Copenhagen, Denmark — Denmark’s government said Friday it is easing its abortion restrictions for the first time in 50 years to make it legal for women to terminate pregnancies up to week 18, down from week 12 previously.
Officials said the law will also be changed to allow girls between the ages of 15 and 17 to have abortions without their parents’ consent.
Marie Bjerre, Minister of Gender Equality, said Denmark is strengthening women’s rights while they are being rolled back in other parts of the world.
“It is about the individual freedom of women, the right to decide about their own body and their own life. “It’s a historic day for women’s equality,” she said.
Free abortion was introduced in Denmark in 1973. The limit was set at up to 12 weeks because “at that time all abortions were performed surgically, and at that time an abortion after week 12 carried a higher risk of complications,” he said. the Ministry of Health. saying.
“After 50 years, it is time for the rules on abortion to adapt to the times,” said Health Minister Sophie Løhde.
He said neighboring Sweden, which set the legal limit at 18 weeks of gestation in 1996, has not seen a significant increase in the number of abortions or the timing of them.
The centrist tripartite government agreed to the measure with two left-wing groups, the Popular Socialist Party and the Red-Green Alliance, and two centrist parties, the Social Liberals and Alternative. The agreement will be sealed by a vote in parliament. No date was announced for it, but it will almost certainly be approved because the government has a majority.
The change is expected to take effect on June 1, 2025.
The Ministry of Health said that the legal age of consent in Denmark is 15, and that a 15-year-old girl can make her own decisions about her own body.
Bjerre said she hopes “young women can find support from their parents. But if there is disagreement, it must ultimately be the young woman’s decision if she wants to be a mother. “It is her body and her life.”
Lawmaker Mette Thiesen, of a populist anti-immigration party that was not part of the agreement, called it “a terrible day. “It’s a terrible new law.”
There is a “very delicate balance between a woman’s right to her own body, but also the right to live the little life that is in the mother’s womb,” she told Danish broadcaster DR. “In week 18, we’re talking about a “. small person with fingers and toes, which can be felt inside the uterus.
Figures from the Danish Health Data Authority show that the total number of abortions in Denmark has remained stable in recent years. In 2022 there were 14,700 medical abortions, up from 14,500 in 2017. It peaked in 1975, when 27,900 abortions were performed.
While abortion is a deeply divisive issue in the United States, it is widely legal throughout Europe.
France inscribed the guaranteed right to abortion into its constitution worldwide for the first time this year, sending a powerful message of support to women around the world. Meanwhile, Poland’s parliament last month held a long-awaited debate on liberalizing the country’s restrictive law, even though many women terminate their pregnancies at home with pills mailed from abroad.
In Germany, which has a more restrictive approach than many other European countries, an independent commission reviewing abortion law recently recommended that the procedure be legalized during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.