Scientific consensus supports extending the abortion limit to eighteen weeks. However, Minister Verlinden and her party aim to restrict the extension to fourteen weeks. The party relies on long-standing arguments about foetal pain, which have been contradicted by research. According to recent reporting, the proposal also includes an exemption allowing abortions up to eighteen weeks in cases of rape, as well as a reduction in the mandatory reflection period from six days to two.
vergeten, maar net om te vermijden dat ze zich als morele kramp blijft herhalen en vrouwen daarmee de clandestiniteit in duwt.
Not only in the field of euthanasia, but also in abortion policy, the strict moral compass of the Christian Democratic politician is difficult to deny. Verlinden’s recent remark is telling: “It is not science that determines politics.” The Belgian law, which was established in 1990 through a shifting parliamentary majority and in the aftermath of the mini–royal question, currently limits the legal abortion period to twelve weeks. One consequence of this is that around 400 women each year travel to the Netherlands to undergo the procedure, where abortion is permitted up to 24 weeks. This threshold is not merely a technical parameter, but the outcome of a political history in which abortion never disappeared — it simply changed form. Stricter legislation pushed the practice underground, into medical clandestinity or across the border. It is precisely this pattern that Belgium has displayed for more than a century and a half.
Abortion has always taken place in history, whether legal or not. In the nineteenth century, medical abortions in emergency situations already existed, as did midwife-abortionists and abortifacient remedies. These practices appeared in newspapers at the time, until the legislator hardened its stance in 1911 and again in 1923, when abortion and contraception were targeted both morally and criminally. What followed was a long struggle for legalisation.
Abortion tourism
This is also where so-called abortion tourism to the Netherlands originates. From the 1960s onwards, and especially in the 1970s, abortion in Belgium became both a social and medical issue, precisely because women travelled to the Netherlands or the United Kingdom for legal or safer procedures. In 1975, around 12,000 Belgian women underwent abortions in the Netherlands. The gap between law and practice did not shrink through moral strictness; it only widened as a result of its failure.
What is striking today is the apparent return of this moralising tone in the political arena (or has it never really disappeared?). As if lawmakers are once again failing to recognise that Belgium is now a pluralistic society in terms of worldviews, and that inclusive legislation cannot be based on a single moral framework disguised as neutrality. In the 1950s and 1960s, secular organisations did attempt to develop a scientifically grounded and pluralistic approach, but for a long time they remained a small network within a pillarised system. That, too, is a lesson that now seems to have been forgotten.
The question is whether this represents another example of Belgium’s consociational democracy, or rather its distortion. That model of governance was originally intended as a mechanism for managing conflict in a pillarised society; later it was also interpreted as a form of consociational democracy ensuring stability through compromise. But when that compromise systematically leads to the postponement of fundamental rights, then pacification ceases to be a democratic virtue and instead becomes a cover for stagnation. It is not as if the medical world has remained at the same point. Contrary to what political debate sometimes suggests, there is broad consensus in international medical circles that abortion care, when carried out according to established guidelines, is a safe and routine form of healthcare. This is not an ideological position, but a summary of the current scientific and medical consensus.
One can therefore hope that, as in the past, courageous members of parliament will step forward, and that Belgium in 2026 will at least align itself with the scientific consensus on this issue. Not in order to forget history, but precisely to prevent it from repeating itself as a moral reflex that pushes women back into illegality.