In Denmark, women who receive fertility treatments often become pregnant with twins. Several have asked to abort one of the fetuses in Norway, but all have been refused.
‘So far we have received eight requests for a fetal reduction abortions from foreign women.
All the requests have been rejected’, said Torbjorn Eggebø, leader at the National Treatment Service for Advanced Invasive Fetal medicine at St. Olav’s Hospital in Trondheim to the newspaper Vårt Land.
The women came from Italy, Germany, Ireland, Sweden and Denmark, according Eggebø. The reason for the rejections were that they did not fulfill the requirement of residing in Norway when they asked about the fetal reduction abortions.
Earlier this year, the Legislation Department in the Ministry of Justice concluded the abortion law with allowance for a fetal reduction of one or more healthy fetuses.
Though the law doesn’t mention this specifically, the interpretation of the law states that it is not an obstacle to such intervention.
Fetal reduction means that women who are pregnant with twins, or even more healthy fetuses, can have an abortion carried out on one or more of the fetuses.
When the abortion law was introduced in 1975, this was not the medical option which it is now.
Just before Christmas, a majority in parliament rejected the Christian Democrat and Centre Party’s attempt to make fetal reduction illegal.
In Denmark, there is allowance to reduce the number of fetuses carried by the mother to two, but under normal circumstances, not to one.
Source: NTB scanpix / Norway Today
