Nazi Germany
During World War II, abortion policy in Nazi Germany varied depending on the people, group, and territory the policy was directed at, as German women were forbidden to have an abortion. The commonality between policies was it's purpose in promoting the birth rate and population of the putative "Aryan race" through eugenic policies by minimizing the population of those such as Jewish, Polish, and Roma women. Additionally, those deemed an overall burden on German society such as the disabled or mentally ill were also subjected to forced abortion with sterilization to follow, and were among the only Germans who were legally subjected to receiving an abortion. These accounts have been categorized as a part of Nazi Germany's "systematic program of genocide, aimed at the destruction of foreign nations and ethnic groups".

After the war ended, the practices of forced abortion towards condemned groups among Nazi society was determined to be a war crime upon assessment during the Nuremberg Trials. Those guilty of encouraging or enforcing abortion during the Holocaust were sentenced to at least 25 years imprisonment due to their practice being considered a "inhumane act of extermination".