Curette blister

Big and important themes from the period of the Yugoslav state, one by one, are still being discovered, often quite suddenly, capturing the attention of their "discoverers". The book "Between carelessness and ignorance" by the historian Ivana Dobrivojević Tomić, published by the Archipelago publishing house, is exactly one such study. "Researching another topic", the author, who is also a senior research associate at the Institute of Contemporary History, writes in the preface, "completely unexpectedly, I came across the materials of the Federal Family Planning Council, which, judging by the way the folders were tied with string, no one had seen before .” The book "Between Carelessness and Ignorance" is a study of rarely rich source material in which the problem of the position of women, their sexuality and family planning in Yugoslavia, pre-war and socialist, from 1918 to 1991 is considered. At the center of the analysis are the very current issues of birth control and the right to abortion.

THIRTY

Only a decade or two after unification and the end of the Great War, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was hit by major family and demographic changes. On the one hand, they are caused by modernization processes, on the other, by difficult economic conditions. "Back in the old days," said an older farmer to the researchers of the time, "when there was more land, we loved children." Each new child then marked a new worker in the house. Now there is little land, every new child is a new holster for the peasant." The changes were particularly noticeable in Serbia, which "far surpassed Croatia" in terms of the rate of decline in the fertility rate. In Belgrade, Srem and Banat already in the thirties of the last century, a large number of married couples had two children, and at the same time, in many villages throughout Yugoslavia, families with eight, ten or twelve children lived.

Only the position of women did not change drastically. The peasants looked at women as lower than themselves, "to listen, serve, give birth and nurture their children". To meet their physical needs, while mostly not paying attention to either the cycle or the advanced pregnancy. "A peasant woman gave birth on straw, standing or kneeling," the book states, "it was not uncommon for her to give birth in a field or in a barn, alone, without anyone's help, because of the understanding that 'it is not appropriate to give birth in front of others.' Childbirth, especially the first, was considered impure in the villages of Serbia. Therefore, the woman in labor was placed in the 'deepest room' or some kind of 'basement', and 'dirty rags' or tarpaulins used to cover livestock were placed on her straw mat so that she would not soil the bedding. Immediately after the birth of the child, still 'tortured and bloody', she had to make hot brandy and coffee, and treat everyone present, and she returned to her daily household chores immediately 'so that there would be happiness in the house'." Slobodan Vidaković, a social researcher from Belgrade at the time, wrote: "In the town and village, where 86 percent of the inhabitants of Yugoslavia live, under the pressure of a primitive life, as well as the absence of any hygienic culture and difficult material conditions, the vast majority of births take place under circumstances that fill cemeteries mothers and newborn children". The data says that in 16 years, from 1920 to 1936, 85.775 stillbirths were born, and 38.000 mothers died during childbirth.

The decline in the birth rate in the countryside, from 1921 to 1939 it dropped from 36,7 to 25,9 live births per thousand inhabitants, upset national spirits. Already in the XNUMXs, there were warnings that population growth must be helped because Yugoslavia is "in the neighborhood of great nations", while the press wrote extensively about the "maternity crisis" and the "white plague". In a public speech, it was assessed that the Yugoslavs who "destroy their own fruit" are to blame for the fact that there are fewer children in certain Serbian and Croatian alleys than in German ones.

Most European countries banned abortion back in the 1934th century, but they became so widespread that in the 100s there was an "abortion pandemic". Due to social reasons, hundreds of thousands of abortions were performed in France, as many as a million in Germany. In Yugoslavia, Belgrade led the way, where as early as 40 there were 50-2000 violent terminations of pregnancy per XNUMX births. At the same time, abortions, especially in cities, made good money. While better-off ladies could afford an illegal abortion in one of the "discreet" sanatoriums for XNUMX dinars, which is three or four monthly wages of an unskilled worker, until then poor women could only count on the help of their neighbors, aunts, grandmothers, or nanny, or they did so. all alone. In provoking abortions, the book states, women's imagination had no limits, often leading to a fatal outcome. "There is a sign that clearly shows that birth control has already started in a certain village," wrote sociologist Professor Sreten Vukosavljević, "suddenly there are many young widows in the village."

