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18 363 (1999)
Retaining the Abortion Law in Slovakia

handle is hein.journals/mlv18 and id is 373 raw text is: Med Law (1999) 18:363-371 Medicine and Law CYOZMOT 1999 RETAINING THE ABORTION LAW IN SLOVAKIA Michal Kliment, Vladimir Cupanik Slovak Family Planning Association Bratislava ABSTRACT This article tells of the founding of the Slovak Family Planning Association (FPA), of the approaches and strategies it has adopted in advocating expansion of family planning education and services, of the challenges and opposition it has faced, and continues to face, in Slovakia's generally unreceptive political climate to its efforts to promote respect for internationally recognized standards of reproductive health and choice, and of the dramatic reductions in the abortion rate - achieved without resort to legislative changes restricting abortion - that have occurred since the Slovak FPA began work. 1. Abortion Law in Slovakia In Slovakia, the relatively liberal 1986 abortion law, which has made safe abortion services available on request, on medical or social grounds, until the twelfth week of pregnancy, is still in force. But liberalisation of the abortion law started much earlier, in the late 1950s. In 1957, the former Czechoslovakian parliament passed an abortion law allowing women access to safe abortion services on practically the same grounds as today. There was one condition: the women had to appear before a special commission, which had power to prohibit the procedure. In practice, however, over 95% of the applications were approved. When, in the early 1990s, efforts began in earnest to replace the existing abortion law with a more restrictive one, not many people understood the background or the significance of family planning, reproductive health or reproductive rights, as defined at the international level by various conferences and organisations within the United Nations. 2. Family Planning and Citizens' Reproductive Rights in Slovakia Because of its forty-year history of Communist government, Slovakia has no tradition of human rights or civil society. After the fall of the Iron Curtain, in 1989, so called pro-life (anti-choice) activists began to mount well- 363

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