The contraceptive pill should be put back in the basic health insurance package, doctors who carry out abortions say in Friday’s AD. The pill is currently only free to the under-21s.

On Thursday, the health inspectorate said there has been a rise in the number of abortions carried out in the Netherlands for the first time in years and that women aged 25 to 30 were the most likely to undergo the procedure.

‘We don’t really know why this is but one reason could be that contraception is too expensive for some women,’ said Ineke van der Vlugt of the Rutgers Stichting, which advises on sexual health. ‘It would certainly help if contraception was free to everyone.’

Anne Jansen, of the Dutch association of abortion doctors, told the paper that the high cost of fitting an IUD also puts some women off. Many doctors won’t carry out the procedure and a hospital fitting can cost up to €500.

There were 30,803 abortions in the Netherlands in 2015, a rise of 442 from the previous year. However, the rate of abortions compared to live pregnancies is still one of the lowest in the world at 8.6 per 1000, said health minister Edith Schippers.