Three respected physicians, MD Dubravko Lepusic, MD Jasenka Grujic-Koracin and MD Gorjana Gjuric, whose Initiative for regulation of conscientious objection raised a public debate, explained their position on demanding that government-funded hospitals shouldn’t employ doctors who refuse do to various medical procedures on the grounds of religious beliefs.

Hospital, as a public institution that is funded by public money, has to secure the right of a woman to have an abortion. That is, and there should be no compromise on that certain issue. There are legal frames that guarantee that right. There are articles, in particular laws that also guarantee a right for a physician to practice conscientious objection, but that does not mean they are allowed not to put patients’ needs first.

“It doesn’t function in Croatia. Every doctor with conscientious objection, like those who work in the “Holy Spirit” hospital, which are massively refusing to do abortions, should work in a confessional hospital that should be funded by the Church. That’s why we are demanding that confessional hospitals get established and that the institutional right for conscientious objection in public hospitals gets shut down, including pharmacy and transfusion medicine. It’s a physician’s obligation to provide services based on science, and not the religious dogma.” – That’s how the MD Jasenka Grujic-Koracin announces the initiative for the establishment of confessional hospitals, as just one of the series of projects the “Initiative of doctors for the regulation of conscientious objection in medicine” will pull off. The Initiative was presented to the public during the roundtable they’ve organized together with Center for education, counseling and research from Zagreb.