The RODA Association, together with the Midwives Association and B.a.B.e organization, organized an action on the occasion of Mother's Day on May 13, 2007, with the aim of raising public awareness of the poor conditions in Croatian maternity hospitals as well as the violation of basic human rights of women during childbirth.
In 2002, the Storks organized the petition "My Birth - My Body - My Choice" to sensitize the Croatian public and appeal to maternity hospitals to change outdated practices that are still being implemented in our maternity hospitals.
Unfortunately, the situation is not much better today. Progress is minimal and very slow, gynecologists and maternity hospitals are still an impenetrable wall, and the wishes of women in labor for a more humane, intimate, and natural birth are generally not respected. Almost every birth is transformed into a risky condition and disease that requires treatment, and otherwise healthy women and newborns become patients who take a long time to recover from childbirth. In addition to unnecessarily burdening the healthcare system, women often experience childbirth as a trauma, which affects their decision to have more children.
In addition to the above-mentioned evident violations of the Law on the Protection of Patients' Rights, it is also shocking that maternity hospitals constantly violate the fundamental, most basic human rights of women in labor and newborns. Upon entering the maternity hospital, it very often happens that a woman in labor becomes a number without a voice: procedures are performed on her body without seeking consent, without explaining what is being done, with the ever-present excuse that everything is being done "in the best interests of the child."
The Citizens' Coalition STOP RISK SEX EDUCATION was founded on January 11, 2007, as a result of a meeting between the CESI association and about thirty concerned citizens, representatives of networks, associations, institutions and political parties.
The immediate reason for the establishment of the Coalition is the decision of the Ministry of Science, Education and Sports of December 29, 2006, that the Experimental Health Education Program of the GROZD Association will be implemented in about ten schools as part of class community hours starting next school year.
The civic initiative "Matija Gubec" - resistance to the space of political discretion, was created spontaneously in 2005, as a reaction of citizens, associations and trade unions to the Act on Amendments to the Act on Public Assembly, Official Gazette 90/2005, which we consider completely unjustified and unacceptable due to a number of reasons, among which the key is the violation of the constitutional rights of citizens of the Republic of Croatia to express their opinions and hold public assemblies.