They ended on 17 last January the negotiations that led to the new governing coalition took place in Norway, the first with a non-socialist majority since 1985. The coalition headed by Prime Minister Erna Solberg is made up of the three parties already present in the previous government, the conservative Høyre party (H), il conservatore-liberale Progress Party (Frp), the social-liberal party Venstre (V) and by the Christian People's Party (KrF), recently joined it.
The new government presented the Granavolden Declaration to Norwegian citizens, from the name of the hotel where it was drawn up and presented, that is, a common document containing the government program, the result of complex and tension-filled negotiations, in particular on immigration issues, climate and abortion.
Precisely on this last topic, fundamental for the Popular Christian Party (KrF) which has the inviolability of human dignity at the center of its politics, Prime Minister Solberg had opened up the possibility of changing the legislation on abortion. The demands of the Christian Popular Party, posed as a condition for entry into the government coalition, there were two: the cancellation of paragraph 2c of the abortion law which allows selective abortion beyond the twelfth week and the ban on embryoreduction.
These are requests full of meaning because for the first time in history a European country is "backtracking" on the regulation of abortion and because, moreover, it is a highly secularized and secularist country like Norway.
Following political negotiations, the Christian People's Party obtained that the ban on fetal reduction or embryoreduction was explicitly included in the Granavolden Declaration.
Embryoreduction is specifically the elimination of one or more fetuses in multiple pregnancies, so that for example a twin pregnancy becomes a single pregnancy or a triplets pregnancy turns into a twin. For medical reasons, embryoreduction is carried out between the twelfth and thirteenth week and performed through an injection of potassium chloride into the heart of the chosen fetus. If the fetuses are healthy, the usual procedure for choosing the fetus to abort involves selecting the one in the most comfortable position for the injection.
Dal 2016 embryoreduction is practiced only in Trondheim, in the hospital dedicated to the Norwegian saint St. Olav. Dal 2002 were performed at St. Olav more than 60 embryoreductions, while it is not known the exact number of embryoreductions performed at the Oslo University Hospital over the years 2002-2015.
This practice will therefore soon become illegal in Norway, also eliminating the flow of foreign women who go to the Scandinavian country to practice fetal reduction as it is illegal in their country.
In relation to ethical issues, in the Granavolden platform we also read in the paragraph entitled "Abortion prevention measures and reproductive health" that the Government's objective will be to reduce the number of abortions in Norway by a third in ten years, through preventive and training tools, while there is no reference to paragraph 2c of the law on abortion. In the end, about the field of genetics and biotechnology, the Granavolden Declaration expressly states that the unanimous agreement of all four parties will be necessary regarding any legislative change on the matter and therefore the Christian People's Party will be able to veto legislative proposals relating to delicate bioethical issues, current in the Norwegian political debate.