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Cornelie Usborne, Cultures of Abortion in Weimar Germany, Monographs in German History, Vol. 17 (New York: Berghahn Books, 2007), pp. xi + 284, £45.00/$90.00, hardback, ISBN: 978-1-8454-389-3.
In 1924, in what the press quickly called a 'monster case', ninety-three people were tried for criminal abortion in Limburg in the province of Hesse-Nassau. The chief defendant, Frau Kastner, a mother of four, received three years' penal servitude with five years loss of civil rights for 'performing abortions for monetary gain'. Her husband, as her accomplice, received three years' prison with three years' loss of civil rights. The aborting women, who came from seventeen surrounding villages, were tried for 'attempted abortion', given that pregnancy could not be established for certain. Most of them were found guilty, as were the husbands or lovers who had arranged abortions, although some of the sentences were commuted upon appeal.
A close analysis of this case is one of the many jewels of Cornelie Usborne's Cultures of Abortion. According to Usbome, the history of Germany in the twentieth century can be read against...