They say that the role of mother is the “most natural” role for women, while ignoring the conditions that the state should ensure, such as economic, social and increasingly political ones, which are sometimes crucial for parenthood planning.
“Have children”, was recently heard in the highest legislative institution of the Republic of Srpska.
The message addressed to a female representative by the first head of the Government of that entity was perceived as a message to all women – a message that suggests that women are responsible for the poor demographic picture.
“He did not insult me, he insulted all women in the Republic of Srpska, all families, because you never know what are the problems of a person, this could be a comment on the street and it is certainly insulting, and for a prime minister to answer a question about pro-natalism policy – to say ‘have children’ is really devastating”.
The representative is Tanja Vukomanović from the opposition Party of Democratic Progress. The First Person in the Government of the Republic of Srpska is Radovan Višković.
“I asked if the government has any concrete measures to stop this demographic picture that we have today. To that question of mine, the prime minister threw a ‘give birth to children’ and after the minister’s answer, which was also devastating, I said that I was surprised by what the prime minister is commenting. He blames women and says that women give birth to children. What a strategy of one prime minister, one government”, Vukomanović told Discriminacija.ba.
A very “unpleasant” discussion followed.
“I said it was a shame that the prime minister was speaking like that and he answered – shame on you – that is how an unpleasant discussion and the scolding of a prime minister, of an entity, started. All of that was really inappropriate”, explained Vukomanović.
Višković rejected the accusations, claiming that “his image, family upbringing and age do not allow him to say that”.
“I said – you need to have children”, Višković commented from the parliament rostrum.
Reproductive rights as a political issue
Whether a person should have children, whether they want to have them and how many children they would like to have, is a right they have to freely decide for themselves. In the Republic of Srpska, this is guaranteed to every individual by the Constitution of that entity.
The Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) does not clearly specify this issue.
Narratives like Višković’s message “have children” as a way to demographic growth are increasingly gaining popularity and serious social issues such as birth rates are addressed exclusively to women.
They said the role of mother is the “most natural” role for women, while ignoring the conditions that the state should ensure, such as economic, social and increasingly political, which are sometimes crucial for planning parenthood.
Such a social climate, in which the cultivation of traditional and patriarchal values is intensified, is gradually undermining the status of women in society, their rights and freedoms.
“Now, in this neoliberal era, we are aware that the state significantly limits women’s rights in the sense that it tells them that the state controls their bodies and what they can want when it comes to reproductive life”, is the opinion of Asim Mujkić, a professor at the Faculty of Political Sciences in Sarajevo.
Mujkić recalled the example of Poland, which has had restrictive abortion laws in place for years, preventing women from having an abortion, even if the unborn child has severe malformations, and the example of conservative judges in the United States who three years ago revoked women’s right to abortion in certain states, which until then, based on the Roe v. Wade court precedent from 1973, had been enjoyed at level of the United States.
As the right wing grows stronger, the issue of gender is usually put at the center of political action.
The way women are seen in society is also changing, says Mujkić, and he points out that in such societies “women will not be able to make decisions, because it is not their body, because they give birth to future citizens”.
Pro-life campaigns that aim to influence women’s decisions about abortion are increasingly visible in BiH. Billboard messages and prayers for unborn children in public health institutions, such as the one in March in Mostar, confirm this.
The goal of such initiatives is to reduce the possibilities or completely ban abortion.
“Bosnia and Herzegovina has unfortunately been in the process of this retraditionalization since 1990, so for a good 35 years”, says Mujkić, recalling the first multi-party elections in the 1990s and the narratives in campaigns to win over voters by emphasizing a “set of family values”.
“But in doing so, they clearly indicated that clear tendency, which unfortunately, especially after the war, through a kind of privileging of religious institutions was widely legalized. And in this desperate economic environment where you are actually rewarded, by some foundations or others, if you accept this kind of retraditionalization and introduce it into your life, read blackmail, similar results were achieved”, recalls the Sarajevo professor of the trends at the time.
And it does not stop there, he continues.
“Not to mention the onslaught of religious institutions on the education system, where through religious education this entire set of conservative and retraditionalizing values have been injected into young minds”.
Today, too, it can be expected that the strengthening of conservative currents will reduce women’s rights and freedoms.
“We also need to take into account what is happening in the region. That kind of demands and attempts to narrow the free space within which a woman can make a decision will continue to decrease, and Mujkić assesses that “on the other hand, we do not really see any forces that would put it as a priority, having in mind that daily concern for national issues”.
BiH, he points out, is currently unable to “appropriately punish femicide”.
The right to abortion: available, but not guaranteed
Although available, abortion in BiH is still a taboo topic and is rarely discussed.
Sexual and reproductive health rights in BiH are often limited and uneven.
Sometimes the place where the patient lives is also important for terminating a pregnancy. For example, residents of Nova Bila in the Federation of BiH cannot have an abortion at the nearest hospital.
“The Dr. Fra Mato Nikolić hospital does not perform artificial abortions!”, this is how the hospital responded to a query from the Diskriminacija.ba portal about terminating a pregnancy.
The conditions for abortion are different, as is the price. There are also differences in whether or not anesthesia is used during the abortion, and even psychological support.
“I had two spontaneous abortions, both of which were done without anesthesia. I passed out twice on that table while they were cleaning me. They sprinkled me with water. Even when they finished, the doctor told me that I could get up from the bed, but I could not. My husband was waiting at the door, he literally took me in his arms and carried me out”, testified the patient from Mostar, whose statement is found in the report “Human rights in the field of sexual and reproductive health”.
The report was prepared four years ago by the Institution of Human Rights Ombudsman of BiH in cooperation with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).
