The human right to the freedom of choice in childbearing is the fruit of an extensive debate between the global North and global South. Since the 1960s, the United Nations discussed whether states should adopt so-called population policies to either raise the fertility rate in the »developed« North, or to prevent the explosion of the population in the global South. Feminist politicians from the non-alignment movement, particularly the Slovenian Vida Tomšič, succeeded in reframing the whole issue. Instead of forcing fertility growth under the pretence either of god’s will or state interest the United Nations adopted the concept of the wanted child. This helped to foreground a human freedom of choice to be or not to be a parent and the freedom and responsibility of every person as a future parent to consider the wellbeing of the already-born children, future children, and the entire community.

The Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia as the first country in the world inscribed this right in its Constitution. This was the result of a heated debate in the Federal Assembly of Yugoslavia regarding the question of whose right is this and what this right should define. Is it a human right of every woman and man regarding parenthood, or only the freedom of the woman to decide to do an abortion?

The argumentation prevailed that a more broadly set human right about the freedom of choice in childbearing offers a better solution because it includes the right of the woman to terminate her pregnancy on her request, which should be indeed only her own decision, however, that the essence of the right of choice in childbearing lies in the rights and duties of parents. They should freely decide on having or not having children, but at the same time, they have to actively strive to create conditions together, at the workplace, in the local community and more widely, in nationwide political decision-making on education, health care, employment, social welfare, childcare, and social housing in order to be able to have children that are wanted and grow up in encouraging family and social conditions.

Thus, in 1974, the following text was enacted by the Yugoslav Federal Assembly: »It is the right of every person to freely decide whether to bear children. This right can only be limited due to health reasons.« However, only in the Constitution of the Yugoslav Socialist Republic of Slovenia, this right was made more concrete in the same year with the words: »To exercise this right, society shall ensure the necessary education, appropriate social protection and medical help in compliance with the law.«

This definition of the right and the later adopted legislation of the Socialist Republic of Slovenia elevated Slovenia above the level of the most progressive European countries of the time. One can see how progressive this solution was if one sees how France only this year, included a much more limited right in its Constitution, namely, the right of the woman to abortion and contraception, while in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union sexual and reproductive rights are not even mentioned.

After Slovenia’s establishment as an independent state, new generations had to win again their constitutional human right to the freedom of choice in childbearing and right of women to the legal termination of pregnancy. The women achieved this with a demonstration in front of the Slovenian Assembly, where in December 1991, the new Slovenian Constitution was being adopted. Today, Article 55 of Slovenia’s Constitution reads: »Everyone shall be free to decide whether to bear children. The state shall guarantee the opportunities for exercising this freedom and shall create such conditions as will enable parents to decide to bear children. «

Today this right is endangered in practice for several reasons: there is growing public opposition from religious anti-abortion groups, conservative lawyers try to annul official constitutional explanation according to which Article 55 also includes the right of women to abortion, but also due to lack of gynaecologists and the deficient sexual education in schools. Nonetheless, the right to freedom of choice in childbearing remains of key importance for parents who want to raise their children in a loving and encouraging environment, and for the people who do not want to have children.

Sonja Lokar

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SOURCES:

• Ana Kralj, Tanja Rener, Vesna Leskošek [et al.], Abortion and Reproductive Rights in Slovenia: A Case of Resistance (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2024).
• Sklepna listina mednarodne konference o človekovih pravicah ZN, 22. april–13. maj 1968, Teheran, poglavje XVIII, 3. člen [The Final Act of the UN International Conference on Human Rights April 22–May 13 1968, Tehran, Chapter XVIII, Article 3] (New York: United Nations, 1968), 14.
• Ustava Socialistične federativne republike Jugoslavije [The Constitution of the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia] (Beograd: Newspaper Institute Official Gazette of SFRY, 1974).
• Ustava Socialistične republike Slovenije [The Constitution of the Socialist Republic of Slovenia] (Ljubljana: Newspaper Institute Official Gazette of the Socialist Republic of Slovenia, 1974).
• Ustava republike Slovenije, 55. člen [Constitution of the Republic of Slovenia, Article 55] (Ljubljana: Official Gazette of the Republic of Slovenia, 1992).
• Vida Tomšič, Ženska, delo, družina, družba. [Woman, Work, Family, Society] (Ljubljana: The Komunist Journal (Ljubljana: Komunist, 1976), 371–94.