"We know the citizens of Croatia don't want to live in a clerical society in which decisions about our lives are made at altars. That's why we invite you to say a loud 'no' to pro-family and life activists, their walks for so-called life, their prayers outside hospitals, morbid campaigns in which, as always, they insult, manipulate and lie. Let's also say 'no' to such a government led by a hypocritical prime minister, 'no' to its attempts to ban the right to choose," Jelena Tesija of the fAKTIV association, which organised the march, said at the rally.
She demanded the resignation of Foreign Minister Davor Ivo Stier and his adviser Ladislav Ilcic, saying the participants in the march did not agree to restrictions of women's sexual and reproductive rights which were under attack by neoconservative forces in society.
The organisers of the march said their goal was to defend women's endangered rights and fight for a system and a society in which they had the right to choose as well as all material conditions for deciding about their lives.
"Right now the political elites and the Catholic Church are turning the society we live in into a hostile environment for all those who stand out in their vision of the proper Croats. They will resort to anything. The prime minister and the government are lying, pushing the most conservative policies which even the European Christian Democrat parliamentary majority is shocked by. Those are not policies, those are fascist methods which try to reduce women to devalued slaves without the right to vote, to producers of disenfranchised labour and cannon fodder," said fAKTIV's Sanja Kovacevic.
She said that, in their fight for women's rights, the organisers followed their predecessors, the women fighters who had won the right to a safe and legal abortion.
Opposition politicians Davor Bernardic and Ivan Vrdoljak, former president Ivo Josipovic, and Zagreb mayoral candidates Anka Mrak Taritas and Sandra Svaljek also marched.
The marchers also warned about women's exposure to economic and sexual violence, discrimination and denial of rights.