Amsterdam
The Netherlands has ended its decades-long policy of providing women with free birth control. The change was greeted with alarm by some health advocates, who warned about a possible increase in unwanted pregnancies and abortions. Contraception “used to be easily available to rich and poor,” Annet Jansen of Amsterdam’s Center for Sexual Health told the BBC. “We are on the wrong path.” The law ending free contraception was recently enacted by the center-right government, which cited the high cost of the subsidy. The abortion rate in the Netherlands is 8.7 per 1,000 women, compared with 21.3 per 1,000 women in the U.S.
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