Marna Jacobsen was 17, pregnant and set on continuing her education abroad, a rare chance for the daughter of a poor fisherman from the Faroe Islands.
The Faroes, a self-governing part of the Kingdom of Denmark, in the North Atlantic hundreds of miles from Copenhagen, allowed abortion only in rare cases. So Ms. Jacobsen suggested to two doctors that she would have a nervous breakdown if she had a baby. It was her only chance to finish her studies, she said.
“I had to lie about it,” Ms. Jacobsen said, now 71 and still angry more than 50 years later. “It was a charade.”
The Faroes has had a near-total abortion ban, one of Europe’s most restrictive, under a law that dates back to 1956. Like Ms. Jacobsen, some women lied to their doctors to get around the restrictions and end their pregnancies, doctors, lawmakers and advocates on both sides of the issue have said.
But late last year, the Parliament in the archipelago of 55,000 people ratified a law that allows women to end a pregnancy within its first 12 weeks, a major shift in a place that has long been more religious and socially conservative than its Nordic peers. The law is set to take effect in July.
“It’s a huge, huge victory,” said Hervor Palsdottir, a lawmaker who cosponsored the bill and paused her maternity leave to participate in the debate. “The women of the Faroe Islands have the right to choose.”
The change would make the Faroes the latest European government to move to expand abortion rights in the more than three years since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, eliminating the constitutional right to abortion.
But a parliamentary election is set for late March and polls suggest that power could pass to a conservative coalition that may try to block implementation of the law or change it.
There are strong feelings on both sides. In a 2024 poll, 52 percent of respondents said abortion should be freely available up to 12 weeks, while 43 percent said it should be banned or allowed only in special circumstances.
The vote in Parliament last year was close, 17 to 16, and came a year after an attempt at the same change failed. Supporters and opponents packed into the Parliament to watch, some on both sides openly weeping.
Many opponents of abortion say their Christian faith guides their opinion on the issue. For them, the change in the law is an outrage. Advocates arranged prayer meetings before the vote and had hosted years of rallies outside Parliament for their cause. During the debate in Parliament, one lawmaker who opposed the bill held 45 seconds of silence.
“A lot of people who live here are people of faith,” said Tora Winther Reinert, a 40-year-old biologist and mother of two, who said she feared the law would lead the Faroes down a slippery slope. “For us, life is holy. It’s given to us by God.”
Some 75 percent of Faroese people are members of the national church, which is Protestant, though the church has taken no official stance on abortion and churches have a wide range of views.
Some Faroese women have long chafed at the restrictions on abortion, quietly coaching each other on which doctors would be sympathetic and what those doctors would need to hear.
Just a few years ago, abortion was a taboo subject in public, Faroese academics and lawmakers said.
Then, in 2018, a small group of women started an abortion rights organization, naming it Fritt Val, “free choice” in Faroese. They encouraged women to share their abortion stories. In 2023, a video of women saying “vit hava tikid abort,” or “we have had an abortion,” was shared widely on Faroese social media.
Even those who oppose abortion were critical of the old law. It allowed Faroese doctors to authorize an abortion for only a few reasons, including rape, a life-threatening medical emergency, a fetal abnormality or mental or physical issues that would leave a mother unable to care for her child.
Many women who wanted an abortion would try to convince a doctor they were psychologically unfit, advocates on both sides of the issue acknowledged.
The old law left a lot of room for interpretation, said Bjork Tyril Sadembou, the president of the Faroes’ main anti-abortion group, Foroya Pro Vita. It should be difficult to obtain an abortion, Ms. Sadembou said. “You can’t just be giving them out on demand.”
Heine Lutzen, a Christian radio host and gospel singer, said he knew women had been able to skirt the old restrictions. “Before, you just had to know the right doctors that were pro-abortion and answer correctly to some questions,” he said.
But he, like several other Faroese people who oppose the new law, said that the hurdles were important because they required women to really consider the stakes of their decision.
“It was a restriction,” he said. “Your conscience would tell you that you were breaking the law.”
Efforts to restrict abortion laws in the United States and elsewhere were a spur to Dr. Diana Reynstind, a gynecologist who works in the Faroese capital, Torshavn, and to others, to support the new law. She said that anti-abortion statements across the Atlantic made the vote feel like a now-or-never moment.
“I wouldn’t say that I’m afraid,” she said. But she sees how her American peers have been targeted in states with restrictive abortion laws.
Dr. Reynstind said she had worried that someone in the Faroe Islands could have tried to bring a similar case and even use her as a scapegoat to test the law. Under the old Faroese law, a doctor who performed an illegal abortion could be sentenced to two years in jail, though there were never any prosecutions.
Women seeking an abortion “have to say certain things to convince me,” Dr. Reynstind said. “And I need to hear some specific things to be able to defend myself.”
In 2025, 33 women in the Faroe Islands had abortions performed by doctors, government figures shows. (The data does not identify why women got abortions and there is no way to measure how many women traveled abroad, advocates and experts said.)
Ms. Jacobsen went on to continue her education in Denmark, and then became an editor and translator. She now has four children, nine grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
She did not open up about her abortion for decades, though in recent years she has been more outspoken. Old hurt resurfaced as she watched the debate in Parliament on a livestream, sometimes muting the sound.
When the law passed, she was thrilled. But, Ms. Jacobsen said, she did not cry or cheer. She was thinking about the years that had passed since her own abortion and of the women who had shared their stories to try to change opinions and eventually the law.
“I was thanking myself — and other women my age — who have fought this battle for many, many, many years,” she said.
Amelia Nierenberg is a Times reporter covering international news from London.
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