In the city, since intentional termination of pregnancy was a criminal offense, going to the hospital was delayed, doctors were given wrong information, and abortion was often denied. "We should ask our hospitals and doctors in practice what today's female clientele looks like," Croatian gynecologist Vladimir Bazala wrote at the time. "Abortion after abortion, one worse than the other, one more difficult than the other. The consequences are terrible, the mortality is sad. Of all those through whose hands mutilated, half-dead women daily pass after criminal abortion, has anyone found himself raising his voice, both as a physician and as a man, to demand that anything be done to prevent and remove or diminish this affliction? ? There is no voice about it from anywhere, only the demand of those who apodictically demand a law against abortion is constantly heard."

The author of the study, Ivana Dobrivojević Tomić, tells "Vreme" that the turning point in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was in the late twenties and early thirties, when socially engaged intellectuals became aware that something had to change: "These were primarily doctors and lawyers. In the newspaper 'Pravda', which was very focused on social issues, issue after issue published debates about allowing abortion in clinics under certain circumstances, if it is established that a woman lives in difficult social conditions. Those were the first such voices. At the 17th Congress of the Yugoslav Medical Association in 1935, a revolutionary resolution was passed at the time, which, among other things, demanded an amendment to the Criminal Code in order to recognize, in addition to medical, social indications as permission for abortion. The authorities ignored that request and the practice of regulating births through illegal abortions continued."



SOCIALISM

The creation of a new socialist man also meant the creation of a "new type" of woman. Women built and worked as well as men, men's authority over women and children was abolished, the church was excluded from family relations, women were equal in inheritance rights, education became more accessible. However, it turned out that the state is often not ready to stand behind all the proclaimed laws, and most often in the sphere of economic independence, and old habits have died out hard. "When we recruit young girls and women," said Dušan Breznik, director of the Center for Demographic Research, "we all wonder if they will have a child." That's when we're being honest. We are all very much in favor of regulations, however, we do not implement them at all or not as they were intended."

In the years of famine and desperate search for work, insufficiently literate and sexually uneducated population, unwanted pregnancies were a big problem. The code from the kingdom that prohibited abortion ceased to be valid in 1945, and a new code was passed in 1947, only it did not mention abortion.

Until 1951, there was silence, which author Dobrivojević Tomić calls a "legal vacuum". At that time, given that abortion due to medical reasons was certainly allowed, two Zagreb doctors published texts with the thesis that women deliberately nurse their illnesses, not treat them, in order to later use them as a reason for abortion. Also, at that time, mothers were excluded from SKOJ because of an out-of-wedlock pregnancy, while fathers of Skojevs did not suffer any consequences. Strong pressure from the environment forced girls and women to have any kind of abortion, and usually the most risky, illegal one.

For the first time in 1951, the criminal code introduced that abortion is allowed for medical and moral-ethical reasons, that is, in the case of incest or rape. However, it was only in the 1952 regulation that it was specified that these could be medical and social reasons. Formally, it was a big step forward. Finally, social reasons "crept" into the decree, and the authorities later said that no one knows how it happened. This still did not mean that a woman is allowed to have an abortion for social reasons, for example, if she already has a large number of children, due to lack of an apartment, lack of work. It was a round-the-clock solution that meant that a woman could submit a request for an abortion if she has a disease that endangers her during pregnancy, that is, if the pregnancy would further intensify some social problems related to that disease. "Abortion permission", the author of the study explains to "Vreme", "does not arise from modern views and pro-feminist attitudes, but is considered to be the help that society provides to women." And once circumstances change for the better, when the state can help more mothers and children, the family in general, abortion will become more unnecessary." Until 1955, the commissions used very strict criteria to decide on submitted requests for abortion, and for women, the whole procedure represented real mistreatment. The problems of pregnant unmarried girls did not end even with an abortion, they were usually stigmatized by that act, although the commission guaranteed discretion, so it happened that the whole provincial town knew when a woman had an abortion. As the media of the time wrote, it was these underage girls who made the most dramatic decisions: they gave birth to children out of wedlock, ran away from home and attempted suicide. Illegal abortions were still the only solution for many women, and images of the disastrous consequences of unprofessionally performed pregnancy terminations poured into gynecological clinics from all over the country, which finally forced the authorities to react.

