Mobilizing the Womb: Anti-Abortion Activism and the Institutionalization of the Anti-Gender Movement in Croatia

In December 1990, the Croatian Parliament adopted the new Constitution of the (no longer Socialist) Republic of Croatia (NN 56/1990). Among many monumental changes to the country’s legal order, one perhaps less visible was that—in contrast to the 1974 Constitution of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) and the 1974 Constitution of the Socialist Republic of Croatia—‘the right to freely decide on childbirth’, encompassing the right to abortion, was no longer a constitutional right (Bijelić & Hodžić, 2014 ; Rittossa, 2005 ). Nonetheless, the legislation that previously guaranteed the exercise of this right—the 1978 Act on Health Measures for the Realization of the Right to Freely Decide on Childbirth (NN 18/78; henceforward Health Measures Act)—remains in effect to this day permitting abortion on demand until 10 weeks after conception.