AFP said that the Croatian parliament on Friday passed the new law on medically assisted insemination despite strong opposition from the Catholic Church and conservative political parties.
The news agency recalled that Croatia had had the law allowing the freezing of embryos but in 2009 the then government led by the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) adopted the law banning that and allowing the fertilisation of only three egg cells.
AFP also pointed out a possibility in the new law to make medically assisted reproduction available to working-age women who are not married and do not have a partner.
The Austrian news agency APA said that the Catholic Church and associations close to the Church and the opposition HDZ had been fiercely criticising the draft legislation and disputing the provisions that entitle members of common law partnerships and homosexual and transsexual persons to assisted insemination.
The Italian news agency ANSA said that the new law in Croatia was one of the most liberal and permissive laws in Europe because it allows, among other things, the freezing of embryos. It also reported about the vociferous opposition from the Church and the opposition right-of-centre bloc. In that context it said that an HDZ official compared the new law to human tragedies of the Holocaust and to crimes committed by the Communist regime.
A few news agencies in Croatia's neighbourhood also reported on this topic.