The concepts of “wrongful life” and “wrongful birth” in the case law of Germany’s Federal Courts 1980-2000 - a comparative biolaw perspective

Abstract

The legal concept of “wrongful life” and “wrongful birth” emerged in the United States in the 1970s and has been controversial in many legal systems. When Germany was reunited in 1990, two fundamentally different approaches to the protection of unborn human life collided. Around the same time the groundwork was laid down in the German federal courts – in the Bundesverfassungsgericht and particularly the Bundesgerichtshof – for rules dealing with claims related to “wrongful life” and “wrongful birth”. This article looks at this development in the 1980s and 1990s from both a private and a constitutional law perspective, culminating in the possibility of such claims despite the constitu( tional decision that the unborn child, too, has human dignity. In a sign of the continued weakening of the protection of unborn life which can still be seen in German law today, Germany‘s federal courts slowly eroded the fundamental concepts which are meant to be a central part of Germany‘s constitution.