Pro-life in Croatia: One Woman’s Relentless Work to Awaken the Church on Abortion

Today, Croatia reportedly has the lowest abortion rate of all Eastern European countries. 

Anita Jovanovic, co-founder of Choose Life Croatia, the 

nation’s first pregnancy help ministry

photo courtesy: Anita Jovanovic 

By Karen Ingle

National Right to Life

Until June 2013, Croatia’s population of over four million people had no pregnancy center holding out hope and practical support in the face of desperate pregnancy situations. Then Anita Jovanovic and her husband Nikola, along with two women from their church, opened Choose Life Croatia in Zagreb, home to one-fifth of Croatia’s people.

Jovanovic, a preschool teacher, said she had not planned to do such groundbreaking work when she first collided with the truth about abortion.

“I didn’t know about the issue of abortion,” she said. “Here, in evangelical churches, no one talks about it. I never heard any pastor or preacher talk about it, or that this was part of the gospel of the church.”

But then she attended “Daughters of the King,” a Christian women’s conference in Sarajevo designed to encourage Balkan women to seek God’s will and step out in faith to obey Him. There, amid presentations on many opportunities for ministry, she first learned the truth about abortion.

During the decade before winning independence from Yugoslavia, her country’s abortion numbers had peaked at more than 50,000 per year.

“The former Yugoslavia nations—Macedonia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro—were second in the world after the Soviet Union for the numbers of abortions per capita,” Jovanovic said. “When I saw that almost every family was impacted by abortion, I knew we desperately needed healing.”

That need drove Jovanovic to tears. But what could she do about it? “It was terribly confusing for me because I didn’t understand how you could connect it to the church,” Jovanovic said. “For the next two years I was praying and asking God to explain to me about abortion, preborn babies, and when life begins. It was a journey just between me and God.”

After those two years of prayer, Jovanovic and her husband knew it was time to act on God’s calling. Two women, including Ivana Galić who still serves with them, stepped forward to help them found the ministry. Both women had once experienced teen pregnancy and were now eager to help others find the hope they had received in desperate circumstances.

Together, these pioneers launched Choose Life Croatia.

Challenges in the Culture and the Church

From its inception, the pregnancy center faced obstacles. First, when Jovanovic’s family moved from 800,000-strong Zagreb east to Daruvar, a town of only 11,000 people, the center’s head office had to move, too.

“My brain told me there was no logic in that,” Jovanovic said. She feared that a center in the smaller city would be ineffective and overlooked. But events soon indicated they were in the right place.

“When we came to Daruvar they changed the motto of our town to ‘Love Life,’” she said. “That was the first confirmation. Regarding the second fear I had, in the four and a half years we have been here, because we are pro-life, we have had guests from almost every continent in the world.”

Continue reading Croatia pro-life story here