Anti-abortion protesters stage a ‘Walk for Life’ in Croatia
7761 Min Read
A march against abortion and euthanasia drew in thousands in Croatia’s Zagreb on Saturday, with feminist groups staging smaller counterdemonstrations.
Organizers of the sixth annual “March for Life” said they were calling for “protecting every human life, with no discrimination” towards fetuses and the elderly. They also urged the officials to provide more support to pregnant women.
One of the banners at the anti-abortion event read “Unborn lives matter too.”
The protesters also waved Croatian flags and sang patriotic songs while marching through the Croatian capital. Many young people took part in the event.
Pro-abortion activists staged their own protests along the route of the anti-abortion march. Some of them wore bloody aprons and were carrying cloth hangers.
Abortion is currently legal until the 10th week of pregnancy in the predominantly Catholic Croatia. The law was passed in 1978, when Croatia was still a part of now-defunct socialist Yugoslavia. Since Croatia declared independence in 1991, however, the influence of the Catholic Church has grown much more powerful.
A growing number of doctors are refusing to conduct abortions on moral grounds.
Photo: Croatian citizens take part in a march against abortion in downtown Zagreb, Croatia. The sixth ‘Walk for life’ event in Zagreb gathered several thousands people to promote the belief that the human life begins with conception and ends with natural death, and that the right to life is a fundamental human right. EPA-EFE/ANTONIO BAT
