Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.3935/rsp.v5i1.353
Family Planning - From Abortion to Health Education
Dubravka Hrabar
; Pravni fakultet Sveučilišta u Zagrebu
Abstract
Human procreation is a phenomenon which, understood in a broad context, becomes extremely important and family planning depends on it. Family planning is of social and political importance. Within a legal framework, it is an expression of a social and political profile of every state. Nowadays, family planning has gone beyond the family framework and it is often considered as a problem of the survival of society ad a whole. Family planning has also acquired a legal dimension because today we speak of the right to plan a family. In that regard, there is a question of classifying that right - does it belong to the personal rights of an individual or is it within the competence of the state? The International Conference in Cairo in 1994 declared itself on that issue. Further, there is a question of the authorised persons possessing the right to plan a family - with regard to gender, age, marital status and business capacity. The content of this right is also analysed, as well as its impact and possible collision with some other rights, and the rights of other persons. The new proposed legislation concerning family planning is subject to critical analyses and explanations. It is a draft law which, in a spirit of the conclusions of the Cairo Conference, approaches the interruption of pregnancy from a professional (medical) and humanistic aspect. The draft law on the interruption of pregnancy is based on the (relative) freedom of abortion, and it is defined as a matter of a woman's conscience. It is explicitly not considered to be a way of planning a family, it may be done in authorised hospitals and it is preceded by obligatory expert counselling. There are abortions (i.e. pregnancies) which involve a decision by a hospital commission. The draft law introduces a new legal category - the right to have a conscientious scruple, manifesting an understanding for all the parties involved in an abortion which is considered a necessary evil. The draft law on voluntary sterilisation, within the scope of family planning, is interesting because it provides legal security by prescribing some preconditions under which and with which persons sterilisation may be done. The health and educational measures have found their place in the package of medical laws (there is no analysis of the Law on Fertilisation with Medical Assistance) because health education on family planning has never been legally regulated. Therefore, the Law on Health and Educational Measures in family planning is of crucial importance because the future of the population policy in Croatia will depend on its implementation.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
29914
URI
Publication date:
1.1.1998.
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