Health Minister Milan Kujundžić talks about the new abortion law.
Speaking in a television interview on Monday, Health Minister Milan Kujundžić discussed the government’s plans for the new law on abortion, reports N1 on March 26, 2018.
According to the decision by the Constitutional Court, the government has one more year to harmonise the abortion law with the constitution.
“We have started working on the law, and we are currently bringing in experts. My position is that life has to be protected from the conception, which I have always advocated for. On the other hand, we have to gather all the different opinions, acknowledge them, open a dialogue and find the best way to have as few abortions as possible. As I have said, the goal is to have as few abortions as possible, but we must not adopt a law which would produce the opposite effect,” said Kujundžić.
Asked whether the new law would be more restrictive than the current one, he said that he did not know what “the experts and public debate will produce.” “Measures will be taken to make this happen less often, to protect mothers and offer them models for the safety of them and their unborn children so that they do not decide to have an abortion,” Kujundžić said.
Kujundžić added that everyone would be involved in the drafting of the law. “Everyone will be involved, including the Catholic Church, in preparing the law on abortion,” concluded Health Minister Kujundžić, who is best known for his infamous statement that one priest is worth more than 20 physicians.
Reacting to the statement, Minister of Construction and Physical Planning and Deputy Prime Minister Predrag Štromar, from HDZ’s coalition partner HNS, said that everybody should do their job. “The church knows what its job is, so it should deal with that. The politicians know what their job is, and we should do it,” said Štromar.
SDP’s newly-elected political secretary Davorko Vidović also spoke about the issue. “I do not like it, it sounds pretty dangerous to include the Catholic Church on a topic where it has shown that it stands with those who do not want good for women and who, in defence of traditional Christian values, question the rights and freedoms of women when it comes to protecting their reproductive health,” Vidović said. “This debate has to have a civilian character.”
“We believe that the Church must not be included in the legislative process for adopting the abortion law, given that its attitude is based on religious dogma rather than on scientific and medical facts,” said the opposition party GLAS.
Translated from N1.
