“Our gynaecologists against the Pope's encyclical"* – The right to abortion in

Yugoslavia

In 2017 the Constitutional Court in Croatia confirmed the right to abortion and ordered
the modernization of the Act on health measures to implement the right to a free decision
regarding the birth of children, which has been in force since 1978. This Yugoslav law does
not engage with factors that make abortion inaccessible today, such as the conscientious
objection to abortion and the need for its modernization is understandable and well accepted
by feminist activists in Croatia. However, in the light of the latest announcements, which hint
that the new law will only further restrict the right to abortion, the 1978 law seems like
something worth keeping. Although dealing with reproductive rights today often brings us
back to the legalisation of abortion in Yugoslavia, little is known about this process.

In this paper, I will present and analyse the debates on the decriminalization of
abortion and then further liberalisation that took place from the end of WWII to the 1978 law.
In my analysis, I will briefly discuss preceding legal and regulatory solutions (1951, 1952,
1960, 1969, 1974), but I will mostly focus on the issue of recognizing social indications as a
legitimate reason for abortion. A special segment of the analysis will concern the abortion
topics published in Žena (Woman), journal of the Conference for the Social Activity of
Women of Croatia. I will put them in the context of the abortion narrative that was created by
the Conference within its work on social policy, health, maternal protection, family, and
social care for children. In parallel, I will pay special attention to the narrative of various
bodies that were in charge of making health and reproductive policy, such as government
bodies, women's commissions and professional associations of gynaecologists and
obstetricians.

*The title of the abortion-related article that was published in a daily newspaper Vjesnik on
October 11th, 1968