Denmark’s abortion reform is now being felt across the Øresund as well. Since Denmark raised the limit for abortion on request from 12 to 18 weeks on 1 June 2025, the flow of Danish women travelling to southern Sweden for later abortions has stopped, according to staff at Skåne University Hospital, which runs abortion clinics in Malmö and Lund.
Why Danish women used to travel to Sweden for abortions
For years, Sweden’s 18-week abortion limit made clinics in Malmö and Lund a practical option for some Danish women who were past Denmark’s former 12-week limit. In those cases, patients either had been refused a later abortion by Denmark’s regional abortion system or did not want to go through that process.
According to Roxana Leyton, the midwife responsible for abortion care at Skåne University Hospital, the last Danish patient treated there arrived in May 2025, just before the Danish reform took effect. In previous years, around 20 Danish women annually travelled to Sweden for a later abortion, paying about SEK 16,000 (€1,485).
What changed in Denmark after the 2025 abortion law
Denmark’s reform, which entered into force on 1 June 2025, was the biggest change to the country’s abortion framework in decades. The new rules raised the limit for abortion on request from 12 to 18 weeks and also allowed 15- to 17-year-olds to request an abortion without parental consent.
The reform was presented by Danish officials as an update to a law dating back to 1973, when the 12-week limit reflected older medical practice and higher procedural risks after that point in pregnancy. The political argument behind the change was that the legal framework should match current medicine, fetal diagnostics and the principle of bodily autonomy.
Abortions after week 18 in Denmark still require permission. But the shift removed the legal gap that had made southern Sweden an alternative route for a small number of Danish patients.
How abortion laws differ across the Nordic countries
The end of this cross-border movement also highlights that abortion law in the Nordic region is no longer as fragmented as it once was, at least between Denmark and Sweden.
Sweden has allowed abortion on request up to 18 weeks since 1975, with permission required after that point. Norway also now allows abortion on request up to 18 weeks after a reform that entered into force in 2025. Iceland remains more permissive, allowing abortion up to the end of week 22. Finland, by contrast, still allows abortion on request only up to 12 weeks, although abortions later in pregnancy can be authorised under specific legal grounds.
This means Denmark has moved closer to Sweden and Norway, while Finland remains more restrictive in its general time limit and Iceland remains the outlier on the more permissive side.
Europe still has a wide abortion access gap
The Danish-Swedish case also fits into a much wider European picture. Some countries, including the Netherlands and Great Britain, allow abortion much later in pregnancy, while others maintain much tighter restrictions.
At the restrictive end, Poland allows abortion only in very limited cases, and Malta remains the only EU member state with a near-total ban, although narrowly defined exceptions have been introduced for serious risks to the woman’s life or health. This means that even after Denmark’s reform, access to abortion in Europe still depends heavily on national law and geography.
Denmark’s new rules have therefore done more than change domestic healthcare practice. They have also removed a small but telling form of cross-border abortion travel within the Nordic region, showing how even one national reform can quickly alter patient flows across neighbouring countries.
