***** The nationalist instrumentalization of women was also confirmed in the new abortion law adopted by the Serbian parliament in May 1993. Just like the patriarch's message, this abortion law all of a sudden introduced women into the political arena, after their long and "normal" invisibility. The version adopted by the parliament permitted women to decide on an abortion only up to ten weeks into their pregnancy, while a commission composed of a physician, a psychologist, and a social worker would be empowered to take the final decision where women sought abortions between the tenth and twentieth week of pregnancy. Also, women between sixteen and eighteen years of age (although having the right to work and to found a family) must obtain permission for both parents in order to have an abortion performed. And last but not least, the initial draft of this law did not recognize rape as a legitimate reason for abortion.
The abortion law provoked major resistance on the part of feminist groups as well as Civic Alliance, the only major opposition party to have taken up the cause of women's rights....[T]his law was among the few that President Milosevic declined to sign, sending it back to the parliament with the explanation that "it diminishes the basic freedom to decide whether to give birth, as one of the fundamental human rights." ...[T]he revised abortion law eventually adopted in Serbia included rape among acceptable reasons for granting an abortion, and allowed women between the ages of sixteen and eighteen to make their own decisions without parental consent. But it still did not allow personal, family, or social reasons to be considered after the tenth week of pregnancy; nor did it allow women to make their own decision after the tenth week.
Where the first draft had stipulated that raped women had to give birth, the "ameliorated" law represented only a lesser erosion of women's fundamental rights. Abolishing women's right to decide on abortion up to the twentieth week of pregnancy, grounded on personal, family, and social reasons, in fact does not represent at all a contradictory precedent in the general trend of _ideologization_ surrounding the issues of fertility and population politics in the service of the Nation. Compared to the "hard" reasons accepted as the only allowable reasons for granting approval for abortion up to the tenth week (the woman's health, a deformed fetus, rape, or incest), _personal_ (including family and social) reasons are the only ones that could be translated as "ideological," that is, reasons outside the realm of "natural" causes....
Only 4 percent of the members of the Serbian parliament are women, and even that represents some small progress when compared with the period 1990-93, when only 1.6 percent of parliamentary deputies were women. Not a single law was passed in this parliament concerning women's rights. Women represents the major part of the workforce that was laid off or put on a compulsory vacation. Women and rural inhabitants were the real pillars of Serbia, bearing the brunt of the U.N sanctions from 1992 to 1996....[T]he death rate among the newborn increased from 12 percent in 1992 to 16 percent in 1994. (163-4)
[An earlier version of this essay was originally published in _War Report_, no 36 (Sept. 1995).]
[Zarana Papic teaches social anthropology at the University of Belgrade and at the Women's Studies Center, Belgrade.] *****
Yoshie