ZAGREB, 11 May 2022 - Seven centre-left opposition parliamentary groups on Wednesday supported the Social Democratic Party's medical pregnancy termination bill, saying it is a woman's right to decide whether to terminate a pregnancy and that the state must make that service available.

"A woman has the right to reproductive health, quality and available healthcare, information and self-determination, and public healthcare must provide her with everything the law guarantees", Sabina Glasovac of the SDP said, presenting the bill.

"It is a woman's right to plan a family, choose if, when and with whom to start a family or give birth as well as whether she will terminate a pregnancy", she added.

The state must ensure legal, safe and quality medical pregnancy termination per request, and a woman should be provided with all the necessary, accurate and scientifically-based information, according to the bill.

It says that all authorised public hospitals must ensure, without delay, questioning or obstruction, pregnancy termination at a woman's request until the end of the 12th week of gestation, and in specific legal situations after that.

The costs of pregnancy termination should be covered by the state and hospitals must ensure a sufficient number of doctors who do not refuse to perform the procedure, or be fined up to HRK 500,000.

Ivana Posavec Krivec of the Social Democrats called on the government and the ruling majority to endorse the bill and prevent the further erosion of women's rights.

The 1978 abortion law which is in force is the minimum civilisational achievement which should be amended due to developments in science, medicine and WHO guidelines, she added.

Urša Raukar Gamulin of the Green-Left Bloc said it was necessary to respect the law, the Constitution and the Constitutional Court, which decided in 2017 that a new abortion law must be passed in two years' time.

"We will fight for abortion in Croatia to be safe, legal, available, free and painless. We acknowledge conscientious objection, but every hospital's management has the duty to ensure abortion regardless of conscientious objection", she added.

"We don't advocate abortion but a woman's right to decide about her body and respect the law", said Krešo Beljak of the Croatian Peasant Party, adding that doctors who invoke conscientious objection are hypocrites because they don't invoke it in private hospitals.

"We live in a secular state and will fight with every political means for Croatia not to fall into the hands of ultra-conservatives, quasi-believers and liars who, for personal gain, are trying to return Croatia to the Middle Ages", said Beljak.

Anka Mrak Taritaš of GLAS said this was a civilisational, not a world-view issue because deciding on abortion is the exclusive right of a woman and her family.

Dalija Orešković of the Centre party said it was unacceptable that any authorities would refuse to execute a Constitutional Court decision. It's a negation of the state and the rule of law, it's the (ruling) HDZ's violence against institutions, she added.

We know the HDZ won't support this bill, so our primary battle is not to allow the HDZ to negate the rights that exist in the law. No woman in Croatia must ever again feel humiliated and shamed when deciding on her legal rights, which don't exist in practice because Croatia is run by parallel interest groups, including the Church, said Orešković.

Katarina Nemet of the Istrian Democratic Party said they would support the bill as acquired human and civil rights, notably women's right to choose, should be viewed as a civilisational minimum.

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ZAGREB, 11 May 2022 - President Zoran Milanović said on Wednesday that justice and morality in the case of Mirela Čavajda were on her side and as a general rule, the state was the one that should ensure assistance for women so that the situation in which all gynaecologists refused to perform abortions would not occur.

Čavajda is a 39-year-old who has requested a pregnancy termination because the fetus has been diagnosed with massive brain cancer six months into her pregnancy. She recently told the Index web portal that all the hospitals in Zagreb she contacted had refused to do a termination of pregnancy despite the fact that doctors had told her that the tumour was so big the child most likely would not live long, and even if it did, it would never have a normal life.

Her complaint against the hospitals' decision is to be discussed by a second-instance commission at the KBC Zagreb Hospital, whose expert commission, formed last week at the request of Health Minister Vili Beroš, was of the view that the child has a chance to live and that neurosurgical treatment is possible if the delivery goes well.

Speaking to reporters after attending the opening of the 15th Job Fair in Zagreb, Milanović warned, in the context of the Čavajda case, that most gynaecologists in hospitals in Zagreb refuse to perform abortions, noting that "the state should step in."

