Professor Sjef Gevers:

Every law can be changed. It is more difficult to change the constitution of course but we do not have anything in the Dutch constitution about abortion. The law can be changed. Theoretically, I agree the law could be much more restrictive than it is now. It is unlikely that will happen because we have had many different coalition governments in the past 35 years and, for instance, the Christian Democratic Party led for part of that time and forms part of the present coalition. Those parties have always respected the balance or the compromise that has been achieved in the abortion Act. I do not expect this will change. The majority of the Dutch public would be opposed to that.