In light of the September 28 Campaign, H.E.R.A., the Association for Health Education and Research organized a national conference: “Legal restrictions – safe and legal abortion”. The event was an excellent occasion to gather all relevant stakeholders to discuss the new Abortion Law which was introduced by the Macedonian government two years ago. The changes introduced a written request to be submitted by the woman who wishes to terminate her pregnancy, mandatory counselling and waiting period of three days. Such barriers stigmatize women’s dignity and create discriminatory legal obstacles to women’s access to legal abortion. Among the speakers were Bojan Jovanovski, Drasko Kostovski and Igor Jadrovski from H.E.R.A., Natasa Gaber-Damjanovska, Constitutional Judge, and Marta Szostak, ASTRA Network Coordinator, who talked about the most burning issues in access to abortion services in Central and Eastern Europe.
In the evening a Slam Poetry event took place, organized in collaboration with Poetry Slam Macedonia. Young Macedonian poets read poems on topics related to women`s rights and gender issues. These events gathered a lot of media attention in Macedonia, news about the conference and parts of the press statement were published on Akademik.mk, Utrinski.mk, Daily.mk, and a1on.mk. View photos from the event here and here.