Dutch government rules out using EU funding to pay for abortions

Abortion campaigners have criticised the decision by health minister Sophie Hermans not to use European funding to support women who travel to the Netherlands because the procedure is not available in their own countries.

The EU agreed to finance cross-border abortions last February after a citizens’ initiative, My Voice, My Choice, gathered more than a million signatures across the bloc.

The money would be provided through the European Social Fund, under which the Netherlands receives €400 million to spend on anti-poverty programmes.

But in a letter to parliament, Hermans said she had no plans to redistribute the funding so that women from countries such as Poland could receive subsidised abortions in the Netherlands, either now or in future years.

Raquel Garcia Hermída-Van der Walle, an MEP with the D66 party who championed the petition in the European parliament, said she was disappointed with the minister’s response.

“I’d hoped that Hermans would look more towards the future in her letter,” she told Trouw. “That she’d say: we can’t do it now, but there might be room in the next budget round.”

Women who live and pay health insurance in the Netherlands have the cost of an abortion fully covered by the basic insurance package, but those living elsewhere will have to pay between €400 and €900 for the surgical procedure.

Hermans said women could pay for their own or apply to one of the volunteer organisations in the Netherlands that arranges abortions to pay the cost from their donations.

Alex van Vliet, a volunteer with Abortion Network Amsterdam, told Dutch News: “It’s quite shameful that the minister is telling women who can’t afford an abortion to turn to small volunteer networks such as ours.

“I’m very proud of the work we do, but it’s actually strange that we have to do it and fund it through donations when it should be a job for the government.”