Abstract

Until the late twentieth century, there were three main political currents in the Netherlands: Christian, Labor, and Liberal, giving Christian party politics a stronger position than in European countries with a binary division between conservative and progressive. The history of the debate about embryo research coincides with the end of this period. Whereas in the 1980s the Christian Democrat party still had strong religiously motivated views about embryo protection, it has since lost both the power and the drive to pursue this. However, due to strategic opportunities arising in the margin of Dutch coalition politics, smaller parties inspired by Christian belief are still quite influential on issues of medical ethics in the highly fragmented political landscape of the present.