Pro tables bill to remove abortion from Dutch criminal code

Opposition party Pro has put forward a bill to remove abortion from the Dutch criminal code and officially regulate it as a part of healthcare. Currently, abortion is still technically a crime, although allowed under specific circumstances by professionals.

MP Lisa Vliegenthart, a former midwife, handed the bill to campaigners from feminist group Dolle Mina outside parliament on Monday morning, broadcaster NOS reported.

“This is incredibly important because abortion is healthcare, and as far as I am concerned healthcare has no place in the criminal code,” she said. “That is why we want to remove abortion from the criminal code and include it in healthcare legislation.”

Already legal
Abortion has been legal in the Netherlands since the 1980s, but the legal framework is unusual. Under an article of the criminal code, performing an abortion is a crime. The exception is if it is carried out by a doctor in a licensed clinic or hospital under the conditions set out in the Termination of Pregnancy Act.

Those conditions include a limit of 24 weeks and a requirement that the woman indicates she is in a situation of distress. Women themselves cannot be prosecuted for having abortions, but people administering them can be.

Pro says it wants to keep all the current care requirements, including the time limit, but move them into healthcare law. “Of course abortion has to be carried out carefully,” Vliegenthart said. “But you don’t need the criminal code for that.”
Proponents of the bill say that having abortion in the criminal code adds to the stigma around it and makes the rules harder to update.

The current law was a hard-fought compromise, passed by 76 votes to 74 in the lower house in 1980 and by 38 to 37 in the Senate. The rules have since been loosened, with the mandatory five-day waiting period was scrapped in 2023, and family doctors can now prescribe the abortion pill.

VVD support
Whether the bill passes depends largely on the right-wing liberal VVD. In 2023, the VVD joined the CDA, ChristenUnie, PVV, SGP and FvD to vote down a similar attempt to remove abortion from the criminal code. But its 2025 election manifesto committed the party to “actively work” to do so.

With support from the VVD, D66 and smaller opposition parties, the bill could have a narrow majority. However, the parties’ coalition partner, the CDA, remains against it.

The VVD has not yet said whether it will back the bill. “We are going to read the proposal and wait for the Council of State’s response,” the party said.

Constitution
If the bill passes, Pro wants to go further and enshrine the right to abortion in the Dutch constitution, as France did in 2024. Vliegenthart pointed to the United States, where the Supreme Court overturned the federal right to abortion in 2022. “That pressure exists in Europe and the Netherlands too,” she said.

In practice, access rather than legality is often the bigger issue for women. Last month, the health inspectorate allowed the country’s only online abortion service, which now issues around a quarter of all abortion pills, to keep operating after it changed its practices.