The Regulation of the Medically Assisted Reproduction (MAR) in Croatia and the European legislative context

Technology advancements in the MAR domain and its different applications that first engaged themselves in the medical practice, often were reinforced with the non-legislative normative, and further with the Government attention with a need for legislative regulation. The Authors show how Croatia as one of the ex-Socialistic Republics was no exception in this tendency and stated “Medical Assisted Reproduction” regulation in front of the lack of a law. At that time, it consisted only of six dispositions contained in the 1978 law entitled “Act Concerning Medical Measures for Exercising the Right to the Free Decision about Giving Birth to Children”, dating 30 years ago. The article then continues mentioning the turn of the political institutional setting that, with the biotechnological evolution, brought, in 2009, to the first systematic law regarding MAR. Although, without some criticism and,in some ways “permissive” law of 2009 (regarding heterologous fertilization, not followed by a clear right to know ones own origins by those born with this procreation way, it was characterized by instances of protection of the embryo in particular by prohibiting production of surplus embryos. By this reason, the law was evaluated by the new Government formed after the elections 2011, as “antiquated and conservative”. As reactions to these unjustifiable evaluations emerged, the great number of Croatian citizens joined the initiative “I was an embryo too”. The following intensive and lively debate had brought to the 2012 law, which was considered as one of the most permissive laws in the European context. Therefore, the authors investigated this last legislative text, enhancing the differences between this and the former law also keeping in mind, the normative European context in which the legislative revolutions and revisions of different laws emerged. Even though the Croatian legislative evolution on MAR has paved the way of spreading “new civil rights” in which the holders are the parents to-be and the different professionals(medical, scientists), presently in Croatia -conclude the authors- there is an alternative culture to the one seeking the “child at all costs” and the destruction of the human embryos as a “scientific advancement”. The initiative “I was an embryo too” and the European Citizens’ Initiative called “One of Us” shared the same expressions of this culture, from which the rights of the smallest ones among human beings stem; therefore, it is possible to understand the true meaning of parenthood and that of the scientific advancement