In June 1971, Schwarzer and 374 German women, including Romy Schneider and Senta Berger, confessed that they had an abortion in a successful campaign to legalize abortion in Germany. Decades later, Schwarzer revealed she had never had an abortion. She called her project "Frauen gegen den § 218" ("Women against Section 218", which was the section of the German Penal Code that made abortion illegal). In autumn 1971, Schwarzer released her first book of the same title. The West German legalization law was struck down by the German Constitutional Court abortion decision, 1975.