Yvonne Herløv Andersen (born 1942) is a Danish former politician. She left parliament in 2001.
A social worker and school principal by profession, Herløv Andersen was present at the founding of the Centre Democrats in 1973, though initially in a background role, serving as assistant to party leader Erhard Jakobsen, and in other internal party positions. She was elected to the Folketing (Danish parliament) in 1977 from Sorø, serving until 1979, again from 1981 to 1984 from Slagelse, and from 1987–88 from Odense. In 1994 she was appointed Social Minister in the first Nyrup Rasmussen cabinet. She subsequently served as Minister of Health in the second Nyrup Rasmussen cabinet, from 1994 to 1996, where she focused particularly on reform of HIV policy, and compensation for previous mistreatment of hemophiliacs.
She was outed as a lesbian in 1996 by Palle Juul-Jensen, the former head of the National Board of Health, who had clashed with Herløv Anderson and her predecessor Torben Lund over AIDS policy, leading to Juul-Jensen's forced resignation in 1995. In his memoir, Juul-Jensen asked what would have been different if "the two latest Ministers of Health, not only politically but personally, had another relationship to the National Union for Gays and Lesbians". Herløv Anderson and Lund thereafter acknowledged their sexual orientations, becoming the first openly gay members of the Danish parliament.
She married a man named Arne Knood Andersen in 1963 and divorced him in 1968, she has two children with him. She entered into a registered partnership with her partner Pirthe Merete Smedegaard Knudsen since 1990, they married later.
References
- "Yvonne Herløv Andersen". www.ft.dk. Archived from the original on 2 May 2005. Retrieved 12 January 2022.
- Lotte Lund (12 February 1994). "Ny minister har altid været på de svages side". Dagbladet Politiken. Retrieved 2011-03-16.
- Per Thiemann (17 June 2004). "Folk sad om ordførerbordet og sagde, at det ikke var Guds vilje". Dagens Medicin. Retrieved 22 October 2011.
- Kaare R. Skou (2007). "Herløv Andersen, Yvonne". Dansk politik A-Å (in Danish) (2nd ed.). Lindhardt og Ringhof. ISBN 978-8711314401.
- Jens Rydström (2011). Odd Couples: A History of Gay Marriage in Scandinavia. Amsterdam University Press. p. 110. ISBN 978-9052603810.
- "Yvonne Herløv Andersen". Kvinfo. Archived from the original on 10 July 2012. Retrieved 6 March 2012.
- 1942 births
- Living people
- Centre Democrats (Denmark) politicians
- Members of the Folketing
- Government ministers of Denmark
- Danish LGBTQ politicians
- Danish lesbians
- Women government ministers of Denmark
- Women members of the Folketing
- Health ministers of Denmark
- LGBTQ legislators
- 20th-century Danish women politicians
- 21st-century Danish women politicians
- People from Sorø Municipality