When Christian Funds Meet Feminists

Saturday Pariser Platz is filled with confused tourists, staring in amazement at young Berliners waving Pride flags or holding uterus-shaped protest signs. Tourists don’t understand why they don’t go through this Brandenburg Gate walk up to June 17 Street. Because on the other side of the Brandenburg Gate, the “Pro Life” march for life takes place for the 18th time in Berlin. And behind them, on Pariser Platz, there are protesters who want to send the opposite message and defend the right to self-determination.

Both groups moved today through central Berlin, to Potsdamer Platz, Friedrichstrasse and to the main train station. On the marshal bridge, a policeman explains to a young couple that the road is closed here. On Friedrichstrasse, an American tourist wants to cross the street to buy souvenirs from the Ampelmann shop. But he is not interested in joining the wooden crucifixes of the March for Life. “It’s crazy how big everything is,” she says of the demonstration, almost to herself. “I mean, what kind of people are they anyway?”

Two equally strong groups are involved in today’s demonstrations: the participants in the March for Life and the activists demonstrating against them. And, unlike the policeman on the marshal’s bridge, this is an important issue for both sides. The march for life, a campaign by the Bundesverband Lebensrecht (Federal Association for the Right to Life), is mainly shaped by Christianity, hence the wooden crosses in their hands; among the demonstrators there are parishes from all parts of Germany. However, the march is also known as a popular meeting place for right-wing politicians; Moreover Beatrice of Cicogna welcomed the action. Many participants wear stickers with the slogan “Thank you, Mom” ​​or “No children, no future” – many children also followed their parents. A Christian band sings on a stage, their songs have names like “A privilege to be” or “More God in Berlin”. A woman, with her eyes closed and her arms outstretched, sways to the rhythm of the music; next to her, a man blesses the band.

After the band, the association’s president, Alexandra Linder, talks about paragraph 219a, which banned the advertising of abortions – since the last “March for Life” it was canceled by the traffic light coalition. Linder is concerned about this. “It doesn’t change much,” she says. “But it means that abortion is normalized in society.” Berlin is Germany’s “abortion stronghold”; It is said that 400 abortions occur here every day. The audience whistles.

When she wants to give the microphone to Bundestag CDU member Hubert Hüppe, she is interrupted. A group of about 20 activists protesting the March for Life, although significantly fewer than the thousands participating in the march, are significantly louder. They played big samba drums, chanted slogans: “No God, no State, no patriarchy”, or “Only I decide whether to have children or not”. The anti-abortion protesters approach the police bars that separate the Tiergarten activists from the square and film the protesters with their cell phones, while others cover their ears.

Drums and whistles drown out Christian hymns

It was all planned this way, says activist Aline of the Alliance for Sexual Self-Determination, a queer-feminist association that is now part of the movement against the March for Life. The goal of the alliance of these groups is “to claim space and fight for an emancipatory society” and to lead by example “against nationalist, conservative and anti-feminist positions”. “We don’t want to make things too comfortable for the Fundis,” says Aline. Fundis: That’s what fundamental Christians are called here.

Not only did the coalition activists hold their own demonstration in the city center, but they also followed the path of the march itself to continue shouting their slogans and beating their drums. Many of the Christian protesters look a bit confused, some laugh. Some sing hymns, but with drums and whistles it’s hard to tell exactly what they are.

Alexandra Linder defends her movement against accusations of anti-feminism on the stage of Platz des 18. März. She believes that regulations like the Hungarian one, according to which a pregnant woman must hear the fetus’s heartbeat before she can have an abortion, would simply promote women’s emancipation, because a woman must know what’s going on in her body. And there should be global help for women in the “pregnancy conflict”. The audience cheers and applauds.

During Linder’s speech, a woman walks through the audience. Wearing a headscarf and a long skirt, she greets everyone in a friendly way and holds a paper coffee cup in front of her with a few small changes. Judging by her bulging belly, she must have been pregnant. She goes to a woman who listens enthusiastically to Alexandra Linder and cheers at each pause between her applause and hands her the paper cup. The woman, who also carries a wooden cross in her hands, shakes her head and taps her ear. “Now listen better,” she says, turning her back on the woman.

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