"In the past five years the state should have stepped in to say - all right, certain procedures will be ensured, under certain conditions, and women meeting those conditions will have access to those procedures and a certain kind of protection. When we say that women should have the right to choose - that is indeed so, but the law has always set certain limits. We are talking about a woman's choice up to a certain week of pregnancy, after which things get more complicated. That is the case in the entire world," he said.

"In my opinion, justice and morality are on the side of this lady," he said, warning about the problem of manipulation of conscientious objection.

"There are certain procedures, but they are evidently manipulated. That is why I am saying that in the case of (Zagreb's) Sveti Duh Hospital, where there are no gynaecologists (willing to perform abortions) - some of them I know personally and for some I know for sure that they are not conscientious objectors but are opportunists - the state, the ministry should step in and make sure assistance is provided to women," he said, stressing that he was not talking about a specific case but in general.

"It cannot happen that tomorrow we do not have a single gynaecologist in public hospitals in Zagreb that is not a conscientious objector," he said.

Noting that the older he was, the more delicate the topic of abortion was for him, Milanović said that what he did know for sure was that nobody can be a victim of the system just because no gynaecologist in public hospitals is willing to perform abortions while the state fails to do anything in that regard.

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ZAGREB, 8 March 2022 - A group of female MPs from different parties warned on Tuesday, on International Women's Day, about the unequal and unfair status of women in the Croatian society, and called for continuing to fight against the pay gap between women and men and securing protection for victims of domestic violence.

Offering her best wishes to women on their day, Sandra Benčić of the Green-Left Bloc said they wanted to raise key legislative issues such as those related to women and their right to a home, unfair and unequal ownership of resources, the issue of women workers and the right to the dignity of work and fair pay.

Benčić said they wanted to express support for women refugees, notably those from Ukraine, as well as all women exposed to war, violence and exile.

State should secure cheap housing for women victims of violence

Benčić said they wanted the state and local authorities to secure access to cheap public housing for women victims of violence so they could deal with the issue of the right to a home.

She wondered how it was possible that perpetrators of domestic violence did not have to leave their households while women and children had to move to shelters, and why the state had not secured minimum protection for women and children from the perpetrator invading their home after he serves two or three days in prison, which, she said, is the usual punishment.

"We think this should be regulated differently by law, in cases in violence the right to a home cannot and must not be treated as less important than the right of ownership. In this country absolutely nothing has been done for 30 years to enable women to acquire ownership of real estate the same way as men, notably in rural areas where very often they end up in the street and homeless," said Benčić.

Anka Mrak Taritaš of GLAS said that around 22 million women affected by the Russian invasion of Ukraine were in a life threatening situation or were travelling with their children to other countries.

Basic conditions for life, work of Ukrainian women

Mrak Taritaš said that those women should be provided with at least minimum conditions for life and work.

Katarina Peović of the Workers' Front said that International Women's Day commemorated the struggle of working women in Chicago for greater voting rights as well as labour rights.

"It is a day when we speak of the need for a higher pay for women, safer working conditions and a better life. That has been recognised by women's associations across Croatia and today they are organising a march under the slogan "March today, strike tomorrow" because they know that there can be no women's rights without equal material rights, wages and working conditions," she said.

If the new Labour Act, which the government has been working on for two years, is adopted, employers will be literally able to ask a worker to be available 24 hours a day, she said.

While the world is turning to initiatives for the right to disconnect during non-work hours, the new law aims to make working hours more flexible and introduces "unclear terminology" that will make it possible, through digital technology, to make a worker available 24 hours a day, she said.

Katica Glamuzina of the Social Democrats' parliamentary bench said that instead of making progress in more than 100 years of struggle for gender equality, one had to continue discussing the pay gap, the fight against gender-based violence, femicide, and ways to break the glass ceiling.

Without equality for women in society, a sustainable future for the entire world is out of reach, she stressed, noting that one should also talk about climate change as it affects women more because women make up the majority of the global population living in poverty and depending on natural resources that are also affected by climate change.