Births and abortions in Germany with persistent anomalies

Reproductive disorder

In May 2023 again, significantly fewer children than expected were born in Germany. The time series of abortions also shows persistent, severe disruptions since Q1 2021, with a trend reversal in 2022 that is difficult to explain.

Births and abortions have followed very regular seasonal patterns in recent years. Since the beginning of 2022, births significantly underperformed predicted values (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1: Monthly birth rates (orange) and forecast (blue) from 2016-2021, taking trend and seasonality into account (TSLM method). Data source: Destatis.

The abortions declined already in Q1 2021, and initially continued until Q3 2021. Later, the trend turned into the opposite. Abortions significantly exceeded expectations. (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2: Quarterly abortions (orange) and forecast (blue) from 2016-2020, taking into account trend and seasonality (TSLM method). Data source: Destatis.

Birth rates regularly reached their maxima in July and August, abortions in the 1st quarter. The range of fluctuation was around 20% for both signals. Since the willingness to carry a child to term is rather unlikely to be seasonal, the seasonality of abortions must be mainly due to seasonally fluctuating pregnancies. From this perspective, abortions are related to later births in two ways. On one hand, of course abortions decimate the stock of pregnancies. In the period shown, abortions accounted for 11.5% of pregnancies. On the other hand, they anticipate the development of future birth numbers. The time difference can only be roughly estimated because abortions are reported quarterly.

An overall picture is obtained by plotting the relative deviations of abortions and births from expected values and combining them with the course of the C19 vaccination campaign (Fig. 3).

Fig. 3: Monthly C19 vaccination rates (red), relative monthly birth deviation (blue), and relative quarterly abortion deviation (green). Data sources: Destatis, ECDC.

In 2020, as in previous years, births and abortions deviated only slightly from expected values, thus running close to zero. The year 2021 saw slightly above-average births, with two flat waves emerging. Presumed causes of these birth waves were the lockdowns and similar measures. If husbands and wives hang out in their private chamber, this is not without certain consequences.

Abortions fell sharply in the first three quarters of 2021. The corresponding birth rates fell from January 2022. Actually, fewer abortions should lead to more births, but the rule derived above, according to which abortions can indicate the number of pregnancies, applies here. Thus, in this period coinciding with the vaccination campaign, fewer pregnancies occurred. This process was repeated in a similar way with the second vaccination wave. In between, there was a period of normal abortion numbers in Q4 2021, after the vaccination frequency had dropped temporarily.

in early 2022, the vaccination frequency finally dropped, and life returned to normal. Subsequently, abortions rose to unusually high levels in the 3rd and 4th quarters of 2022, without any later increase in births. In fact, the opposite occurred. Since the beginning of 2023, births remained at their lowest levels so far. However, the increased abortions only explain a small part of this decline. If around 12 out of 100 pregnancies are terminated by abortion, 88 will remain. If abortions increase by 7%, as in 2022, just 13 out of 100 pregnancies will end prematurely, and 87 will remain. The resulting decline in births is therefore only 1 in 88, or about 1.1%. It follows from these considerations that both fewer women became pregnant and more abortions were performed during this period. The latter could be an indication of less favorable socioeconomic conditions that had a negative impact on a desire to have children since 2022.

In the quintessence, two regimes can be delineated. The first was characterized by a combination of declines in pregnancy, abortions and births. The relationship also held in the opposite direction and seemed to be temporally associated with the C19 vaccination campaign. The smaller booster peak showed the described pattern again, but in a weaker form. A repeating pattern actually has considerable evidential quality, in this case to the detriment of the vaccination campaign, but other influences also appear to have been at play. The sharp drop in abortions in the 1st quarter of 2021 is too early for vaccination to be the sole cause, as the highest vaccination frequencies were not reached until the 2nd quarter of 2021.

In the second regime, the abortions increased conspicuously, but this was not a sign of rising pregnancies. The corresponding birth rates dropped even further later on. Both vaccine-related persistent fertility damage and more restrained family planning are probable causes. It is not possible to decide from the figures available to date what proportion of the decline in pregnancies is attributable to these factors.

Even if these figures do not provide the one conclusive explanation for all the observed anomalies, one thing seems clear. Reproduction patterns have been running out of whack, and it didn't start with C19, but rather in the winter of 2021/2022, at the earliest at the beginning of the second lockdown. It appears that human reproduction is robust againt a new virus, but rather sniffy about pandemic control activities as defined by the WHO and health administrators.