Basic health insurance should cover the pill, says ChristenUnie

Christian party ChristenUnie says the government should once again include the contraceptive pill for adult women in the basic health insurance package because of its important role in preventing abortions.

‘It is rather strange that abortions are covered by insurance but that the pill is not,’ ChristenUnie MP Carla Dik-Faber told Trouw in an interview on Thursday.

The measure is one of several proposals ChristenUnie has drawn up to reduce the number of abortions in the Netherlands. The pill has not been covered by health insurance since 2011.

The party also wants the government to help women who want to talk about their experiences of abortion and to give family doctors a bigger role in helping women who become pregnant and who don’t want a child, Dik-Faber told the paper.

The issue of abortion and who should pay for the pill is likely to become an issue during negotiations to put together a new coalition after the March general election, Trouw said.

The pill and other forms of contraception are included in the basic health insurance package up to the age of 21.

D66 have already come out in favour of scrapping the five day wait women face before undergoing an abortion while both the PvdA and GroenLinks say family doctors should be able to prescribe abortion pills.

There are some 30,300 abortions in the Netherlands a year, and over half take place in the first seven weeks of pregnancy. The Netherlands has one of the lowest abortion rates in the world, at 8.5 per 1,000 women.