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Politico (4 June 2025)

HANNE COKELAERE, CLAUDIA CHIAPPA, AND MARI ECCLES

While the global focus is on America’s reversal of long-standing abortion rights, a surprising number of European women still have to travel to terminate pregnancies.

She was driving from the Belgian city of Ghent to the small seaside village of Groede in the Netherlands, with an 18-year-old woman joining her for the short 60-kilometer drive.

It was the late 1970s, and abortion was still illegal in Belgium. The young woman had been raped and was carrying the baby of her assailant. She had turned to Bellens for help, and the young doctor had found a clinic just across the border.

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