I'm sorry, we don't perform abortions here any more. Our physicians have stopped performing abortions a few months ago; we'll do it only in emergency situations, if the mother's life is in danger.
So what can I do?
You'll have to contact a private practice.
Clinical Hospital Split, 1/2 1996 about 6p.m.
Hello, I'd like to have an abortion, so I'm interested if I can have that done at your hospital?
Of course.
What is the waiting period, what do I need to bring and how much is the operation?
There's no waiting period; just bring a referral from a gynecologist and 450 Kunas.
Clinical Hospital Split, 1/3 1996 about 10a.m.
Instead, we encountered the silence of physicians and nurses, explained with the absence of the department head Dr. Ivo Banovic who was on a vacation ("I'm sorry we cannot do anything in his absence"). Only one of the physicians, after we guaranteed not to reveal his name, managed to say more or less this:
Here, at our department, women used to stay for a day or two; in private practices the whole operation takes an hour. That shouldn't be like that, since it increases the likelihood that complications will occur. I believe that abortions should be performed in a hospital.
Well, are they performed here?
I cannot say.
Rumors which are circulating through the city claim that the whole business is a subtle self-promotional trick of the gynecology practitioners who eagerly receive in the afternoon and evening in private offices the same women whom they rejected in the morning at the hospital, using the "conscience" excuse. if you thought that the reason for this is that Split doctors want to offer their patients better quality care, we'll have to disappoint you: in private practice, this intervention costs about 1000 Kunas [Croatian currency], which is more than twice as much as in the hospital.
Dr. Mihovil Biocic, the head of the Split hospital, did not deny stories and speculations which had spread through the city. He stated the following for Feral:
If it is true, as is written in the papers and talked about, that my doctors refuse to perform abortions at the hospital while they perform them in the afternoon in private practices, that is insupportable. I will investigate that, but cannot tell you anything until the head of the department, Dr. Banovic, comes back.
Can you tell us whether the abortions are performed at the hospital or not? You are the head of the hospital after all, aren't you?
I'm sorry, I can't do anything in Dr. Banovic's absence!
That's a total chaos!, says Dr. Busic. Supposedly, they don't dare do it, and a X-ray specialist starts his own practice and employs a gynecologist for two hours a week. Those two hours are a formality; actually they work longer hours.
It is interesting that Drs. Busic and Ruzic, as they claim, don't perform abortions although they have a permit. Neither does Dr. Andelka Juric the only female gynecologist in Split.
I don't perform abortions, says Dr. Juric. I specialize in fertility problems. I always warn women, especially the younger ones, that every abortion carries a 30% chance for the future sterility. Nevertheless, it would be a catastrophe if women were denied their legal right to have an abortion. I think that abortions should be performed at the hospital, not illegally.
Since the remaining two private gynecologists in Split, Dr. Cecuk and Dr. Buljan, in their own words, perform abortions very rarely, it seems that the overwhelming majority of women in Split, in spite of their legal right to an abortion are forced to have them illegally.
The statement of a respected Split gynecologist, who demanded to stay anonymous, that about 15 gynecologists employed at the Hospital "Firule", who show one face to pregnant Split women in the morning and a different one in the evening, fits in this depressing picture of the attitude toward this sensitive and vital question for women.
With that the conscience is classified as every other commodity: for example as a cheaper cassette player or an expensive perfume, 100 kilograms of cabbage, about fifteen rolls of "grass" or 10 square centimeters of living space (which, multiplied by a number of women who seek gynecological services every year rapidly transform into square meters and even larger measurement units).
We should add that this sophisticated approach of the highly educated Split experts is simply a non-humorous copy of Strikan and Netjak's "Hick's bluff" [Strikan and Netjak are characters from a well known TV series, "Malo Misto", written by a recently deceased Feral's collaborator, Miljenko Smoje] - let the opponents win the first game (which is played for wine) in order to win the second one (which is played for a lamb). The difference is that Strikan and Netjak were, in their own way, real sportsmen and respected fair-play, while the Split gynecologists prefer money-play.
All this is done in spite of the Public Health Law which defines the obligation to provide of all medical services, including an abortion, as well as the Abortion law which was enacted in Croatia in 1978 and is respected in all European countries except for Poland and the Republic of Ireland. Let's not mention the Hippocratic oath. It is obvious that the Health ministry, lead by the Minister for Health, Dr. Andrija Hebrang, consciously ignores the situation and quietly condones the existing practice. In the Zadar "conscience mutiny" case everything finished with Minister's verbal threats, but the announced procedure against the gynecologists was never initiated.
