ZAGREB, February 21, 2020 – Twenty-two MPs on Friday tabled a proposal to set up an inquiry commission into the financing, work and influence of organisations which consult pregnant women in Croatia in order to prevent quackery and disinformation about abortion.
Independent MP Bojan Glavašević, Sabina Glasovac (SDP) and Vesna Pusić (GLAS) told the press that according to reports in Croatian and foreign media, so-called pregnancy crisis centres were spreading in Europe and Croatia as part of a global coordinated project aimed at disinforming women about their reproductive rights and health as well as introducing additional obstacles to abortion.
Those centres are organisations that try to dissuade women who are thinking about aborting by providing incorrect information and advice on reproductive health and medical services, which denies women the legal right to medical services and information based on scientific facts, they said.
There is evidence that some of those pseudo-medical institutions are receiving more and more funds from foreign organisations and governments, notably from the US as part of its policy to deny the right to abortion around the world, the three MPs added.
Such practice is dangerous to women’s reproductive rights and health, as warned by the European Parliamentary Forum for Sexual and Reproductive Rights in a letter to the European Commission, the MPs said.
They recalled that under recommendations by the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women published in July 2015, Croatia should stop retrograding with regard to sexual and reproductive health and that this included access to safe abortion.
The three MPs said the organisations that offered reproductive health advice and spread disinformation were exempt from mandatory oversight for institutions offering medical advice.
The proposal was signed by MPs from GLAS, IDS, HSS, HSU, Bridge, SDP, SDSS, SNAGA, Democrats, New Politics and independents Glavašević and Marko Vučetić.
More news about abortion rights in Croatia can be found in the Politics section.