“In the past period, no complaints have been filed regarding the denial of the right to abortion or the inadequate conditions under which these medical procedures are performed”, the Institution of Human Rights Ombudsman of Bosnia and Herzegovina responded to a request from the Diskriminacija.ba portal.
Perhaps this was due to the data from the Report, which states that almost 35 percent of service users believe that women do not have information about the abortion procedure, and therefore do not complain.
According to the law, abortion can be performed up to the tenth week of pregnancy in BiH. Later, abortion is performed only if there is a vital indication or with the approval of an ethics committee.
In some health institutions, it is not possible to perform an abortion; health workers are called upon to “conscientious objection” and can refuse to perform an abortion, according to the report of the Institution of Human Rights Ombudsman of BiH.
A case of a doctor deciding to make a “conscientious objection” also happened at the University Hospital in Foča.
The Director of the University Hospital in Foča, Nenad Lalović, tells Diskriminacija.ba that abortions are performed at that hospital. However, doctors can, and usually do so, as he explains, due to “religious beliefs”, to make a “conscientious objection”.
In these situations, according to the Director of the Hospital in Foča, another doctor performs the abortion and the patient receives full health care services.
Due to restrictions and unequal rights, the Institution of Ombudsman in BiH has issued recommendations. They relate to ensuring equal conditions for performing abortions, the availability of anesthesia, covering costs from mandatory health insurance, and providing counseling and psychological support to women before and after the procedure.
But nothing has been done or implemented since then.
“There have been no significant legal changes that would systematically address these issues”, they add to Diskriminacija.ba.
“The mere prescription of a right does not guarantee its implementation”, they point out.
And the laws on sexual and reproductive health in BiH still rely on entity regulations, many of which were taken from the legislation of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) and have not been significantly reformed. These are laws that are more than half a century old.
“This includes laws on the conditions and procedure for termination of pregnancy in the Federation of BiH and Republic of Srpska, which remain inconsistent and insufficiently harmonized with international standards, including recommendations from United Nations bodies such as CEDAW and UNFPA”, the Institution of Ombudsman stated in its response to the Diskriminacija.ba portal.
There is no single legal solution that would regulate the issue of termination of pregnancy, but rather they are contained in a number of other laws, those in the areas of health, social protection, family relations, criminal and misdemeanor legislation.
In the Federation of BiH and the Brčko District, the Law on the Conditions and Procedure for Termination of Pregnancy from 1977 is in force, which guarantees freedom of decision-making about childbirth.
In accordance with the current 1977 Law for the FBiH and the Brčko District, and the Law on Conditions and Procedure for Termination of Pregnancy of the Republic of Srpska, every woman has the right to decide, according to her own choice, on the termination of pregnancy up to the tenth week of pregnancy.
However, abortion services are not provided in all areas of BiH, as is the case in Canton 10 and part of Mostar, where only medically indicated abortions are performed, according to the Institution of Ombudsman of BiH.
Denying access to abortion in certain circumstances violates women’s right to health, right to privacy, right to freedom from inhuman and degrading treatment, and right to non-discrimination. This is how international human rights bodies and the United Nations treat it.
“The social reality of a certain, generally enjoyed right, in this case we are talking about the right to abortion – a legally enjoyed right is limited in reality in different ways in different areas of BiH”, points out Amila Ždralović, a professor at the Faculty of Law in Sarajevo, in an interview with the portal diskriminacija.ba.
As she says, “a enjoyed right, at least research shows, does not mean a guarantee of its implementation”.
The Constitution – the absent guarantor of freedom
Although the laws on abortion in one part of BiH were taken from the legislation of the SFRY, which in 1974, as the first country in the world, included the right of a person to freely decide on the birth of children in the Constitution – the Constitution of BiH guarantees basic human rights but does not specify the freedom to decide on the birth of children. Thus, there is no clearly specified mechanism for protection against discrimination in this regard.
By including this norm in the Constitution of BiH, the state would signal that it protects the right of everyone to decide about their own body, and policies would be aligned with the principles of human rights and individual dignity.
“These principles should be directly incorporated into the Constitution. This is not a guarantee that they will be fully respected, but it is somehow an additional safeguard for us to seek the implementation of these rights in reality”, believes Amila Ždralović, a professor at the Faculty of Law in Sarajevo.
In the current situation in BiH, this would mean a change in the political paradigm, believes Mujkić.
“In a country like ours, you either protect the individual citizen, or his or her rights, freedoms, or you protect the people, the constituent people, and they appear to you as a subject and you subordinate the entire system to the protection of their collective rights and freedoms. You do not need to be told what we have opted for”.
Professor Ždralović emphasizes that changing the Constitution of BiH would mean a step forward in the fight against discrimination.
“If all the initiatives to amend and supplement the Constitution of BiH were adopted, it would be naive to claim that the adoption of these proposals would automatically lead to the implementation of rights”, she emphasizes. This, as she says, is “a step forward in the protection of guaranteed rights and a step towards implementing the guarantee of rights”.
However, we should not give up on the fight for equality and dignity because that “does not relieve us of the responsibility to fight”, concludes Mujkić.
“We have to come out with that #Women’s Lives Matter# like we have #Black Lives Matter# in America. We have to come out with it and not to privilege women’s lives, as the right wing usually says”, he points out.
Through the particular struggle, in this case of women’s human rights, Mujkić says that there is always that universal, human rights dimension, because “through the struggle for the oppressed and the enslaved, we are fighting for everyone”.
Written by Aida Đugum for the Initiative Women Citizens for Constitutional Reform and the discriminanija.ba portal
Text taken from: diskriminacija.ba