In one of his books, Gabriel Garcia Marques famous Columbian writer said the following through one of his characters:
I am telling you: there is no wealth in this country behind which you cannot find a donkey.
Who is a fool here, dear readers, you should judge yourself. It seems to me, although I'm not a woman, that my ears are getting longer and longer...
The Minister was however, firm. He wouldn't say anything for Feral because Feral was a "continuation of the anti-Croatian tradition." The Minister then concluded: "In this moment, you are the greatest enemies of Croatia! Click."
Why doesn't the Croatian Minister think in the following way: if the Croatian women were given their right to an abortion, so many enemies of Croatia wouldn't be born?
Gynecologists became assistants, while interns actually performed abortions. Many Zadar women did not like the approach of the Zadar hospital and some of them obtained their legal rights at the Split hospital. Until recently, when the Split clinical center decided to show a "STOP sign" to abortions, and a majority of Zadar gynecologists has opened a private practice. In spite of their conscience.
According to the law, who is allowed to perform abortions in Croatia?
Every hospital with suitable conditions is obliged to provide abortions. If they refuse to do so, the physicians are breaking the law. The first case in which the law was broken occured in 1991 when, due to the request of the director, the gynecologists in the "Sisters of Mercy" hospital in Zagreb stopped performing abortions. However, the women protested and the decision was later suspended. The case in Zadar hospital is similar, since the gynecologists there also refuse to perform abortions and fulfill their legal obligations.
Women cannot obtain abortions in the Zadar hospital and now the same is happening in the Split hospital. What are the consequences of a ban on abortions in hospitals?
If abortions cannot be performed in the best possible conditions, the number of illegal abortions and, consequently, deaths caused by unprofessionally conducted interventions which affect the psychological health of a woman, increases. Furthermore, the refusal of the hospital gynecologists to perform abortions enables greedy and ruthless gynecologists to illegally earn large sums of money on women.
A very strong ideological movement in Croatia which supports not only the ban on abortions but also a ban on contraception also helps the alleged conscience objection of Zadar and, it seems, Split gynecologists?
Yes. Certain demagogues, in Croatia try to address with their speeches the uneducated population segments and successfully influence their emotions and will. Some of them use lies in their fight against abortions. For example, don Ante Bakovic claims that the current abortion law is a Stalinist law. As if he didn't know that Stalin actually banned abortions as well as did all other dictators, Hitler, Musolini and Ceausescu, who in Romania not only banned abortions but also formed a gynecological police which cruised through the country controlling the most intimate human affairs. The group of people who are agitating for a ban on abortions in Croatia is very loud and well organized. Unfortunately, authorities are certainly tolerating their activities.
B.a.B.e, Women's Human Rights Group, has learned that a Split hospital violates Croatian law and womens human rights by rejecting to perform abortions.
The Split magazine DAN published on 31.12.95 an article ("Hypocritical Gynecologists") about a woman who went to Split's Clinical Hospital to have an abortion. The gynecologist rejected to perform the abortion calling on his conscientiousness reasons. The woman then went to a private practice to have the abortion done. There she met the very same gynecologists who performed the abortion for a charge of 1.000 kuna (app. DEM 300), which is almost an average salary for women in Croatia. The director of the hospital, Mihovil Biocic, was not available to journalists for further comments.
The hospital has taken the law in its own hands by internally voting not to perform abortions. Although such decision violates the present law, it anticipates the "spirit" of a new proposed abortion law, which has not yet been proceeded in the Parliament. According to the new proposal doctors can make moral decisions not to perform abortions. This law supports doctors "conscientiousness" but does not secure women their reproductive rights. In May '95, when the new law was proposed, B.a.B.e and other womens groups collected throughout Croatia 20.000 signatures in support of womens reproductive rights and to keep abortion legal and safe in Croatia.
This is not the first time incidents like this happen in Croatia. B.a.B.e has already warned that the new proposed abortion law, in addition to grossly violate womens reproductive rights, also supports existing double morality and legalizes the profit oriented doctors "conscientiousness".
We call upon all women and men to support Croatian women in the fight for their reproductive rights!