The social climate towards abortion began to change in 1955, and the commissions finally became more sympathetic. Social indications, for example the husband's alcoholism, poverty, looking for work, became the dominant reason for legal abortion, although still disguised as medical. Until 1960, the number of women seeking abortion in Yugoslavia was constantly growing and in a certain way, in terms of family planning, it became a type of "contraception". In Western Europe, abortion was largely only a backup option, more in the case when contraception fails, but in Yugoslavia, until its disintegration, abortion was considered the "most convenient" method of birth control. In the decree from 1960, social indication is finally allowed as a justified reason for abortion, so throughout the sixties abortions are allowed much more liberally and en masse. It was enough for the women to say at the commissions that they simply did not want to give birth, that the child would increase the cost of living or that they did not have a large enough apartment - and the abortion would be approved.

The doctors had a hard time accepting the new situation. Their views on the fact that the right to abortion should be limited, perhaps partly because of the pronatalist policy, but above all and most importantly because of the violation of women's reproductive health, were defeated as conservatives. On the other hand, their appeals to the state to educate the population more intensively about modern means of contraception, and to make the means widely available, did not bear fruit. The first gynecological counseling centers opened in 1955 where you could get contraceptives, which was even ahead of that time, died due to poor financing. According to information from the book, some commissions for the approval of abortion even tried to convince the couple to get married and give up the termination of pregnancy, so thanks to the efforts of one commission, an average of seven marriages were concluded per month.

The 1960 regulation had both positive and negative sides. The number of illegal abortions decreased from year to year, but gynecologists were desperate because of the insufficient number of doctors and the unprepared health system, as well as the accelerated growth of abortions. "I have a blister from a curettage," said a well-known gynecologist at the time, "because doctors have to curettage 30 to 40 women a day in a city of 170.000 inhabitants." If this continues, we will refuse the curettage because we have turned into abortionists, and we are not performing the duty of a doctor. The way it is done today, abortion is legalized, only with great mistreatment for women. She has to go through so many commissions, she has to wait, she has to lose a large number of working days, and that's all harassment, and then she comes home tortured."



ABORTION CULTURE

In the Constitution of 1974, a provision was introduced that reads: "It is the right of a person to freely decide on the birth of children. This right may be limited only for the protection of health." In the new Yugoslav policy, the focus of health care has shifted to preventive activities. Doctors believed that the provisions of the new constitution should be interpreted as an obligation for everyone, not only for healthcare and gynecologists. Thus, according to legal solutions in all republics and provinces, mass education about the use of modern contraceptives became a priority, for which health, social, and educational institutions were in charge.

In reality, however, it deviated from a progressive and modern legislative framework. Most of the state institutions were quite uninterested in the implementation of the law, general practitioners could not or did not want to deal with it too much, the introduction of sex education in schools was met with resistance, and when you add to all that a relatively low standard, increasing unemployment, the unsolved housing issue, insufficient number of places in crèches and kindergartens, reduction of child allowance, inflation and high prices of children's items, resulted in smaller families and an increasing number of abortions. Among the many data from the socialist era, the book also includes the fact that, for example, in Kosovo and Metohija, even in 1988, only half of births were performed with professional medical assistance, that Yugoslavia was second only to the Soviet Union in terms of the frequency of abortions, that In 1984, the number of abortions exceeded the number of live births for the first time, that in Serbia only one in ten women knew how to accurately determine their fertile days, that a third of them believed that intercourse interrupted represents a safe method, that the majority did not know enough about the mechanisms of contraception, and that with all that there was a great resistance to condoms.

Illegal abortions were indeed completely eradicated, but a greater step forward than that was not made. The will, enthusiasm and material conditions for the implementation of the law were not enough, and the "abortion culture" took deep root. The huge gap between the laws and practice at the time is perhaps best illustrated by one piece of information from the book. Namely, the Family Code of Bosnia and Herzegovina stipulates that young people cannot get married before going to a marriage and pre-marriage counseling center where, among other things, they would receive information about family planning and reproductive health. Only, the problem was that even a full six years later, not a single counseling center of this type existed in that republic.

Only before the collapse of socialism, the generations born in the late 1960s and early 1970s began to change their perceptions. Contraception was becoming more accepted, partly due to the epidemic of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases, partly due to popularization in the media, so the processes that were completed in Western Europe in the seventies took place in the former Yugoslav republics in the nineties. Over time, finally, abortion ceased to be the most suitable method of family planning in these areas as well.