The Roda Association organized an event to mark the end of the “Fight against Infertility Week”.
The Roda Association organized on Saturday the “Together for Fertility” event to mark the end of the Fight against Infertility Week. Participants sent a message that assisted reproductive procedures were medical treatments and therefore should not become a victim of ideological interpretations, reports Index.hr on April 30, 2016.
Irena Rožić from the Roda Association said that they wanted to send a message that “never again should we have restrictive legislation such as existed when Health Minister was Darko Milinović (HDZ)”. With this message they wanted to respond to statements made by former president of HDZ’s Health Committee Ante Ćorušić, who during the election campaign late last year said that HDZ would amend the present law, which has been in force since 2012, if it came to power.
“Assisted reproductive procedures must never again become a political issue. All couples who are facing infertility should be given access to modern procedures if they so wish, in line with global trends and without financial constraints”, said Rožić. She added that the current legislation, which was adopted by the SDP-led coalition government in 2012, is much better than the one that was in effect earlier. However, four years after its adoption, couples in Croatia continue to face many difficulties with infertility treatments.
According to the World Health Organisation, one in six couples of reproductive age are facing the problem of infertility or reduced fertility. For Croatia, that means more than 150,000 couples which should receive or should have received some sort of medical help. Although there are no official records, Rožić said that estimates showed that, since the 1980s, tens of thousands of children were born in Croatia thanks to assisted reproductive procedures.
