Professor Sjef Gevers:

We have formal rules about the law, as it stands, in the Netherlands. I take the Deputy's question to be whether there is a contradiction in it. He referred to what I was saying about it not being a routine medical procedure. I think there is no contradiction because it is not considered, in law or in practice, as a normal medical procedure, as a routine, which is only a question of medical expertise, technique and norms. In my discipline of health law, we say that not everything doctors do can be regulated only by their own norms. Some things must be considered by society. Abortion is an example in this regard because there is more at stake than only medical intervention to solve a medical problem. In that sense, it is not routine or normal. That is why we have kept and will keep the basic prohibition on abortion in our criminal law and it is why we have a time limit in our penal code to say that after 24 weeks of gestation, only in very exceptional circumstances, the numbers on which were set out half an hour or so ago, can abortion take place. As such, there is protection of unborn life and respect for unborn life, but the choice of the woman remains in the centre. Perhaps, our system will have more protection of unborn life than others which do not respect the choice of the women concerned.