Left wing leader worried by right-wing pushback against equal rights for women, LGBTQIA+

Party leader Frans Timmermans of GroenLinks-PvdA finds it worrying that right-wing parties in Europe are engaged in a “pushback” on equal rights for women and the LGBTQIA+ community. On the television program Khalid & Sophie, he accused JA21 party leader Joost Eerdmans of being part of this. Eerdmans said he is just as concerned about developments in this area in Poland and Hungary, but he also believes that the Netherlands should not “do more just to be a counterweight.”

The politicians clashed about the bill that will allow people to change their gender on their passports without the intervention of a professional. Eerdmans called it “objectionable” to enable it just like that. “That does not affect the fact that someone can be who they are; as JA21, we are all for that.”

“If a person goes to the municipality and says: I no longer identify as a man but as a woman, can you put that in my passport? Why should the municipality say no?” Timmermans asked the JA21 leader.

But, according to Eerdmans, that is different from the personal choice of wanting to be addressed with different pronouns because a passport is a “state document.”

Eerdmans also disagrees with the bill submitted by GroenLinks-PvdA on Wednesday to remove abortion from the Criminal Code. According to him, it is good that women and their unborn children are “protected by the law” when abortions are carried out illegally and in a “shoddy” manner.

Timmermans objected, saying that those types of practices no longer occur in countries where abortion isn’t punishable. He mentioned Canada as an example.

“Women deserve that we emphasize that they are in charge of their own bodies and that it has nothing to do with criminal law,” said Timmermans. Moreover, the criminal liability deters doctors, he thinks.

The GroenLinks-PvdA bill wants to scrap the law that stipulates that anyone who performs an abortion is punishable unless the abortion is performed in a special clinic or hospital.