This article reviews and summarizes widely scattered evidence on abortion and eugenics in Nazi Germany. Following an overview of abortion legislation from the beginnings of the German Reich through the Weimar Republic and a brief perspective on the birth control movement, sex education, and contraception, consideration is given to the influence of demographic trends and notions of eugenics and racial hygiene in evolving population policy. The Nazi years are then discussed in terms of abortion and birth control policies and practice in the period 1933-39 and in the war years 1939-45. The former period was characterized by the suppression of the birth control movement, increasing restrictions on grounds for legal abortion, and severe penalization of performers of illegal abortions. During the war, racial grounds were virtually the only basis for legal abortion, numbers of illegal abortions rose abruptly, and penalties were severe. Experiences in neighboring occupied countries mirrored, with some variation, the German policies and practices.