Nearly 400 Dutch doctors register to prescribe abortion pill
Since the government made it possible for house doctors to prescribe the abortion pill at the start of this year, 392 general practitioners have completed the mandatory online additional training to do so. That is 3.2 percent of the total 12,246 GPs registered in the Netherlands, Trouw reports based on figures from Fiom, the expertise center for unwanted pregnancies, which organizes the additional training.
“We didn’t know what to expect beforehand,” Wendy Kersten, a policymaker at Fiom, told Trouw about the number of registrations. “The surveys were very mixed. We think it’s positive that women have more options, but it’s about freedom of choice, and that applies equally to the general practitioner.”
Before 1 January 2025, women could only access medical abortions at abortion clinics and hospitals. After years of political debate, house doctors are now also allowed to prescribe the abortion pill up to nine weeks of pregnancy.
According to Kersten, even 400 doctors prescribing this treatment improves access to abortion care. Not everyone has an abortion clinic nearby, and due to protests and stigma, many are nervous about visiting these clinics.
It could also be that GP practices decided to get one of their doctors certified. “If GPs have a practice with eight members, they ensure that one of them is authorized to prescribe abortion medication, and the rest, for example, only take the part of the additional training program that covers decision support. This way, quite a few practices are already covered,” Kersten told Trouw.
A total of 1,415 GPs, 11 percent of the total, have logged on to Fiom’s education course and likely completed at least one of these modules.
More doctors are completing the training every day, Kersten added. “People weren’t immediately ready to start; something like this needs to become better known. Next year, the number might even double.”
