Else Kienle La Roe (1900–1970) was a German physician.

Life

Kienle and Friedrich Wolf were arrested on 19 February 1931 for providing abortions. Their arrests led to popular demonstrations against Paragraph 218, which criminalized abortion in Germany. While the

Communist Party of Germany The Communist Party of Germany (, ; KPD ) was a major Far-left politics, far-left political party in the Weimar Republic during the interwar period, German resistance to Nazism, underground resistance movement in Nazi Germany, and minor party ...

submitted a motion for her release, it objected to her feminist beliefs and gave her considerably less support than it gave Wolf. The

Nazi Party The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party ( or NSDAP), was a far-right politics, far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that created and supported the ideology of Nazism. Its precursor ...

supported the imprisonment of Kienle and Wolf because they were Jewish. During her imprisonment, Kienle participated in a

hunger strike A hunger strike is a method of non-violent resistance where participants fasting, fast as an act of political protest, usually with the objective of achieving a specific goal, such as a policy change. Hunger strikers that do not take fluids are ...

that brought her near death. She was released from prison on 28 March 1931. In 1932, Kienle published the book ''Frauen: Aus dem Tagebuch einer Ärztin'' () to criticize Paragraph 218. Kienle believed that it was immoral to force birth into a society that lacked

gender equality Gender equality, also known as sexual equality, gender egalitarianism, or equality of the sexes, is the state of equal ease of access to resources and opportunities regardless of gender, including economic participation and decision-making, an ...

and

social security Welfare spending is a type of government support intended to ensure that members of a society can meet basic human needs such as food and shelter. Social security may either be synonymous with welfare, or refer specifically to social insurance ...

. Kienle fled to New York after the Nazi Party seized power in Germany.

Life

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