Nine years of struggle for the right to a family
53 to 52. With a majority of a single vote, the Danish parliament ended in 2006 a nine-year ban that had denied lesbian women the right to a medically assisted pregnancy.
On 2 June 2006, the Danish parliament, the Folketing, voted by a narrow majority of 53 to 52 to give lesbian women and single women equal access to medically assisted insemination. This ended a nine-year political struggle by the Danish LGBT movement against a law that in 1997 had laid down exactly the opposite.
Denmark had been an early pioneer of queer rights: in 1989 it had been the first country in the world to introduce registered partnership. But in 1997, the newly passed law on artificial insemination expressly excluded lesbian couples and single women. From then on, doctors were not allowed to treat these patients. The law was seen as a serious step backwards and immediately sparked protests from the LGBT organisation LBL and other groups.
Because the ban applied expressly only to doctors, a creative loophole emerged: in 1999, the midwife Nina Stork opened the Stork Klinik in Copenhagen, which treated lesbian and single women and so formally did not break the law. Hundreds of women used this route. The clinic became a symbol of resistance and still exists today.
The narrow vote of 2 June 2006 finally ended the ban in law. With the new Act No. 535, which came into force on 8 June 2006, lesbian couples and single women received the formal right to the same medical treatment as heterosexual couples. The decision showed how strongly social acceptance and political majorities can shift within a decade, and how important pressure from civil society is in the process.